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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75113 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                        THE NOISE OF THE WORLD
+
+                          By ADRIANA SPADONI
+
+                 AUTHOR OF "THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM"
+
+                          BONI AND LIVERIGHT
+                              PUBLISHERS
+                               NEW YORK
+
+                           COPYRIGHT, 1921,
+                       BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
+
+                         _All rights reserved_
+
+               _Printed in the United States of America_
+
+
+                      ... but hearing oftentimes
+                   The still, sad music of humanity,
+
+
+                   A motion and a spirit that impels
+                   All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
+                   And rolls through all things.
+
+                             --WORDSWORTH
+
+
+
+
+                        THE NOISE OF THE WORLD
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER ONE
+
+
+"Well, what do you propose? Come down to facts. It's all very
+interesting and ethical, this harangue of yours; I wouldn't ask any
+better if I were the defendants' counsel, but, as the opposition, it
+is not in line. Are you seriously suggesting that this firm refuse the
+case?"
+
+"Exactly. I thought I made that plain at the beginning of my
+'harangue.'"
+
+John Lowell drew in his upper lip, frowned and swayed slowly back and
+forth, as was his habit when thinking out some intricate point of law.
+But, by the nervous tapping of the fingers upon the desk, Roger Barton
+knew that the other was not analyzing a point of law. He was angry and
+would continue to sway thoughtfully and tap with long, slim fingers
+until he had fashioned a verbal sword with which to slash Roger's
+repression to bits; then, smiling, would watch Roger flounder from
+abstraction to personality, and drown in the sea of his own anger.
+Roger Barton's wide mouth closed in a firm line.
+
+At her stenographer's desk by the window, Anne Mitchell leaned
+across her machine, her eyes on the younger man. In the year of her
+secretaryship she had seen few men defy John Lowell and none emerge
+with dignity from the interval of his silent tapping.
+
+"Well?"
+
+Still Roger did not speak. Neither did he knit his brows nor make any
+outward sign of searching for a more cogent argument than the one he
+had already advanced. His blue eyes summed up the man in the chair and
+held his deduction quietly for the other to read. Against that look
+John Lowell's pretense of calmness finally splintered.
+
+"If we don't, some one else will; and it's eight thousand a year for
+whoever gets the Morgan work."
+
+Anne Mitchell rose and came round her desk. There she stopped, as
+Lowell reached the end of his sentence, and stood leaning against the
+edge. Standing so, she was slighter even than one would expect, almost
+frail but for a kind of compactness, a perfection of bodily finish that
+allowed no such waste of material as physical weakness. If Anne had
+been a few inches taller, or twenty pounds heavier; if she had been
+more sharply defined instead of being a small portion of space cased in
+a body for the convenience of physical motion; if she had obstructed
+attention instead of being almost fluid in the unobtrusiveness of
+her movements, she would long ago have doubled her twenty dollars a
+week. As it was, on the few occasions when John Lowell lent her to
+other members of the firm, they always looked puzzled for a moment:
+"Mitchell? Oh, sure, send her along. Good." And gave Anne twice the
+amount of work they had intended.
+
+"Well?" John Lowell drew out his watch, murmured "four twenty-seven!"
+as if he were noting the amount to be charged later, and slipped his
+watch back. "You don't seem to have anything very constructive to
+offer, do you, Barton? Our not taking the case won't save your friends
+on the hill."
+
+"No. Neither did your refusing that railroad franchise case save the
+public."
+
+The older man smiled at the reference. "Too sticky. That would have
+smelled to high Heaven."
+
+"Not a bit stickier or smellier than this." Roger now took a step
+forward, as if to insure the aim of his words through the unexpected
+aperture of the other's momentary honesty. "The only difference is,
+that you can put this over without publicity. The smell would never get
+beyond the office. No one would whiff the rotten legal juggling that's
+going to take away those poor beggars' homes. The Morgan Gravel Company
+has literally blasted away dozens of laborers' homes, of foreigners
+mostly, in the last ten years, and now that they've come up against a
+few fighting Irish, the last stand on the Hill, they're going to daub
+over their proceedings with a coat of white-wash."
+
+"Goldwash," Lowell corrected with a grin. "You seem to forget that
+these people are going to be paid for their property--whatever the
+judge decides is fair."
+
+"His imagination may reach to one hundred. McLaughlin may prod him to
+one hundred and fifty."
+
+"They'll take it."
+
+"Of course they will, because Morgan will take the land out from under
+them whether they accept the money or not."
+
+"They can appeal. There's always more law."
+
+Roger Barton's shoulders hunched. His thick, dry, blond hair seemed
+to rise like an angry dog's. Without his moving, Anne felt that he
+had crossed the space between himself and the other. Her small hands
+clenched, and she nibbled her lower lip as she always did in moments of
+forced repression.
+
+"Yes," Roger said quietly, "there is always the law, more law, for the
+rich, the crooked, the morally rotten. There is always the perversion
+of justice, the farce of an appeal, the hypocrisy of a judge, the
+pitiful sight of the 'twelve good men and true.' There is always more
+law to quibble and distort the truth."
+
+"No doubt." The smile deepened at Roger's vehemence. "Only we lawyers
+don't usually express it so frankly."
+
+"No, we don't. As long as we stay in the shameful business."
+
+John Lowell's smile vanished. He looked at Roger with a sudden, new
+penetration, as if he had only just come to the realization of the
+seriousness of Roger's objection. After all, it might be well to
+temporize a little with this hectic young idealist. The firm needed
+Roger in many ways, and, in time, might need him more. With all this
+popular truckling to labor and democracy, this preposterous inversion
+of common sense and accepted order that seemed settling on the world,
+Lowell & Morrison might come to need a signpost in the murk.
+
+John Lowell frowned thoughtfully. In the six months of Roger's
+connection with Lowell & Morrison, John Lowell had, more than once,
+admitted to old Morrison that Roger Barton had "principle-itis in an
+acute form." But as he had never seen, in the long course of his legal
+life, this disease withstand the treatment of personal success, he
+had kept his faith in Roger's final malleability--and many cases from
+Roger's knowledge. This Morgan matter had escaped his vigilance, and he
+was almost as angry with old Morrison as with Roger.
+
+"Well," he finally conceded and rose to indicate the interview at an
+end. "I don't want you to do anything you don't believe in, Barton.
+I'll give the briefs to Daniels. You need have nothing to do with it."
+
+"I never intended to have anything to do with it, nor with any other
+case from now on. I'm through."
+
+For a moment John Lowell looked at the younger man with a look of
+hatred, scorn, and a shade of envy so faint that it was gone before
+Roger could be sure it had been. Then he shrugged his acceptance.
+
+"That, of course, is for you to decide. I would not want to try to
+influence you in either direction. If you feel there is a purer field
+for your talents, why, go to it. The law has existed for several
+thousands of years and will probably go on." With a cold smile that
+never touched his eyes, he turned to Anne.
+
+"Miss Mitchell, could you take some letters right away? I must get them
+off before five."
+
+But Anne was coming slowly across the room toward him, as if drawn
+against her consciousness. Now, at the direct address her face flushed
+to realization; she hesitated, and then completed the distance with
+so genuine an effort that Roger Barton felt her courage, and without
+knowing that he moved, took a step toward her, as if answering the call
+of her slight frailness for physical support.
+
+"Do you really mean that those people are going to be maneuvered out
+of their homes? That the legal action is only a sham? That it's all
+settled before we begin?"
+
+Always physical torture for Anne to assert her beliefs against
+opposition, the flush flamed to a brick-red burning, her eyes grew
+smaller, she looked hot and swollen. When Anne blushed like this she
+was ugly.
+
+John Lowell moved impatiently.
+
+"Really, Miss Mitchell, a law office is not a church. It is a business.
+Here is a big firm needing rock and gravel, easy to get and close to
+shipping facilities. Years ago, when the city was not much more than a
+village, a few people built some dilapidated shacks on Telegraph Hill.
+The Lord knows what they paid for the land, or whom they paid. Soon
+the growth of the city will force down these shacks. Morgan offers to
+buy them now, and unless you value them by the 'home and fireside,
+and baby's cradle' standard of every sentimental tenant, the price is
+a fairly just one. The people themselves, if not interfered with,
+will be glad to take what they can get. On the whole, they're a canny
+lot. They know that it's only a question of a short time before they'd
+have to go. A city growing like this has no room to waste so near its
+water-front in rotting cottages and little gardens. The place for small
+houses like those is in Ocean View, or the Portrero, or the Mission
+outskirts."
+
+"But it would take the men hours to get to their work from those places
+and"--Anne shivered--"they're so dismal and bleak. Gray hills, and wind
+and dust. The Hill has the Bay and the islands and the ferryboats at
+night."
+
+John Lowell stared in astonishment and then laughed.
+
+"Really, Miss Mitchell, you alarm me. I'm afraid you'll be turning my
+dictation into poetry, and sending out letters in blank verse."
+
+The laugh cut Anne's last grip from the hope that John Lowell had not
+really meant what he said. He was, then, deliberately doing this thing
+that he knew was wrong, for the money in it. He was going to tear away
+from these people perhaps the only external beauty their lives held.
+Safe in his own well-appointed home, with all the glory of Bay and
+hills spread out before him, he was going to condemn these to the gray,
+thick dust of the Portrero, the bleak and windswept hills, the dull,
+depressing streets of the Mission outskirts. All her life Anne had
+lived on such a street and hated it with the whole force of her nature.
+
+He had the power to do this thing and he was going to do it. Under the
+suave kindliness of his slim, perfectly groomed figure, he was like an
+animal snapping at every morsel that came his way. The law suddenly
+appeared to Anne as a trick surface upon which one walked, ignorant of
+the complicated mechanism below.
+
+Standing before John Lowell, not reaching above his elbow, she looked
+straight into the eyes smiling down at her with a new, appraising gleam.
+
+"Well?" he said, "do you feel that you will be able to get them out in
+plain prose?"
+
+Anne rose on her toes, because the look in the full, brown eyes above
+her forced her to throw her scorn straight into them.
+
+"No. I shall not be able to get them out in prose--nor--in any other
+way--after to-night. I--I--sha'n't be taking any more at all."
+
+"No?" he said softly, the look changing to a touch that passed hotly
+all over the surface of her body. "I'm extremely sorry."
+
+"I--I--couldn't work here another day," Anne squeaked, furious at the
+ridiculous picture she must make, poised upon her toes, like a silly
+little bantam pecking in a rage.
+
+"You needn't explain, Miss Mitchell, I understand--perfectly." And,
+without moving his eyes, Anne felt them now include Roger Barton. "I
+beg your pardon for suggesting it. Of course you couldn't--under the
+circumstances. I assure you--I understand."
+
+"Oh," Anne gasped in a cracking whisper that reached only to John
+Lowell and deepened his touch-like look, "you are--rotten."
+
+Then, feeling the tears rushing to her eyes, she dropped to her heels
+and walked back to her desk.
+
+The telephone summoned John Lowell. Roger Barton hesitated as if he
+were coming to her, but she put a sheet of paper quickly into the
+machine and he left the room. The office routine closed over the
+incident.
+
+From long practice Anne's fingers worked with accurate independence,
+but, beyond their flying movement, her brain tried to put in order
+the chaos of her thoughts. She had given up her job, the best job she
+had had in the five years of her working life. In another half hour
+she would go out of the office, never to return. She would go home
+and tell her people. Into the heat of her mood, this need to tell her
+people fell like a small, cold lump of lead. Something within herself
+would drive her to try to make them understand, and only one fact would
+emerge clearly to them--she had lost her job.
+
+At five-thirty, Anne laid the last letter on John Lowell's desk. As she
+put on her things, she knew that he was aware of every motion without
+directly looking at her.
+
+"Good night, Mr. Lowell."
+
+"Good night, Miss Mitchell." He looked up. Anne was the best
+stenographer he had ever had. In her close-fitting blue tailor suit,
+with a small blue velvet toque framing the wonderful fairness of her
+skin, and the smooth, cool gold of her hair, she was exceedingly
+pretty--prettier than John Lowell had ever noticed. With Roger Barton
+out of the way----
+
+"If you reconsider your decision by morning, I won't remember it," he
+said with a smile that she alone among his stenographers had escaped so
+long.
+
+"I shall not reconsider, Mr. Lowell." Anne spoke with a stiff primness
+that instantly dispelled his new interest.
+
+"Very well. Your check will be sent you at the end of the week, as
+usual."
+
+"This is only Wednesday."
+
+"That's all right. You've often given overtime."
+
+"Until Wednesday, if you please," Anne said quietly and wanted to cry.
+Four days would mean nothing to John Lowell; much to her.
+
+"Very well." He picked up his pen and Anne went out.
+
+She heard Roger Barton's voice as she passed his door and hurried on
+to the elevator. Down in the street, the home-going crowds flowed by.
+Anne's eyes filled with tears and she nibbled her lip to keep them
+back. Then she joined the northward current and walked quickly away.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER TWO
+
+
+The Mitchells lived in an old-fashioned upper flat on a street that,
+before the great fire of 1906, had been a street of two-story wooden
+houses and small cottages set back in pleasant gardens. But the fire,
+sweeping the City's poorer quarters, had driven the inhabitants to the
+safety of the Mission hills; the little cottages had been converted
+into flats, the houses raised and small, congested shops inserted
+below. For the first two years, until the new city settled to permanent
+lines, there had been a bustle and cheap glitter through these streets,
+a cosmopolitan mingling of many different types and nationalities,
+that had touched the district faintly with romance. But now the better
+shops had gone, and only a few frowsy Italian immigrants continued in
+their untidy vegetable stands; disheartened widows managed small notion
+stores and bewailed to the wives of the petty clerks, also nailed to
+the district by low rents, the mythical comforts they had enjoyed
+"before the Fire."
+
+The wooden houses were all dulled to the same sad gray by wind and sun
+and rain. The once pleasant gardens had shrunk to occasional slabs
+of hard brown earth railed off with rusty iron pickets. The front
+doors of the flats, raised three steps from the sidewalk, were all
+exactly alike, warped and dust-grimed, with oblong insets of glass
+two-thirds of the way up. Behind these insets, in brilliant curtains
+of silkoline, or conscientious Battenburg or negligent Nottingham, the
+tenants expressed their individuality against the engulfing monotony.
+The Mitchells had plain white scrim, of thick quality and tightly drawn
+on a brass rod. The doors of the upper flats worked by an uncertain
+mechanism managed from within. When this mechanism broke, if one lived
+in the top flat, one descended the endless stairs and worked the latch
+by hand. As a child, Anne had dreaded calling on friends and ascending,
+watched suspiciously from the heights above, until her identity was
+disclosed. There were ghastly stories of unsuspecting women who had so
+opened to burglars and been at their mercy.
+
+As Anne unlocked the door the smell of pot-roast instantly enveloped
+her, shutting away the problem of her own immediate future and the
+broad shoulders of Roger Barton, hunched forward in defiance of John
+Lowell. Anne's lip quivered.
+
+"To-night--of all nights!"
+
+Slowly she began the long ascent, enclosed by the thickening odor as by
+the walls of a narrow corridor.
+
+Anne hated pot-roast, not because of itself, but for its associations.
+Pot-roast was a pretense. It had not the open honesty of stew.
+Pot-roast was Mrs. Mitchell's final compromise in a line of preference
+that had started with prime ribs of beef. It meant that James Mitchell
+had bet away more than the usual portion of his monthly pay check; the
+meager remnant had stung Hilda's patience to rebellion; her imagination
+had leaped from the invariable shoulder chops of Wednesday evening to
+prime roast; but, before it could safely land upon that pinnacle of
+rebellion, had tripped and clutched at pot-roast. Anne sighed and went
+slowly on. At the stair-head, the gas jet, stuffed with cotton wool to
+keep it from ever being extravagantly turned to its full capacity, shed
+a sickly light through an amber globe. She turned the cock ferociously
+as far as it would go and then went on down the hall to the curtained
+niche just outside her own hall bedroom.
+
+Long ago this niche had been formed to hold the overflow from the hall
+closet. Into it Mrs. Mitchell had since crowded broken and worn-out
+pieces of household furniture, hideous bisque ornaments of the '90's
+which Anne and Belle had refused to have about, oil lamps, in case
+"something happens to the gas"; a sewing-machine that would cost more
+to fix than to replace; dresses and bits of carpet, some day to be
+made into new rugs; and the week's accumulation of laundry from which
+she snatched and ironed pieces as she needed them. Years ago Anne had
+tried to eliminate this niche, but when her mother had demanded where
+she should put the things and Anne had suggested burning them, Hilda
+had looked so grieved at the implication of her bad management in
+ever letting them accumulate, and had asked Anne in so hurt a tone to
+pick out "one single thing that might not be needed some day," that
+Anne relented. Now the niche was like a malignant growth, too late to
+operate upon, to which one submits. But even yet Anne never let the
+portière quite fall to behind her and enclose her in this cemetery of
+odds and ends.
+
+When she had hung up her things she went down the hall, past the
+dining-room where her father sat in the rocker under the hard, white,
+incandescent light, staring at the unlit gas log in the grate, the
+evening paper spread on his knees. In the kitchen her mother was making
+gravy from the fat in the baking-pan.
+
+"Hello, dear. You're late. I was just going to begin without you."
+
+Mrs. Mitchell wiped the perspiration from her face with the corner of a
+very soiled apron and kissed her daughter. She was taller and broader
+than Anne, but she had the same long-lashed, deeply-blue eyes, and her
+skin had once been even fairer. It was remarkably white and soft yet at
+the base of her throat, although there were tiny lines about her ears
+and at the corners of her mouth. Her hair had been dark, however, like
+Belle's, and now was a fluffy mass of gray curls.
+
+Anne always felt older than her mother and loved her, on the whole,
+with a passionate, protective tenderness. There were times, however,
+when Hilda's persistent cheerfulness and muddled thinking annoyed her,
+and at long intervals Hilda disgusted her. These were the moments
+of confidence in which her mother, under the pretense of "warning
+the girls," confided to them, in general terms, "some of the things
+married women have to put up with." Belle and Anne both knew that these
+confidences were the result of her relations with the small, gray man,
+their father. Years ago it had deepened Belle's indifference and Anne's
+dislike to him.
+
+"What is it now?" Anne took the spoon and tried to beat the lumpy gravy
+to smoothness. "He's just staring into the grate."
+
+Hilda shrugged. "That oil well, I suppose. I wish to goodness they'd
+stop discovering gushers and copper and all those things. I thought
+when the Chinese lottery was put out of business we might get a little
+ahead."
+
+Anne smashed at the lumps and frowned. "You ought to have put your foot
+down years ago, that's all there is to it. If you'd made a real row
+every time instead of just--just spluttering sometimes--he would have
+had to sit up and behave."
+
+Hilda bridled. "It's one thing to talk and another to do. When you're
+married yourself, you'll understand. By the time you get 'round to see
+how you could do it better, it's too late. They've got you saddled with
+a baby and----"
+
+Feeling a confidence about to descend upon her, Anne snatched the first
+weapon to hand.
+
+"I've quit the office, mamma."
+
+Hilda's mouth remained open, her eyes held the "if-you-only-understood"
+look that always accompanied such a confidence.
+
+"You needn't look like that, moms; the world is really rotating just as
+usual."
+
+"Quit!" Hilda echoed in a whisper. "Quit!"
+
+Anne nodded. "But I'll get another place in a day or two, don't worry,
+dear."
+
+"Quit!" Hilda echoed more faintly, and emerged into the reality of
+the situation. "What for? I thought you liked the place. Did Mr.
+Lowell--did he--anything----?"
+
+Anne stamped her foot. "No. Of course he didn't. I did like it as far
+the general atmosphere of the office went, although I've had doubts of
+him lately. But to-day he came out into the open. He's a--crook."
+
+"Good gracious! What did he want you to do?"
+
+"Nothing special. But I can't work in a place where I know things are
+being done that he's doing. I just can't."
+
+Hilda went back to the gravy. She did not want Anne to work in a
+dishonest office, but she did wish Anne had not discovered the
+delinquency of John Lowell for a few days.
+
+"No, dear, of course you can't. But--suppose you don't tell papa
+to-night. It's gloomy enough as it is."
+
+"Why on earth he should create all the gloom is beyond me. Why
+shouldn't he be annoyed? It might do him good."
+
+"Please, dear."
+
+"Well, I'll see, moms. I won't promise."
+
+Hilda sighed and dished up the potatoes. For all her slim, frail
+fairness, Anne was very difficult to manage. As Belle said, "You never
+know when you're going to strike one of Anne's principles. They're like
+deep sea mines, unsuspected till they go off under you." Hilda carried
+the roast into the dining-room, Anne followed with the potatoes, and
+they sat down to dinner. In silence they began to eat.
+
+Through the glass of the mantel above the gas log, wreathed in asbestos
+moss, Anne watched her father. He was a small man with thin, gray hair
+and brown eyes, faded from long years of figuring in bad lights. He
+bent low over his plate, but ate slowly, through habit acquired in
+an attack of nervous indigestion when Anne and Belle were children.
+There was little general conversation at the Mitchell meals, although,
+when James Mitchell was in a good humor, he was inclined to deliver
+monologues, chiefly against Radicalism and the Catholic Church. Any
+newspaper mention of the possibility of a strike precipitated the
+first, which before its finish, by some complicated process of logic,
+always included the second.
+
+In the office of the Coast Electric Company, where he had been an
+assistant bookkeeper for thirty years, James Mitchell was known as
+one of the most faithful men they had. He never took a vacation nor
+objected to overtime. He had a tremendous respect for every one in
+authority above him, and the only temper the office had ever seen him
+display was when one of the younger clerks had tried to organize a
+clerks' union. James Mitchell had thrown down his pencil, whirled upon
+the astonished organizer, and demanded to know "where the city would
+have been if it hadn't been for the men who started this company?"
+Apparently he considered that the city would still have been using
+candles. For this act of faith he had been raised five dollars shortly
+after.
+
+He disliked open conflict and in the early days of his marriage had
+once left the house to escape the first real discussion between himself
+and Hilda on the subject of money. This astonishing act had for years
+hung over the home, and the fear that "papa would take his hat and go
+out" had been held as an extinguisher over the children's quarrels and
+suffocated any tendency Anne or Belle might have had to appeal to him.
+
+Anne could never remember an age when either she or Belle had talked
+to him of their own accord, although there had been periods when her
+mother, driven by some hidden impulse, had insisted that they "go and
+talk to papa. Tell him about school; he likes to hear it." At thirteen
+Belle had refused, and Anne, three years younger, had managed to slip
+from the obligation at the same time.
+
+They finished the meat and vegetables in safe silence and Hilda
+gathered up the dishes, hopeful of peace to the end. But the heavy
+stillness had weighted Anne's already taut nerves, and when her mother
+returned with brown betty and hard sauce, and her father came suddenly
+to consciousness of the elaborate nature of this week-day dinner with
+a remark on the price of butter and sugar, Anne's hands went cold and
+her face flamed.
+
+"Well, we don't have it often," Hilda propitiated, "but sometimes it
+gives one a headache trying to think of changes, everything's so high."
+
+"And going higher." He helped himself sparingly to the hard sauce and
+pushed it across to Anne, who smothered her pudding in it. "And it'll
+keep on going up, too, unless people stop buying. Women could bring
+down the prices in a minute if they had the sense. Nobody needs hard
+sauce."
+
+"They do," Anne spoke quietly without looking up. Her mother tried to
+touch her foot under the table, but Anne moved just beyond reach. Hilda
+began to eat her betty.
+
+"They do, do they?" James Mitchell pounced upon Anne's remark like a
+small and hungry terrier on a bone. "They do? Well, it would take more
+than any argument you, or anybody else your age, could put up, to show
+me."
+
+"I don't doubt that," Anne shot at him, still busy with her dessert;
+"nothing would convince you because you don't want to see, or else you
+really can't understand."
+
+"I can't understand, can't I? Oh, no, I suppose nobody can understand
+anything these days when they're past twenty-five. I've been out
+bucking the world for more years than you've lived in it, but of course
+I've had my eyes shut all the time. Now see here, let me tell you this,
+young lady," he leaned toward Anne and thumped the table, "you've got
+what this whole country's got--a dose of blind staggers. You can't see
+what's coming and you won't till it's hit you. You go ranting along
+about people needing hard sauce and luxuries and you kick like steers
+when the prices go up. Of course they'll go up. Why shouldn't they?
+It's the law of supply and demand. When dairymen find out people 'have
+to have hard sauce' they're going to run up butter and eggs. A fool can
+see that."
+
+"Only a fool can see that," Anne's voice shook in spite of herself.
+"Why shouldn't people have hard sauce?"
+
+"Don't you get off any of that Socialistic jargon in this house. I
+won't have it. If I'd had any say in the bringing up of you girls----"
+
+"Now, papa, please. The girls----"
+
+"If you'd had anything to say, Belle would never have been a trained
+nurse, nor I a special stenographer. We'd both have been wrapping
+packages in some department store basement." Anne rolled her napkin and
+rose in an icy quiet.
+
+"A lot of good either Belle's nursing or your stenography does," he
+darted now down the personal opening Anne had made him. "We never see
+Belle except when she has a few moments she doesn't know what to do
+with, and she wouldn't help out with a dollar if she was asked. And as
+for you--where could you get the board your mother puts up for what you
+pay?"
+
+"Now, papa! Anne----"
+
+"Well, I've quit my job, so you'll have to board me for nothing until I
+get another one."
+
+"Quit!" James Mitchell stared as his wife had stared. "Quit! What for?"
+
+"Because John Lowell is dishonest and I won't work for a dishonest
+firm."
+
+"How many firms do you suppose are honest? You haven't risen to the
+management of a firm yet."
+
+"Nor have I sunk to conniving with a thief, either."
+
+James Mitchell opened his lips and then, suddenly and unexpectedly,
+leaned back. He looked shrunken and grayer, and he stared as if he saw
+something unseen by the others.
+
+"I've had--the same job--for--thirty--years," he said slowly.
+"Thirty--years--at the same desk."
+
+Anne softened.
+
+"You ought to have quit long ago. They've used you because you let
+them. You could have done better. You could do better now. Do you want
+to quit? I'll get another place to-morrow and stake the house till you
+get a job."
+
+"No, no, I don't want to quit. No." He seemed fleeing before the
+suggestion. The strangeness of the new road terrified him and he
+scuttled back to the familiar. "Used me? Of course they've used me. A
+man with a family has to get used to being used. A married man has to
+put up with things. Where would you kids have been if I'd have been
+getting on my ear all the time you were little?"
+
+"Papa has been faithful," Hilda began, but the sudden tears that filled
+Anne's eyes astonished her to silence.
+
+Without a word, Anne picked up the plates and went into the kitchen.
+Hilda followed.
+
+"If he only wouldn't get down behind that pretense of having done it
+all for us, I might respect him, moms. But he just burrows into that
+hole like a gopher and you can't get him out."
+
+"Well, after all, dear, I don't suppose he would have stuck if it
+hadn't been for us. He'd have gotten into some kind of a gambling
+scheme long ago. After all, he brings home most of his salary most of
+the time."
+
+And Anne saw herself a small girl watching her mother dividing the
+contents of the pay envelope, counting and recounting and finally
+tying up each little package in tissue paper, as if to keep the tiny
+allotments from spending themselves in another department. They had
+hurt to tears, those thin little allotments, and her mother's sigh as
+she gathered them up and went humming about the housework. Anne did not
+answer and they did the dishes in silence until the phone rang. Hilda
+came from answering it with such a look of relief that Anne smiled.
+
+"Belle?"
+
+"Yes. She's got an hour off and is coming up."
+
+Anne wiped the last glass and put it away.
+
+"Well, I'm all in and I'm going to bed. The autopsy will have to take
+place without the corpse." The smile deepened as she kissed her mother.
+"All nice and safe again, moms?"
+
+"I don't care what you say, Belle has a practical mind. She always
+seems to know what to do."
+
+"As if we had a fever or a dose of colic."
+
+"I'd a lot rather we had things like that. What with you and papa,
+sometimes I feel as if I were living in a cloud of feathers."
+
+"You dear thing," Anne patted her shoulder. "Well, Belle will be along
+with her spray in a minute and wet us all down nice and flat. I don't
+suppose I'll go right to sleep----"
+
+"She'll look in for a minute, I guess."
+
+Anne laughed. "She sure will."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER THREE
+
+
+Belle Mitchell was much taller than Anne or Hilda, with straight, very
+heavy brown hair and brown eyes. She had a jolly, even disposition,
+was rarely hurt herself, never knew when she hurt others, and felt
+competent to manage any situation in which she found herself. Her
+favorite expression was "look facts in the face." She loved Anne with
+the same protecting tenderness that Anne felt for Hilda, and never
+understood the chain of "highfalutin" reasoning by which Anne finally
+exploded into one of her rare rages. James Mitchell had always been
+a little afraid of Belle, but he agreed with Hilda that she "had a
+practical streak." This was supposed to have descended to her intact,
+like an heirloom, from James' Scotch grandmother.
+
+At seventeen, Belle had looked over the possibilities of the future,
+left high-school and gone into hospital training. Four years later she
+was earning twenty-five dollars a week. She had then left the family
+and taken an apartment with two other nurses. As she explained to Anne:
+
+"The only way to go on caring for your family is to get away from them."
+
+She had paid for Anne's course in a good business college and
+supplemented the family income with five dollars a week, until Anne was
+making enough to pay her own board. Then she stopped.
+
+"In some silly streak she'll call 'being honest with papa,' mamma will
+tell him, and some race-track tout will get that extra five. Or she'll
+have a fit of rebellion and go off at a tangent in another washing
+machine or bread mixer or aluminum contraption for getting a whole
+dinner under one lid, and nobody will have the benefit. But kidlets,"
+and here Belle had put her arms about Anne in a way that always melted
+any hardness Anne felt for Belle's practicality, "this rule is not for
+you. If you want any extras--please, sisterkin, ask, won't you?"
+
+Anne had promised, her amazement at Belle's ability to do these firm,
+decided things, mingling with a sense of disloyalty to her mother in
+recognizing their truth. She herself could never have left the house,
+nor stopped a contribution, unless she had done it as the final step
+against pricks that Belle would never have felt at all.
+
+But now, as Anne sat in the cool darkness of her own little room,
+looking out into the fog-wrapped silence of the empty street, she was
+not thinking of Belle, nor of Belle's management of "her case." She was
+thinking again, in spite of her effort not to, of Roger Barton. He had
+passed out of her life, and yet, in some inexplicable way, he seemed to
+have suddenly entered it very intimately.
+
+In the six months of his connection with Lowell & Morrison, Anne
+had seen more of him than of any man in any of the three offices in
+which she had worked. They had never talked of personal things, but
+of business details and the generalities into which these seemed
+inevitably to lead them; discussions, scarcely ever more than a few
+moments long, of plays and books and Life.
+
+Anne envied Roger his university education and Roger envied Anne the
+courage which carried her, after a hard day's work, to extension
+lectures at night. From these she extracted a kind of sensory
+conviction of the complex and interesting world beyond her experience.
+A world of clear thinking, in contrast to the muddled and confused
+mental processes of her own family and of all the people whom she had
+ever known; of aims higher than the daily grubbing for food and shelter
+that they called living. In Roger Barton, Anne had encountered the
+first person who, born into an environment like her own, had forced his
+way through to this interesting and complex world. Anne often wondered
+how he had done it, but as he seemed to take his own progress for
+granted, and had never commented on the achievement, Anne had been too
+shy to ask him. And now she would probably never see him again. Through
+the monotony of the working day there would be no moment to look
+forward to; no memory with which to contrast the dullness of evenings
+at home.
+
+Out in the great world open to men, Roger Barton would make another
+place for himself. Before his ability, his courage and his masculinity,
+everything was possible. He could leave to-morrow for distant countries
+and the far strange places he expected some day so confidently to see.
+He could seek beauty and romance, limited only by his own powers of
+physical endurance. He could work his way in ships about the world, or
+tramp alone across deserts. He was strong and free.
+
+And she? In a few days she would begin again to look for another place.
+Perhaps she would better her salary a little, but she would come and go
+at fixed hours. For the greater part of the waking day she would sell
+her intelligence and strength to strangers. They would know nothing of
+the reality beneath, nor would she touch their lives at any vital spot.
+Her father would get over this spell of depression at his losses and
+his annoyance with her contradiction, and the house would run smoothly,
+like a narrow gauge train along a dusty, uninteresting depression
+between high hills; beyond these she would never see. It was all so
+flat, so gray, so dead. Anne shivered:
+
+"Anything as ugly as this house and the way we live is WICKED."
+
+Through the silence of the lonely street, Belle's firm step echoed
+clearly. The signal ring, three quick peals, brought Hilda running to
+the stair-head. The lever on the landing clicked, far below the door
+opened and closed with a slam, and Belle came gayly up the stairs,
+filling every cranny of the house with the force of her cheerful
+efficiency, just as if a strong breeze had been suddenly admitted.
+
+"Hello, moms. Her Royal Highness decided she was well enough to let me
+off for an hour, and so I----"
+
+All sound suddenly ceased. Then Belle, with a brisk "Hello, papa,"
+followed her mother down the hall, past the dining-room, and the
+kitchen door closed behind them.
+
+Anne shrugged impatiently. No smallest change was ever accomplished in
+the Mitchell household without this background of tragedy. The news of
+her action in leaving Lowell & Morrison was now being "broken" to Belle
+and advice asked, exactly as if Anne had absconded with the funds or
+tried to commit suicide. There were no degrees of tragedy among the
+Mitchells.
+
+"I don't care, let them talk it over until there isn't a shred of it
+left. I'm not going to explain. They wouldn't understand if I talked
+all night."
+
+Anne closed the window, turned on the softly shaded lamp and chose a
+book from the small bookcase at the foot of the white enameled bed.
+Settled in the chintz-covered Morris chair, she opened the book and
+forced herself to follow the lines to the end of the first page. But
+Roger Barton's angry gray eyes moved between the words and Anne did not
+even turn the leaf. The book slowly slid to her lap. Across it Anne
+stared into the future.
+
+The sound of Belle's step coming firmly along the hall drew her back to
+the present with a physical reaction of having been literally lifted
+from one spot and deposited in another. And before she had quite
+achieved equilibrium in the moment, Belle was tapping at the door. This
+tap of Belle's was not a motion of the fingers, but a denunciation of
+any pretense of absence you might be intending. It not only declared
+Belle's certainty that you were there but her knowledge of exactly what
+you were doing.
+
+"It's me, kidlets; may I come in?"
+
+Anne opened the door and Belle instantly filled the entire room.
+Closing the door, she smiled down upon Anne, flushed and a little
+stiff with the force of her decision not to be led into any apologetic
+explanation of her act.
+
+"Well, you certainly have done it this time. I never saw such gloom,
+and that's going some. You'd think the sheriff was in the parlor and
+the morgue wagon at the door. Tell me the whole sad tale."
+
+From an ivory cigarette case, "a remembrance from an officer patient,"
+Belle drew a cigarette and lighted it.
+
+"Come on, 'fess up."
+
+"You've been out there half an hour and have heard the whole thing,
+more no doubt."
+
+"From A to Z, and inside out and I haven't got it straight yet. Why did
+you do it? That's what has upset them, but they don't seem to know what
+it was. Why did you?"
+
+"That's what they both asked."
+
+"Their intelligence must be looking up. I gather that you were asked to
+do something your conscience didn't approve and that you up and quit."
+
+"I wasn't asked to do anything. But John Lowell isn't straight and I
+won't work for him."
+
+Through her cigarette smoke, Belle stared as Hilda and James had done.
+
+"But, kiddie, you'll never find a business man that is straight, or an
+office or any place where you approve of everything. How long do you
+think I'd be a nurse if I had to approve of everything I see in an
+operating room; people cut up when there's no need; often carelessness
+that would make your hair stand on end. My relation to the surgeon is
+like yours to Lowell. I hand the instruments, and keep mum."
+
+"And I quit."
+
+"So I hear," Belle laughed. "But what are you going to do? Ask for a
+certificate of conscience from your next employer? I say, sisterkin,
+what do you think business life is?"
+
+"That depends on what you want to make it."
+
+"Rot. It's compromise from dawn till dark; from the cradle to the
+grave. When you start out you think you're going to do wonderful
+things, reorganize everything and everybody, because your own pet
+ideals are the very finest ideals in captivity. And--in the end you're
+lucky if you remember what they were. Why, even I, and nobody would
+accuse me of being sentimental, had all kinds of ideas about what a
+nurse's vocation might be, a kind of etherealized Florence Nightingale
+in a perpetual ecstasy; but when I came up against real patients,
+whining nervous women and men--well, Belle Nightingale gives her pills
+and powders now strictly according to the doctor's orders and forgets
+most of her patients with the last pay check. The whole thing's like
+Mom's pot-roast--a good solid makeshift for something better."
+
+Anne shrugged. "If Moms had never fallen for that first pot-roast----"
+
+"If Eve had never picked the apple."
+
+"Well? You don't know what the world might have been like if she
+hadn't, do you?"
+
+"I can make a guess. It would have been just about as it is--if not a
+little worse. She would have found a pear or a cranberry or a walnut,
+any old thing." Belle leaned slightly forward and peered with genuine
+concern through the thickening film of tobacco smoke at the small
+blonde figure, sitting stiffly now on the bed-edge. "Anne, do you
+know that I worry a lot about you sometimes? I know you're a good
+stenographer and as economically independent as any woman, but it
+always seems to me as if you were out of step with the world in some
+way. You don't plunk, plunk along with the rest of us. You--you----"
+
+"Sit down on the curb-stone."
+
+"No. You mince along reluctantly. I wish to Heaven you'd get married."
+
+Anne flushed, but Belle was grinding her cigarette stub into Anne's
+lacquered pin tray and did not notice. She ground it into the polished
+surface as if the tray were the problem of Anne's future and the stub
+her own power of settling the difficulty. When she had burned the
+delicate surface to a black spot, she went on. "But I can't for the
+life of me picture the kind of man you would marry, not with your
+opportunities for meeting them. An ordinary business man would drive
+you as crazy as you would drive him. A professional man--well, there's
+not much difference. An up-to-date doctor, even an up-to-date minister,
+has just as keen an eye for the main chance as John Lowell--and
+that's what seems to upset you. And even if you found one straight in
+business--men are rotten morally, most of them, and you're so--I don't
+know just what it is, Anne, but you're like a cool drink in a very
+clean glass, and men want beer in an earthen mug when it comes right
+down to everyday diet. They want it in women just as much as they do in
+business."
+
+"I don't believe it." Anne spoke with such vehement assurance that
+Belle looked at her sharply.
+
+"You don't? Why not?"
+
+Anne wished now that she had not spoken, but the quickest way to escape
+from that gimlet-like boring of Belle's eyes was to go on. "It isn't
+true of all men in business and I don't see why it should be true of
+all men morally."
+
+"Did you ever know an absolutely honest business man?"
+
+"Yes." Anne felt her face beginning to burn, and to escape the look
+creeping into her sister's eyes she rose quickly and began doing
+something unnecessary to the window curtain. She felt Belle's eyes
+between her shoulder blades and knew that even the back of her neck was
+flaming. At Belle's low chuckle she bit her lip, dragged about herself
+the fast vanishing wrap of impersonal interest, and turned to her
+sister with an assumption of surprise that Belle's look shattered in a
+moment.
+
+"Come on, sisterkin, this is getting interesting. Who is he?"
+
+"I wasn't thinking of any special individual. I--there must be----"
+
+"Cut it out, Anne, anyhow with sister Belle. When a working girl keeps
+her faith in men for five years, there is always an individual."
+
+"Shut up, Belle. I loathe that cheap talk."
+
+"And I loathe dodging round and pretending. Who is this torch-bearer in
+the darkness of the legal world?"
+
+"He isn't a torch-bearer, but he's honest. Roger Barton." It was the
+easiest way, because Belle would prod until she got it.
+
+"That good-looking young blond? Well, how does he compromise with his
+honesty and John Lowell?"
+
+"He doesn't. He quit, too."
+
+"Well--I'll--be darned. You both rode out of the office on the same
+white palfrey! When's the wedding?"
+
+"Will you please get out of this room?"
+
+"Not on your life. Not till I hear the whole thrilling tale. Are you
+engaged, Anne?"
+
+"No. Will you stop?"
+
+"What'll you bet that you won't be inside a month?"
+
+Anne did not answer.
+
+"All right. It would be a shame to take the money. Why, if dad had tips
+like that we'd have been rich long ago. What'll you bet, then, that he
+doesn't ask you?"
+
+Anne's lips trembled. "Belle, please stop joking like that."
+
+"But, kiddie, the most wily flirt in the world couldn't have done
+better. Any man would be flattered to death. You don't suppose he's
+going to let a kindred soul--and a pretty one--slip out of his life, do
+you? He'll look you up, anyhow."
+
+"No, he won't. I won't be here. I'm--I'm going to take a vacation,"
+Anne added in a sudden decision that startled herself.
+
+Belle grinned, and then, at the tears that filled Anne's eyes, relented.
+
+"Fine idea. You never did have a real one. Where are you going?"
+
+"Quincy."
+
+"Heavens! That's not a vacation. That's a penance."
+
+"I never hated it the way you do. I don't mind Aunt Het, and I'm fond
+of Janet and Bab."
+
+"If it's money, Anne, I'll be tickled to death--Tahoe or Yosemite--or
+any other real place."
+
+"I loathe them."
+
+"You don't know anything about them. Please. Don't be so highfalutin'.
+I can do it easily. Make it a birthday present if you like."
+
+"No, thanks just the same. I don't mean to be highfalutin', but I love
+the bluff, really I do. And I am rather tired. I just want to lie out
+there on the dunes and think."
+
+Belle's eyes twinkled. "Of course----"
+
+"Belle Mitchell, if you go back to that I'll walk straight out of this
+room."
+
+"Go back to what?" Belle rose and took the rigid little body in her
+arms. "Oh, come on, Anne, relax inside and out. Run along and have a
+grand time feeding the chickens and listening to Aunt Het reminisce and
+thank the Lord for your simple tastes. When are you going?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"Moms know it?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+The sisters smiled at each other. Then Belle drew Anne into her arms
+and held her close, her own cheek on the cool blonde hair, her eyes
+very soft and tender.
+
+"You dear little thing," she whispered, "you dear--breakable--little
+thing."
+
+Released, Anne tried to laugh, but she was too queerly excited about
+something that, as soon as she was alone, was going to slip out from
+behind the wall to which Belle's presence relegated it. The laugh
+stopped at her lips in a wistful little smile.
+
+"Remember, Anne, if you change your mind you only have to phone me. I
+always have some cash on hand. You will, won't you?"
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"Cross my heart to die. And--thanks--awfully----"
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+Belle opened the door and went briskly down the hall. Anne closed it
+softly, turned out the light, undressed and threw the window as wide as
+she could. Between the smooth, fresh sheets she lay waiting tensely for
+silence to settle on the house and leave her quite alone with her own
+thoughts.
+
+At last Belle and her mother went downstairs, her father wound the
+cuckoo clock, the door below slammed and Hilda came slowly up. The hall
+light went out. Silence had come.
+
+In the soft, black stillness, Roger Barton stood out clearly, his
+crisp blond hair electric with vitality, his wide mouth now tight with
+repressed anger, now whimsical with mirth.
+
+Would he really look her up?
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER FOUR
+
+
+For two days Roger Barton luxuriated in his escape from the law.
+At twenty-eight all experience had to him the nature of a material
+thing. It was to be grasped, used to his need, and when it failed him,
+dropped. He absorbed what his mind needed at the time and went on, as
+an animal leaves a food supply, its wants satisfied. University and
+law school had been the road to an education offered by a distant,
+childless relative with an ambition to have a profession in the family.
+Roger now wrote and told this relative he had given up the law, but the
+old man's irate answer did not disturb him in the least. He did not
+feel that he had been ungrateful or that he owed anything beyond the
+power of his own conscience to pay.
+
+He had no definite plans for the future, except a general feeling that
+he was about to enter a real and interesting world. In this world there
+were fine, high things to do, and he would probably be poor, for John
+Lowell's office had convinced Roger that ideals do not pay and that
+nothing else is worth while. He took long tramps through the Marin
+hills, or lay on the sand at Land's End listening to the waves, and
+dreamed. In these dreams he thought often of Anne, standing on tiptoes
+before John Lowell. Now that he would probably never see her again he
+wished that he knew her better.
+
+There could not be many women like Anne. She gave so fully of her time
+and interest, and yet there were unstirred depths beneath. Roger had
+always felt them in sudden, sad looks that passed across Anne's eyes,
+in the catching of the breath that marked an almost painfully keen
+interest, in small, quick motions and physical responses that he had
+accepted as mannerisms, but now saw as revelations of that courage and
+ideality that was Anne.
+
+"It wasn't easy for her to confront that rotter, but she did it, the
+slip of a beauty-loving thing! How she must hate an office!"
+
+And she would probably go into just such another in a few days, perhaps
+a worse one. She might already have found a place. While he lay on
+the sand, facing the full future, she might be bent above a machine,
+her fine enthusiasm leashed to the narrow demands of price lists, her
+physical rarity the object of some cad's coarse admiration. The thought
+sickened Roger when it first came to him clearly, an employer trying
+to touch Anne's hand, pressing her knee as he forced her to needless
+proximity for dictation; Anne, the hurt and quivering object of those
+advances he had seen other girls welcome with feigned annoyance and
+sidelong glances. He rose quickly to escape it, although he had come
+to his favorite cove with a book for the whole afternoon, and began
+walking again across the dunes. But the picture moved beside him.
+
+"By Jove, it isn't right. A man has a hard enough time hanging to his
+principles, but a girl, a worth-while girl like that who has something
+beyond the idea of attracting men--it's a shame."
+
+And he could do nothing to prevent it. He could not even call Anne a
+friend. He did not know where she lived.
+
+"What a simp!" He stopped and kicked the sand viciously and marveled at
+his own stupidity. For six months he had worked with Anne and had never
+asked her to go anywhere with him, or tried to know her better. He knew
+now that he had looked forward in the mornings to seeing her, soft and
+small and silvery fair at her desk. He had snatched every opportunity
+to talk with her. And had made none! Seen so, now, from the outside,
+it was incredible but true. He knew nothing of Anne whatever. Nothing.
+She might even be engaged to some man, no better, under the veneer
+with which men, physically desirous, deceive girls, than John Lowell.
+Perhaps worse.
+
+Roger strode on, his shoulders hunched now as they always hunched
+against obstruction and defeat. He would do something to prevent the
+waste of Anne. He would find Anne a place where that rare fineness
+would not be quite wasted in the mechanical routine of mercenary
+ambition. At least he could do that.
+
+Anne quivering with hurt of ugliness, seeing the bay at night, the
+jewel-like islands, the stately white ferry boats, clinging to them for
+people she had never known! He would find a place for Anne and see her
+in it before he went out into the fullness of the future waiting for
+him. The possibility of Anne's engagement to a worthless man, Roger had
+finally to push aside, with reluctant concession to his own ideal of
+her. If Anne were engaged, the man would have to be worth while.
+
+For a day and a half Roger sought a place for Anne. His own mail
+remained unopened, telephone messages unanswered. About twelve o'clock
+on the morning of the second day he found what he wanted. It was with
+a publishing firm and the duties involved a wider scope than the usual
+stenography. The surroundings were as pleasant as any office could
+offer, the hours easy, the firm established, conservative to a degree
+that had always rasped Roger's youthful enthusiasm, but satisfied him
+when he visioned the two white-haired, old-fashioned gentlemen as
+Anne's employers. At the end of half an hour he had forced the salary
+up five dollars a month and secured an option on the opening for two
+days.
+
+From old Morrison he got Anne's address, and ten minutes later
+so astonished Hilda by his insistence that he must know Anne's
+whereabouts, that she forgot the definite orders to tell no one and
+described the Saunders home at Quincy so minutely that Roger could have
+found it blindfolded in the dark.
+
+Three hours later Roger got off the train, the sole passenger for the
+windswept little wooden box upon the dunes. To the north and east
+the dun sand swelled to mounds and rounded hummocks, held from their
+eternal drifting by bunches of coarse, gray grass. Across the narrow
+bay, low hills, dense and black with chaparral, each guarding at its
+base a tiny white beach, ran westward to the sea, beating on the rocky
+coast in long, sobbing protest against the lashing wind.
+
+In the vast, clean loneliness of sand and wind and sky, a fear that had
+touched him on the way up that Anne might think it strange for him to
+appear suddenly like this, dissolved. The silent emptiness absorbed the
+misunderstanding of motive, and Roger knew that if Anne did not wish
+the position she would not think him intrusive. He easily found the
+half-obliterated wagon-road Hilda had described and took it across the
+dunes.
+
+As the front gate creaked on its sagging hinges, Barbara Saunders rose
+from the floor, where she and Anne had been trying to force a faded
+blue dimity to contain a yard more material than it had ever had.
+
+"I simply will not wear the thing as it is. Janet can say what
+she likes--she doesn't care what she wears--but I've been to six
+Quarterlies in it--and I've reached my limit."
+
+The gate slammed and Barbara turned to the window.
+
+"Anne! It's a man!"
+
+Anne looked up, still puzzling over the impossibilities of the faded
+dimity. "Do you know, Bab, I believe if we ripped the whole thing and
+turned the top to the bottom and gored it, we could take all the scraps
+left over and----"
+
+"Come here," Bab whispered as if the person below could hear through
+the glass. "He doesn't look like an agent. Who on earth----"
+
+Anne came and stood beside her. With nose pressed to the glass she
+could just see the top of Roger's hat. A loud knock echoed through the
+house.
+
+"In a hurry, rather, isn't he? Who----" Bab turned. "Why! Anne! Do you
+know him?"
+
+Before the burning self-consciousness in Anne's eyes, Bab stepped back.
+
+"Will--will--you open the door? Yes, I know him. It's Mr. Barton.
+He--used to be in the same office."
+
+Barbara's sallow cheeks flushed and her eyes scorned Anne's
+insincerity. For five nights Anne had let her go on, in the
+dark intimacy of the same room, piling up the mass of her small
+perplexities, the annoying efforts at adjustment between herself and
+Janet and her mother. And all the time Anne had harbored a romance.
+Anne was not the small, shy cousin, so different from Belle, so like
+themselves in spite of her daily contact with the great world of
+business. Anne knew men. When deprived for a few days of her society
+they came long distances to see her.
+
+"Very well, I'll open the door. But don't be long, please. Janet's
+cleaning out the chicken house and looks like a fright. My other waist
+isn't ironed and mother's asleep."
+
+She went. Anne heard her open the door and lead Roger down the creaking
+hall to the dining-room, a bare, dilapidated room, with sagging floor
+beyond the skill of the manless household to repair, and woodwork
+painted streakily by Bab and Janet.
+
+Anne tried to hurry, but her cold fingers fumbled. And even when, at
+last, the hooks were hooked, the hairpins all in place, and Anne stood
+with her hand on the knob, it seemed impossible to turn it.
+
+Why had he come?
+
+Was Belle right? How had she known?
+
+Roger Barton looked up as the rear door unexpectedly opened and Anne
+came toward him, with just the degree of welcome to express her
+surprise, and the exact amount of pleasure at the sight of a friend.
+Her greeting angered and disappointed him. Anne thought she did it very
+well.
+
+"Hunting?" She tossed the word off lightly, as if she had many male
+friends all deeply interested in the sport.
+
+"No," Roger snapped, annoyed at this assumption of social manner in the
+stark, unfriendly room, with its stained walls and broken floor. "No. I
+didn't bring a gun. Besides, it's not duck season yet. I never heard of
+any other game on the marshes, did you?"
+
+"No. I don't think I have." Anne flushed.
+
+Her embarrassment at discovery did not soften Roger; he had been too
+hurt by her greeting.
+
+"No. I have no excuse except one you may think presumptuous. I heard,
+accidentally, of a place I thought might suit you. But you'll have to
+let them know by Tuesday, to-morrow if possible. It's with Wilmot &
+Brown--twenty-five a week."
+
+Anne tried to look as if she were seriously considering, but she had
+scarcely heard. She had not thought of this and now she saw so clearly
+it could have been the only reason for his coming. He had a deep, human
+kindliness for all misfortune, and she had been unfortunate. She, a
+working girl, had given up her place. He had found her another almost
+instantly.
+
+"Thank you. It was very kind of you. But I'm not sure I'm going back to
+town directly. My cousins," the word contained the broken floor, the
+scratched wall, the worn furniture, "want me to stay for the rest of
+the month. I may do it."
+
+Through the window she saw Janet wheeling a refuse-filled barrow from
+the chicken run. Bent against the wind, she moved, almost doubled above
+the vile load. Bab followed with a pitchfork. They disappeared behind
+the barn. Anne looked straight at Roger:
+
+"There are no men on the place and the school vacations are the only
+time my Cousin Janet gets enough leisure to do anything. We have been
+talking about fixing the fences and mending this floor. If you'd come
+to-morrow instead of to-day you'd have found us calcimining."
+
+Roger's eyes came back to Anne, flushed, defiant, so unmistakably proud
+and hurt.
+
+"I didn't mean it intrusively," he said quietly. "I just couldn't stand
+the thought of you taking any old thing--another rotter like Lowell,
+perhaps--where anything but a machine is wasted. Please believe----"
+
+A sound from beyond the thin partition struck him to silence. It was a
+high, querulous voice calling, "B--a--b."
+
+Anne started. In another moment Aunt Harriet would come trailing in,
+her frail hands moving gracefully to insure safety, her sightless blue
+eyes staring before her. It was years since Harriet Saunders had talked
+to a city man, a professional man, a man worthy of her own Harrington
+culture, a culture guarded through long years with Hilda Mitchell's
+brother, kept undimmed to hand down to "the girls." In another moment
+she would be there, winding about him the snake-like coils of her
+selfish monopolization.
+
+"Would you mind if we went outside?" Anne whispered, partly because she
+could so convey the need for instant action, partly to bear out the
+quickly invented reason. "Aunt Het is rather an invalid and she has
+been asleep. If no one answers she'll drop off again, but if she hears
+us----"
+
+"Certainly," Roger whispered back, and they tiptoed from the room
+together, out through the nearer kitchen to the yard. And there Anne
+paused. Where could she take him? There was no spot on that windblown
+dryness, no garden nook. For a moment she thought of the barn, a
+favorite place of her own. But it was so overtoned; herself and Roger
+Barton, who had come to tell her of a position, sitting in the hay!
+
+"It does seem inhospitable to drag you out on a day like this," she
+began, but Roger cut her short.
+
+"I like gray days, and it may be an extraordinary taste but I love the
+wind--in the open. Not city wind filled with dust, like the dead hopes
+of people blowing in your face, but clean, open wind like this."
+
+Anne's face lighted with the pleasure of a shared sensation.
+
+"So do I. It seems to blow all the tangles out of the world and give
+every one a chance to begin again--simply."
+
+"I guess--maybe--that is it--only I hadn't thought of it as a beginning
+again. It always makes me feel courageous, like plowing straight on
+through everything, just as it is."
+
+Anne did not look toward him instantly, but she felt him very sharply,
+so much taller than herself, broad, with that courageous, crisp hair,
+and his clear blue eyes that could look so different according to his
+mood. They would be wide and blue now, with a light in them as if Roger
+were turning it upon this "everything" through which the wind gave him
+the courage to plunge. He would be looking straight ahead, his chin up,
+ready. Anne turned a little, and he was looking exactly like that. She
+felt that she knew him very well, and then, that he was rushing into
+the wind, away from her, leaving her behind.
+
+"I think you will, because--I don't believe you're ever afraid, are
+you?"
+
+"No--I don't believe I am. You see," he seemed to be feeling his way
+carefully through this new experience of dissecting his own impulses,
+"there is really nothing to be afraid of in the world. Of course there
+is sickness, but when you're well you don't go about fearing a possible
+illness; there's hard work, but that's fun."
+
+"There's poverty."
+
+"Yes, I know there is, but, somehow, the poorer I am the freer I feel."
+
+"But it's so ugly--always skimping and twisting and thinking about
+money. It--it's stifling."
+
+"But you don't stay in a state of poverty for long," Roger laughed.
+"You get busy getting out of it. But while it lasts there's something
+exhilarating in being broke and not knowing what's going to happen. You
+know how it feels on a clear, cold, sunny morning of north wind, when
+the bay's all white-caps and you can almost see the windows of every
+house in Oakland? The air seems more alive than at any other time, and
+everybody goes round with his head up, smiling. Of course the feeling
+wouldn't last forever, but, for a time--it's like being suddenly
+freed from all binding restrictions, being lifted from a groove and
+thrown suddenly out into new possibilities--like being picked up by
+this wind and carried--off to China. There's something safe--and
+depressing--about a steady income."
+
+Anne tried to smile in return. But the tissue-wrapped allotments of her
+childhood were too vivid.
+
+"I don't think it's the having nothing that exhilarated you, it's the
+excitement of getting the next thing."
+
+Roger stopped and the wind wrapped them about. "I never thought of it
+that way," he said slowly, "but perhaps it was."
+
+They went on again in a moment, their relation somehow readjusted.
+Roger felt masculine and dense; Anne protective and feminine. Roger
+felt her sensitive and intuitive reaction to hidden impulses, and she
+his need to be looked after.
+
+Anne became conscious of this readjustment first and tried to find an
+impersonal path back to the reason for having come out at all, but
+could not. She grew gradually so conscious of the physical motion of
+walking that she felt she was obeying a natural law as inescapable as
+the force of gravity. She would put one foot before the other until
+they had reached the moaning sea two miles away.
+
+By a tremendous effort she stopped. And then the alternative of going
+back to the house and watching Aunt Het's python-like embrace of Roger
+in general conversation, emerged from subconsciousness.
+
+"There's an old Indian graveyard back a little; would you like to see
+it?" Without waiting his agreement, Anne turned into a depression
+between the dunes and led the way. "When I was a little girl, I used to
+think this was the most wonderful place in the world. We used to dig up
+beads and arrow heads and invent the most conventional Indian stories
+about braves and princesses."
+
+Roger did not answer. The wind swept across the dune tops, leaving
+them in the warm seclusion of a sandy depression. Anne went lightly
+just before him, small and silvery blonde, her arms white and quiet
+by her sides, no physical effort disturbing her swift, quiet way over
+the shifting sand. A sudden turn brought them to it on a slope above
+the dunes. Anne stopped and waited for him. Together they climbed the
+short distance to the small square of parched earth, with its broken
+fence, once whitewashed, now peeled by sun and wind to leprous patches,
+like the little wooden crosses that marked the mounds within. At the
+corners four gaunt gum trees sighed and bent, chieftains wailing the
+degradation of the Christian burials below. Anne passed through an
+opening in the fence and Roger followed, tense now with the realization
+of Anne, of the moaning trees, of the wind searching over the earth,
+and, far away, the sea crying its everlasting plaint to the rocks.
+
+Up one row and down another they went, Anne trying to read the
+rain-washed names on the tiny crosses. "You see, many of them were
+half-breeds, and Father Crowley was the only friend they really had
+among the whites, and so he managed to baptize most of them and bury
+them at last with the rites of the Church. I wonder what they really
+felt while he annointed them."
+
+"Like fakirs, I suppose," Roger said quickly, and moved a little nearer
+to Anne.
+
+She shook her head. "No, I don't think they felt like that. They're
+all gone now except one or two, but when I was a little girl there
+were a lot scattered through these hills, and I knew some of them. One
+was very old, wrinkled like an oak leaf, with the most piercing black
+eyes. I used to feel as if he had died, all but his eyes. We called
+him William Black, but he had a wonderful Indian name we never could
+pronounce and he would never tell what it meant. Most often, when we
+asked, he would grunt and walk away, but once he told me that his name
+was dead, and if he told it, it would come back and kill him. I didn't
+know what he meant, but now I think he was sad and ashamed of his
+people and despised us too much to even tell us what he had once meant
+among them. He was the only Indian I ever heard of who refused to be
+baptized. Nevertheless, when he died Father Crowley buried him over
+there. It was really just on the edge of the consecrated ground then,
+but one night the fence in that corner was broken down, and when they
+put it up William Black was outside. I think the others were very proud
+of William, but not so strong as he."
+
+"Very likely," Roger muttered, and stepped nearer still.
+
+She felt him so close that the slightest motion on her part would touch
+him, strong and alive against this eternal sleep of a dead race.
+
+"On--on--a clear day--you can see the sea--from here, and the
+spindrift--high as the cliffs--in a rough surf." Her arm, so slim,
+so white, like a wisp of the fog caught in form, pointed toward the
+muffled calling.
+
+Leaning over her, Roger's hand closed gently on the cool flesh. He drew
+her slowly round and they looked silently at each other.
+
+"I think I have always loved you," Roger said at last, like a child,
+whispering a confession strange to itself, born of the tender knowing
+in its mother's eyes. He did not understand this thing himself,
+revealed with such sudden swift quietness, but the earth understood,
+and the fog, and that old, old race asleep. As if the mist had parted
+and revealed it to him, so this love was revealed, something concrete
+in that wind-filled emptiness, something definite and shapeable, a
+thing he could cup in both hands and offer to Anne.
+
+It had come. Belle had been right and so utterly wrong; Belle, with her
+cheap experience, her world-eaten deductions from sickness and disease.
+Roger Barton loved her. The wonder of it held Anne to the exclusion of
+her own feeling.
+
+Roger dropped her hand and Anne looked up quickly.
+
+"I'm pretty clumsy, Miss Mitchell, but----" the pounding in his throat
+choked him. A piercing shaft of joy shot through her.
+
+"You're--you're not clumsy at all. And I--I would like to marry you
+very much."
+
+Sudden awkwardness descended upon them. They looked shyly at each
+other, Anne waiting for Roger to draw her close and kiss her, Roger a
+little frightened.
+
+Wasn't he going to kiss her? Chill crept over Anne. And then he was
+drawing her to him. The surface of her body broke into tiny pricks of
+excitement, triumph, awe. She could feel his breath on her face, see
+the inevitable approach of his lips. Now he was too near to see. His
+lips were on hers. Suddenly, driven by the need to reach through to
+something beyond them both, Anne returned their pressure. Roger felt
+their clinging with faint surprise, deep tenderness and awe.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER FIVE
+
+
+The following morning Anne and Roger went back to town. They strolled
+up Market Street to Third and Kearney and there Anne stopped.
+
+"Wilmot & Brown, you said. They're on Mission, aren't they?"
+
+Roger looked puzzled, until he recalled the position he had found for
+Anne, and laughed. "You're not going to bother with that now."
+
+"I certainly am. Why not?"
+
+"You're engaged."
+
+Anne giggled. "Not yet. I haven't seen them."
+
+"I'm not joking. Listen." He drew her to a doorway from the hurrying
+stream. "Don't, dear, please. I don't like to think of you tied down in
+an office, and anyhow it's not worth while. We're going to be married
+soon."
+
+Anne looked away confused, partly because of the strange feeling
+it gave to realize herself engaged, partly at the imminence of the
+wonderful, new experience of matrimony waiting her; and, beyond her
+own acknowledgment in words, curiosity as to how Roger planned to
+marry without a position. In the sweet intimacy of the trip from
+Quincy, Roger had talked of the future, a future that exhilarated and
+frightened Anne in its possibility.
+
+"We're going to live for something worth while," Roger had said, "and
+live for it with every scrap of the stuff that's in us."
+
+Anne's eyes came back to him with a tender smile.
+
+"But we're not going to be married to-day. Besides, I----" Anne had not
+spoken much of her family yet, but at these definite words of Roger's
+about marrying, Anne realized what a difference it would make when her
+income into the house had stopped, especially to many little pleasures
+she had accustomed her mother. "There are lots of things I want to get
+and--and--I like to work, really I do."
+
+Roger frowned. "Will you promise to quit the instant I ask you to?"
+
+Anne laughed. "Are you always going to boss me round like this?"
+
+Roger's hand slipped into hers. "No. Because we're going to want to do
+the same things."
+
+The future was going to be very wonderful.
+
+"And I'm going to do some of the wanting and you're going to do some of
+the meek and mutual obeying?" she teased, and wished they were alone so
+that Roger could kiss her. Instead he dropped her hand and looked down
+seriously.
+
+"Do you mean, honestly, that you would rather work until we marry?
+I never want to try to persuade you to do anything against a real
+inclination."
+
+Anne knew that her puckered brows and serious lips were weighing,
+to Roger, hesitation between her own preference and the dislike of
+going counter to this, his first expressed request. But behind them
+the thought clicked away that Roger himself could solve the problem
+by accepting the opening of private secretary to Hilary Wainwright,
+a millionaire ship owner and philanthropist, who had offered him the
+place as soon as he heard that Roger had left John Lowell. But Roger
+was not quite sure that he believed in Wainwright or that he wanted the
+place. The tick, tick, kept saying: "Take the place for a beginning and
+we can marry to-morrow."
+
+"Yes, dear, I think I do," she said at last, and added gayly, "Now,
+where is Wilmot & Brown?"
+
+They walked east to Mission Street and stopped before the building.
+
+"I'll wait here twenty minutes. If you don't turn up I'll know you're
+taken."
+
+He sought her hands, and linked, they smiled at each other until a
+passing man turned to look again, when Anne snatched her hands away,
+and with a whispered, "Good-by, dear," hurried into the building.
+
+Roger waited half an hour and then went, disappointed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every noon hour Roger was waiting for Anne and they had lunch together
+at a nearby cafeteria which Anne insisted was the only kind of place
+she liked for lunch. For the rest of the hour they strolled on the
+sunny side of the street, or, if it were raw and foggy, sought some
+sheltered bench in one of the small plazas and talked. Roger usually
+did most of the talking, a running commentary on the people they
+passed, which linked the individuals up to society as a whole. Roger
+was always seeing people whom he pitied; starved, eager souls, thwarted
+longings, stunted minds, drudges in a mill whose working they did not
+understand, whose spiritual profits they did not share. When he pointed
+out these people and qualities to Anne, she understood, because she
+too had felt stifled and thwarted and full of vague, high longing.
+But she never quite understood how Roger understood, because he never
+seemed to long vaguely, nor to feel suppressed or driven. As the days
+slipped into weeks, Anne came to feel that there was a surplus of some
+qualities in Roger over and above the sum of those same qualities in
+herself. She had ideals and courage and faith, but his ideals were
+sharper before him, his courage deeper, his faith firmer.
+
+Roger never doubted the best within himself, nor allowed a nervous
+over-conscientiousness to distort a quality into its reverse. If he
+had had a family, he long ago would have told them of his engagement,
+while Anne could not yet make up her mind what to do. Sometimes she
+saw her hesitancy as loyalty to Roger, because neither her father nor
+her mother would understand Roger or his standards. At others she felt
+that it was her own need for harmony and peace in the life about her,
+a need so deepgrown that it was a weakness in its inability to risk
+disturbance. And she knew how her father would accept a son-in-law who
+had no position, who talked of the world's misery as if it really did
+matter to him personally, who dallied with the prospect of a private
+secretaryship at fifty dollars a week to begin with because he could
+not quite prove to himself Hilary Wainwright's sincerity.
+
+Sometimes, after an irritating day in the office, when old Mr. Wilmot
+dictated worse than usual and, on rehearing the letters, declared he
+had never used those words at all, Roger's begging to be allowed to
+come up in the evening and meet her people annoyed Anne almost to the
+point of confessing the main difficulty.
+
+It was at the end of such a day, more than a month after she had
+promised to marry Roger, that she came down from the office almost
+wishing Roger would not be waiting. It was a June day of clear
+sunshine, but with a gusty wind straight from the ocean. The air was
+filled with dust that seeped through clothing and got into one's eyes
+and mouth and scratched one's nerves to snapping. But Roger was there,
+holding his hat on with one hand and making his happy little gesture
+of welcome with the other. Anne tried to smile cheerfully, but it was
+difficult with dust blowing into her face and a wind whipping her skirt
+about her. Roger came up quickly and took her arm.
+
+"You mite of a thing. It always astonishes me to think of you getting
+about by yourself."
+
+Anne was glad that a gust forced her to duck at that moment so that
+Roger did not see her unsmiling eyes. She was tired, sick of getting
+around by herself, of being respectful to that impossible old Mr.
+Brown, of keeping exact hours, every one a tiny bit snatched from the
+happy future of which Roger was so sure. It was one thing to refuse to
+work with John Lowell, or in the law at all because it was corrupt and
+unjust, but it was--to-night anyhow--just a bit overstrained to dally
+about over the possible insincerity of Hilary Wainwright. Whatever the
+man might be, at least he was doing real things for civic betterment,
+the kind of thing Roger seemed to believe in. If Hilary Wainwright's
+methods were not exactly Roger's, still it was an attempt. And she and
+Roger could marry.
+
+They had crossed the street and now, in the temporary protection of a
+high building, were safe for a few moments from the wind. Anne could
+not go on with her head bent. She looked up into Roger's smiling eyes
+and succeeded in smiling back. His fingers closed over hers and drew
+her closer to him.
+
+"You mite," he whispered, "you little, silvery-gold princess. When
+we're married I'm afraid I'll worry every time you're out of my sight."
+
+"That'll be nice," Anne said a little sharply, but she was very tired.
+
+Roger looked down quickly.
+
+"Anne, when are you going to tell your people? It makes me feel as if
+you weren't sure yourself. You said at first that you wanted to 'gloat'
+all by yourself; that's very flattering and I believe it when we're
+together, but, sometimes after I've left you, I feel--Anne, you are
+sure, aren't you?"
+
+"Of course I am."
+
+"Don't they expect you ever to marry?"
+
+"Why, I suppose so. We never talked about it."
+
+"Is it me, 'specially, they would object to?"
+
+For a moment Anne hesitated. At last he was giving her the chance.
+Should she take it? But before she could quite make up her mind Roger
+was pleading again, and suddenly Anne felt her strength exhausted. She
+would not evade or pretend any more. It might as well come now as later.
+
+"All right, dear, if you feel that way. Come up to-night."
+
+Roger gave her fingers a quick grip, and they stepped from the
+protection of the buildings into a side crossing. The wind tore at
+them. Bent against it, they reached the opposite curb. In that interval
+Anne felt the matter had been settled beyond change.
+
+"I think I'll take the car here. It's useless trying to walk in this
+wind."
+
+Just then Anne's car came into sight. They hurried out into the street
+and Roger helped her through the crush about the steps. It was nice
+to have Roger making a way for her, to feel the strong, sure lift
+of his hand under her arm, to feel herself swung up by such a small
+expenditure of his strength. Now that the decision was made, Anne was
+glad. After all, no matter what the conditions, her people would have
+found some objection. Clinging to the hand-strap almost beyond her
+reach, Anne went over the best ways of opening the subject to them.
+
+But in the end Anne did not open it. She was catapulted from an
+unusually pleasant meal, straight into it, by a chance remark of her
+father's.
+
+"I see there's likely to be another street railway strike," he
+remarked. "They were running provisions into the carbarn as I passed."
+
+"Well, now, that will be a nuisance." Hilda beamed round the table. Any
+general conversations at dinner always made her feel that they were,
+after all, a closely knit family. "Thank goodness, I don't have to
+go on a car to do any shopping, although those Saturday sales at the
+Sunset Market are quite a save."
+
+"Didn't the company promise the men not to push that matter of open
+shop until the year was up?" Anne, like her mother, was glad of any
+general conversation, and had no intention of bringing down the wrath
+of her father. But he peered at her suddenly over the top of his
+steel-rimmed glasses.
+
+"What if they did? How long do you think the men would have kept their
+agreement not to agitate a strike if they had been in a position to
+call one?"
+
+Anne felt herself chill; a thin surface of frost seemed to cover her as
+it always did when her father talked like this. But she did not want to
+anger him and so she said quietly:
+
+"I don't know. But I would like to think that there was a little
+decency and honesty in the world. There must be."
+
+"Well, it's not among labor agitators, let me tell you that. A greedy,
+selfish lot, out for what they can get. They won't take a job and stick
+to it themselves and so they try to stir up others to quit."
+
+"But they couldn't stir the others up all the time, if the others
+didn't really want to be stirred. Something is wrong and people feel
+it."
+
+When James Mitchell delivered an opinion he did not expect to be
+answered, much less argued with. He turned swiftly upon Anne.
+
+"What's that? Who feels things are wrong?"
+
+"A lot of people feel things are unjust and wrong and that something
+has to be done. They may not be clear as to exactly what it is or how
+they're going to do it, but they know there's trouble somewhere." The
+icy veneer deepened, but Anne held her ground.
+
+"Who? A lot of Jews and foreigners who never had enough to eat in their
+own country. The trouble with this country is that the natives are too
+good-natured. They won't realize the harm these fools are doing until
+it's done. They ought to be deported now, every last one of them."
+
+Anne nibbled at her lip and did not trust herself to speak. But she saw
+Roger, his eyes deep and sad, watching some weary soul in a city park.
+
+"I think papa's right, Anne. It is mostly foreigners that do the
+kicking. Not the blonde kind. Danes and Swedes are hard workers, but
+Jews and Dagos are always fussing. Don't you remember that Greek,
+Kapoulos, who lived over Martini's after The Fire, always haranguing
+about justice and fair play, and the first chance he got he ran off
+with the firm's funds and went to Greece?"
+
+James shrugged Hilda's efforts aside and leaned across to Anne.
+
+"Let me tell you one thing, Annie; these theories won't hold water,
+socialism and I. W. W.-ism and all the other fire-eating babble. And
+they'll never be put into practice, because, at bottom, the working
+man is too smart and he knows he'd lose his job if he tried them, and
+then where'd he be?"
+
+James whisked the tail of this inverted logic in Anne's face and waited
+triumphantly. But Anne did not see the narrow, tired face, the small
+work-weakened eyes of her father. She saw Roger, hunching toward John
+Lowell.
+
+"But men do give up their jobs for their beliefs; not unskilled
+laborers, but professional men who have spent years getting their
+preparation."
+
+"Bunk! You talk like a romantic school girl. Show me one professional
+man, likely to succeed in his line, and show me him quitting."
+
+"I will," Anne spoke with difficulty, "to-night. Roger Barton is coming
+up this evening."
+
+"Now, I am glad of that," Hilda breathed a sigh of relief. "I wish
+you would have more company, Anne. It's not my fault the place is not
+filled with young folks."
+
+"Who's he?" James demanded.
+
+"The man I'm engaged to." It was scarcely more than a whisper.
+
+At last Anne looked up, from one to the other. Her mother sat, the look
+of pleasure at the prospect of young company frozen in her eyes. Her
+father peered forward, still amused at her childishness, triumphant at
+his own logic.
+
+"What say?" He too whispered. "You're engaged!"
+
+Anne rose. Sitting, she felt the coming struggle closing down upon her.
+
+"Yes. I am engaged to Roger Barton and we'll be married as soon as he
+gets a job."
+
+"You're engaged to a man without a job! A fool, that throws up a
+profession--fine profession it must have been--and then asks a girl
+from a decent home to marry him!"
+
+There was a silence, filled by small, clicking noises from Hilda.
+Then James Mitchell rose too, and with the evening paper screwed to a
+ferule, banged his ultimatum upon the table.
+
+"No damned skunk like that comes into this house, not if I know it. Do
+you hear? What you do outside the house I can't help, and I'm not fool
+enough to suppose I can. I never did have any say in this house, nor
+about you girls. But I'll have my say about this thing and now. If this
+fellow thinks he's going to sneak into this house and have me support
+him, he's going to get left. Go ahead. Marry him; a man that asks a
+girl to wait till he gets a job! Have half a dozen kids and then sneer
+at the state of the world and a steady job." His rising voice reached a
+thin scream. "Do you hear? That blackguard never enters this door."
+
+Anne looked at him, gray, thin, raging, and a sudden pity mingled with
+her anger. He was so tightly locked within his fear of life, his terror
+of all strange ways and wide roads, all experience that had not been
+his. In that moment, Anne's feeling for her father parted in clearer
+strands than she had ever seen it. She scorned and pitied and disliked
+him.
+
+Without another word, Anne went into the hall, took the receiver from
+the hook, and called Roger's number. In the momentary silence until
+she got it, she felt the two gray-headed people peering at her, like
+animals from a hole.
+
+"Yes, it's Anne. I don't think you can come up to-night, dear. I
+twisted my foot getting off the car and it's swelling. I'm going
+straight to bed."
+
+Not even Roger's genuine concern, nor his loving good-night penetrated
+the icy calm that encased her. She hung up, and, without looking toward
+the dining-room, went down the hall to her own room and locked the
+door. Dressed, she lay upon the bed, staring up through the window to
+the stars.
+
+She did not know what time it was when her mother came tapping gently
+at the door. But she did not open, and, after a moment, heard her
+tiptoe away.
+
+Out on the back porch, Hilda Mitchell stood for a long time looking
+out over the city lights and trying to straighten her world so
+suddenly upheaved by Anne. But the fact of the engagement loomed like
+a blank wall before her and finally she gave up. With a sigh she went
+in, locked the back door and, without turning on the bedroom light,
+undressed and got into bed. Beside her the small gray man huddled under
+the clothes, but, by his stillness Hilda knew that he was not asleep.
+
+"Papa, I wish you wouldn't be so harsh with Anne. Young folks can't be
+expected to think ahead like old folks. Anne's not flighty or silly
+like most girls. She won't do anything foolish."
+
+"She can't--after this. My God, what a mess you've made of bringing
+up those girls! Belle was always an obstinate, headlong piece
+but--little--Annie----"
+
+"Now, papa. Have patience."
+
+"Oh, shut up. It's no good talking to you." James Mitchell turned on
+his side and drew the clothes high about his shoulders.
+
+For a long time, Hilda lay beside him, thinking. Then, she, too, sighed
+and turned over.
+
+Life would have been a simple thing to Hilda Mitchell if it had not
+been for her family.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER SIX
+
+
+"You didn't hurt your foot after all?"
+
+"No. I didn't hurt it. I didn't want you to come and it was the first
+thing I thought of."
+
+Roger crumbled his bread on the cloth and waited. Anne tried to go on
+calmly with her lunch, but she felt her face flushing and she knew
+Roger was watching her, his eyes growing sterner, his mouth settling in
+that straight line. She felt like a trapped animal, caught between a
+quixotic pity of her people, a pity seen most clearly in moments when
+Anne detested it most, and her longing to have Roger confess, unaided
+by an explanation, the understanding she was sure he had. But Roger sat
+on silent, waiting.
+
+Before the strong, free youth of Roger, her father and mother shrank,
+small, aging, pitiful. Little gray things, scuttling over the surface
+of their flat, uninteresting world, never looking up, their worried
+little eyes fastened on their own food and shelter. Units, among
+incalculable millions of others, all frightened, worried, and avid
+of personal comfort. To explain was to strip them bare, tear off the
+meager covering of their self-respect, expose their one pride in all
+its narrow rigidity.
+
+At last Anne put down her knife and fork and looked at Roger.
+
+"Roger, you asked me to trust you, yesterday. Won't you trust me?
+You're right, I was not ill. Something did happen and I couldn't have
+you come."
+
+But no generous yielding softened Roger's eyes.
+
+"It's different, Anne. Yesterday, when I asked you to have faith in me,
+it was a question between ourselves. But this--there are others. I feel
+surrounded by enemies. I don't even know which side----"
+
+He bit the sentence, but Anne finished it for him.
+
+"----I am on."
+
+"Because you're not being open with me."
+
+"Neither are you being honest. You do know, but you want to force me to
+say."
+
+Anne's lip trembled and Roger looked quickly away. In this, their first
+misunderstanding, Roger wanted no emotional element to enter.
+
+"Yes, I think I do. Your people don't approve of me. You've always
+known it and that's why you didn't tell them. Why did you pretend it
+was any other? I wouldn't have minded the truth."
+
+"No, because you would scarcely recognize their existence as human
+beings. They are of the 'spiritual bourgeoisie.' They are of the great,
+spiritual middle class you despise so much."
+
+Roger flushed. Anne went on:
+
+"But they are my people. I live with them. I don't share their
+standards. My brain despises their outlook on life. I can't help
+knowing what their reactions will be. My father is bigoted and selfish
+and, on the whole, rather mean. Sometimes, he is jolly and kind and a
+little more tolerant, usually when a bet goes well. He is a clerk, a
+corporation clerk, in body and soul. But he is a victim, too, of the
+smallness of his own soul, just as much as the men who can't get work
+are victims of 'the system.' And mamma----" Anne held her voice steady
+by an effort, "I wouldn't hurt mamma for the world, or make things more
+uncomfortable for her. In time----" but the tears welled over and ran
+down Anne's cheeks.
+
+Roger gripped her hand. "Don't, Princess, please don't. I was a brute.
+I do understand, better than you think. But I hate meeting you round
+in parks and public places, sneaking as if there were something to be
+ashamed of. Last night, I wanted to sit close to you, in some warm,
+comfortable room, like a human being."
+
+Anne's lips moved in a warped smile. "You wouldn't have sat in a
+comfortable room. It's one of the ugliest rooms I have ever seen.
+There's a crayon portrait of a brother papa always hated and won't
+have removed, and they would have watched us through hideous chenille
+portières. That is, mamma would; papa would have pretended to read, in
+a chair fixed so he could see us in the mantel glass. It would have
+been ghastly."
+
+Roger smiled, but his fingers held Anne's more firmly. "My high-strung,
+beauty-loving Princess. We'll never have an ugly thing in the house,
+will we?"
+
+Anne shook her head. "No. We'll have nothing in it at all, rather than
+that."
+
+"Oh, it won't be as bad as that," Roger laughed.
+
+"I don't care, Roger. Really I----"
+
+Two people took the vacant places at the same table, so, in a few
+moments, Anne and Roger finished and went. It was another day of
+sunshine and dusty wind.
+
+"I don't feel parky, to-day, do you? Then let's walk." Anne turned
+north and Roger walked close beside her.
+
+They walked slowly, Anne tingling with consciousness of Roger's
+nearness, and of their isolation from others, in a new understanding
+that had come to them. All these hurrying strangers were the world,
+flowing around the little island on which she and Roger stood alone.
+
+Block after block they walked in a silence rhythmic with shared dreams
+and hopes that seemed to throb in unison with the perfect harmony of
+their step.
+
+Roger spoke first: "There was another call from Wainwright this morning
+while I was out and he left word for me to see him this afternoon."
+
+"I guess he wants a decision," Anne said casually.
+
+"Yes. Yes, that's it, no doubt."
+
+"Don't do anything you don't want to do." Anne's voice was even,
+indifferent to the issue. Roger pressed her arm.
+
+"Anne, you're a trump. The grandest little chum a fellow ever had."
+
+Anne nodded valiantly. "And some hiker. Look where we've walked to.
+Clear out to the City Hall."
+
+"So we have! It didn't seem but a few blocks, did it?" Roger looked so
+bewildered at the sight of the City Hall just before him, that Anne
+laughed.
+
+"Seeming is not being. There it is and I'll have to take a car right
+straight back."
+
+She moved, but suddenly Roger's hand held her arm and, at the strange
+look on his face, Anne's eyes grew serious.
+
+"Princess, let's go over and get the license now. It doesn't mean
+much--but I would like to feel we'd gotten that far."
+
+"Why! Roger! Now, this minute?"
+
+Roger nodded. "Will you, dear?"
+
+Under his look, Anne colored. She tried to say something flippant but
+could not.
+
+"All right," she whispered finally.
+
+They crossed the street and went up the steps into the rather dirty
+corridor, along which fat, red-faced politicians and young clerks
+hurried. In the license office, a bored clerk, just about to leave for
+his delayed lunch, rushed them through the questions. Anne held up her
+right hand and swore. Then Roger. The clerk scribbled in the answers.
+Roger paid the fee. They turned away, as legally two as when they had
+entered.
+
+But to Anne, something had happened, so that never again would she be
+the Anne Mitchell who had come up the steps only a few moments before.
+All the weeks of her hidden secret had not made her feel so irrevocably
+Roger's as this: a few stereotyped questions gabbled by a bored clerk,
+the unimportant fact of her age sworn to with ridiculous solemnity. The
+personal quality of her secret had been hers, even through the ordeal
+with her parents, but now, it was not hers any longer. It had been
+given to the world. This bored, gum-chewing clerk had placarded her
+name and Roger's for the world to see. She and Roger were now tagged
+and listed, in orthodox fashion, for the great event of matrimony. She
+began to tremble.
+
+"Let's--do the--rest--now."
+
+"Anne!" A lump rushed to Roger's throat and he could say no more. Then,
+hand in hand, like two children, they crossed the corridor to the
+judge's chambers.
+
+In ten minutes it was over, witnessed by a stenographer and the
+janitor called in from the hall. The judge made his mechanical speech
+of congratulation, which neither heard nor waited for him to finish.
+Silent, they walked down the stairs and out into the sunny, dust-filled
+wind.
+
+"What--what would you like to do?" Roger felt as if he had suddenly
+been left alone in a strange situation with a strange woman.
+
+Anne wanted to cry. "Are--are--you sorry?" she demanded almost angrily.
+
+"Why, sweetheart!" But the thing he had just done was touching Roger to
+a seriousness beyond his power to treat gayly.
+
+"Only, we can't go away very well till to-morrow and----"
+
+Anne tried to catch the words fluttering about her like bits of paper
+in the wind, but the realization that she was now married, that all
+the rest of her life she would come and go, eat and sleep, share the
+thoughts of the man beside her, paralyzed her power to think or move.
+She could not even look at Roger.
+
+"I'm--going--back to work," she managed at last.
+
+"You are not. Not for a single minute."
+
+The tone left no alternative. Anne thrilled.
+
+"But I can't leave them like this--without notice."
+
+"You're going to do just that. I'll phone Wilmot. It'll be all right."
+
+Anne looked at him with a shy smile. Roger pressed her arm.
+
+"You're mine now, Princess," he whispered. "And to-morrow we'll go away
+into the mountains."
+
+Anne nodded, and then there was nothing small and unimportant to say.
+They stood in a self-conscious silence that had the separating quality
+of space, until Anne broke it:
+
+"I--think--I'll go home now."
+
+"Just as you like, sweetheart." The relief in Roger's tone
+disappointed, although Anne did not know what she had expected. An
+unending stream of cars all going in the wrong direction passed. They
+were both glad of the clanging noise and the wind which made speech
+difficult and filled the silence between them.
+
+At last the right car came and they hurried out into the roadway. As
+Roger helped her in, he whispered:
+
+"Till to-morrow--little wife."
+
+The crowd on the step jostled her forward, the conductor, like a
+specialized machine, bellowed his--"Step forward. Fare please. Step
+forward. Plenty of room in the front of the car."
+
+Through the jam on the back platform Anne looked back and glimpsed
+Roger, already hurrying away, holding to his hat. A strange mingling of
+fear and exultation rushed over her.
+
+"Mrs. Roger Barton."
+
+She tried to think of it calmly, as indifferently as any one of the
+strangers in the car would have thought of it, but the realization
+danced like electricity along her nerves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three-quarters of an hour later, Roger accepted the position of private
+secretary to Hilary Wainwright, at fifty a week, the work to begin in
+two weeks.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+
+The next afternoon while Anne packed her trunk, her mother kept
+wandering to the door and gazing in the puzzled excitement of a child
+who encounters something pleasant, but so extraordinary and unexpected
+that its delight is lost in bewilderment--like being confronted with a
+Christmas tree on the Fourth of July. Without turning from her task,
+Anne felt her come, stare, decide to say something and go, unable to
+express her thought.
+
+At last the trunk was packed, locked and corded. Anne rose and smiled
+at her mother, again in the doorway.
+
+"By the look on your face, one would think you had never expected me to
+marry."
+
+Hilda came in and sat on the bed-edge. "Of course, I did, Annie. I
+wouldn't like either of you girls to be old maids. Women have a lot
+to put up with either way, married or single. But you have certainly
+rushed right along. First you quit a good job, dash off to a place
+where there isn't a man for miles and come home engaged; don't
+tell a soul for weeks and then marry in the lunch hour. I feel all
+upside-down."
+
+Anne patted her knee. "Well, you'll get right side up again before I
+come back and then we'll have some good times, momsy."
+
+Hilda's pleasure at the prospect vanished almost instantly.
+
+"What papa will say, I'm sure I don't know."
+
+"Shall I write him a note? I will, if it will make things easier. I
+don't want to upset him needlessly, for your sake. But he wouldn't be
+any better if he had a month to think about it."
+
+"I know. But then, you must make allowances, Anne. At our ages we can't
+shift round so quick as you young folks, and papa thinks----"
+
+"I know what papa thinks. Let's not go into that. But I don't, and,
+as I am the one marrying, papa's opinion doesn't matter. Besides,
+you know, I can get a job any day. I don't have to sit at home and be
+supported."
+
+"Now see here, Anne, you may be a lot smarter than I ever was, but I'm
+older than you, and one thing I've learnt, if nothing else, it doesn't
+pay for a woman to work after she's married. A man may pretend he
+doesn't want her to and all that, but he gets used to it mighty soon
+and takes it for granted. And no woman can do it--keep a home and work
+and have babies. Just wait till some morning when you feel sick and
+have to go out as usual. Why, when Belle was coming, I couldn't lift up
+my head till ten o'clock. I----"
+
+Anne turned quickly and began putting some things in a handbag. In a
+few moments Hilda wandered back again from her own first confinement to
+Anne's marriage.
+
+"And to think you were married yesterday and came home here as cool as
+you please. Now when I was young, if a girl had done a thing like that
+it would have been thought wicked, although I don't know but what it
+is a good thing for the man. It's just as well to keep them waiting as
+long as you can. Besides, an hotel room, just an ordinary room where
+the man's been living right along, seems kind of--coarse."
+
+Anne's flaming face bent lower over the grip. There was a short
+silence. Then Hilda whispered:
+
+"Annie--is there--anything--you would like to know?"
+
+Anne did not even shake her head. She had felt like this once,
+strengthless in disgust, when Belle had persisted in showing her the
+colored illustration of a disease in its worst stage. At last she
+succeeded in turning to her mother.
+
+"I'm going to phone for the taxi, now, mamma, and we'll have a cup of
+tea before it comes."
+
+"I'll put the kettle right on." Hilda bustled away, relieved. For she
+had always found it a little difficult to enlighten Anne and had a
+vague idea that it would have been easier if Anne had been a brunette.
+Certain simple truths had a way of splattering all over Anne's
+fairness, and making Hilda uncomfortable.
+
+"Oh, well, I dare say she knows more than I did at her age;
+everything's different than it used to be, anyhow."
+
+With this large, comforting deduction, Hilda began to make the tea.
+They drank it in a constrained effort on Anne's part to keep the
+conversation general, and finished just as the taxi driver rang the
+bell. The little trunk went bobbing down the stairs; Hilda took Anne in
+her arms and they clung together, not crying, but very quiet.
+
+"There, dear, I must run, and you can say I eloped and phoned you
+afterwards, or anything that comes handiest."
+
+"Oh, I'm not going to lie about it. It's done now. Besides, papa's
+bark's a lot worse than his bite. He'll be decent when you get back."
+
+Anne kissed her mother and ran quickly down the stairs, waved from the
+door and shut it behind her. As the taxi drove off, she looked back,
+but Hilda was not at the window. Anne's eyes clouded.
+
+"Dear old moms. She does annoy me sometimes, but she has had a hard
+time. I'm going to see that it's better in the future."
+
+And then Anne forgot all about her old home, and sat nervous and very
+timid on the edge of the taxi seat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At dawn, Roger and Anne went down to the lake edge. In the east, the
+cold, night gray was melting in green and silver pools. Not a sound.
+Not a ripple on the surface of the lake. Beyond the lower hills,
+granite mountains rose, peak upon peak, to the snow-covered barrier
+beyond which the world lay. They stood silent, hand in hand, part of
+the eternal youth of the dew-drenched earth.
+
+Behind the towering mountains were cities and hurrying men. Anne knew
+it because they had passed through them the night before, but it was
+hard to remember and impossible to visualize. This was the core of the
+world, calm, absolute in its perfect understanding, untouched by hurry
+or man's confusion.
+
+Anne pressed closer to Roger and he put his arm about her.
+
+The green and silver pools brightened with the coming light; a faint,
+crimson glow, herald of the day, spread its warmth for the advance of
+the sun, and then, suddenly, a great jolly sun looked over the rim of
+the world and laughed at them. They laughed back.
+
+"The old fool thinks he's surprised us. As if we didn't know he was
+there and going to do exactly that."
+
+Anne made a face at the sun, just as the breakfast bell at the ranch
+rang for the milkers' breakfast.
+
+Hand in hand, they turned from the lake. The sun was already well over
+the mountain top. The herald had rolled his crimson carpet and gone.
+Day had come.
+
+"I suppose a dewdrop should be meal enough, but I hope it's at least
+bacon and eggs and pancakes."
+
+"With cereal and cream first," Anne laughed.
+
+Roger squeezed her hand. "I'm awfully glad, Mrs. Barton, that you
+suggested marrying me."
+
+"Always take my suggestions. You'll find they will always be right,
+even if I do say so," Anne teased.
+
+"Not a doubt of it." Roger stopped and took Anne in his arms.
+Tenderness beyond passion was in his hold. "Princess--it's--so good to
+be alive and love you."
+
+Day after day, deeper and deeper in their understanding, Anne and Roger
+wandered in the hills. Icy streams tumbled roaring through granite
+gorges, suddenly emerged to wide sunny meadows, and spread in flat
+stillness. The fat, black earth of the lower mountains thinned to sheer
+granite slopes, where sparse trees grew miraculously in tiny crevices,
+their roots hanging like ropes from the cliffs.
+
+They sat by the lake, which, beginning a hundred yards from the ranch,
+stretched to the blue distance of the hills. The lake fascinated Anne.
+No fish swam in it, no birds alighted upon it, the wind seemed scarcely
+to ruffle its terrible stillness. No one drank of its water. No one
+swam in it. No craft sailed it. In its own brackish depths, it hid
+the reason of its existence. No one knew how many centuries it had
+lain there, acrid, wide, as indifferent to man's need as man to its
+uselessness. "The lake," the rancher and his wife spoke as if it were
+a person who had committed some unmentionable crime and been banished
+from human intercourse because of it. There were legends that, ages
+ago, the Indians had worshipped a god living far out in its bitter
+depth. But now, they were afraid of it. The Christian God had stolen
+their god and given them fear. But the lake was as indifferent to this
+Christ as it had been to their pagan deity. It needed neither god nor
+man.
+
+They talked and were still. They were very near.
+
+At the end of the second week, the first sheep-man came. Early in
+the morning, Anne and Roger were waked by the baaing of the lambs, a
+piercing wail of terror, as of children pursued by a malignant force.
+They went quickly to the window. Hundreds of gray, dusty sheep were
+coming up the road. Every now and then they stopped to nibble the
+thick, sweet grass. But the dogs, at a call from the shepherd, ran
+among them and with uncanny knowledge, drove them on. Bleating, they
+obeyed. The rancher hurried out and opened the gate. The dogs began to
+maneuver them through. Behind the band, the shepherd came, carrying a
+lamb in his arms.
+
+"A hierarchy of authority," Roger said. "The shepherd directs the dogs,
+the dogs drive the sheep."
+
+At last they were all safely through and the gate closed. In a few
+moments, the bleating was over. The sheep were contentedly munching the
+lush grass.
+
+"They are like people. A moment ago and they seemed really to have some
+definite point of view. They wanted to do something. And now, they've
+forgotten what it was. They'll eat the meadow flat and then the dogs
+and the shepherd will drive them on, and they'll rebel and yield and
+eat another meadow flat--and go on--and on."
+
+Anne patted his hand, resting on her breast. Roger was always seeing
+things so, analogies between animals and mountains and trees and
+people. Nothing was just itself to Roger, but always a picture of
+something else. It made Anne very tender and filled her with the same
+sense of deep protectiveness that a child's belief in fairies does; a
+gladness, touched faintly with wistful envy and regret that faith must
+go.
+
+As they sat down to breakfast they realized a new feeling of bustle and
+industry in the air. The sheep had come. Soon tourists would follow.
+Automobiles would pass, meals would be called for at all hours. The
+rancher and his wife talked of rooms to be opened, supplies brought up
+from cellars, bedding aired. Roger and Anne sat silent, as silent as
+the dark Indian girl who served them.
+
+The rancher ate quickly and went. In a moment his wife followed. They
+crossed the rear yard and disappeared in a storehouse. Roger looked at
+Anne and sighed.
+
+"I suppose it's the end. The place will be all cluttered up with people
+soon."
+
+"I suppose it will. It's been perfect, hasn't it?"
+
+Roger's hand moved over and took hers. "Absolutely perfect. We----"
+
+A note so clear, so sweet, so rounded that it seemed to be the spirit
+of the earth slipping into sound, stole into the room.
+
+"Oh!" Anne whispered and held fast to Roger's hand.
+
+The Indian girl straightened and stood listening. A brightness
+flashed over the brown silence of her face and vanished as she moved
+noiselessly to the door and passed through. Outside, in the sun-filled
+meadow, the Basque shepherd stood among his sheep, his arms raised, a
+little wooden flute to his lips. Once more he sounded the clear, sweet
+call and then, at the sight of the girl, the happiness of the whole
+earth came rippling and dancing from his flute.
+
+For a moment, the girl remained motionless on the doorstep. Then,
+without a sign of recognition, glided away toward the dense high reeds
+of the lake edge. Still playing, the Basque shepherd moved after
+her through the munching sheep. At the edge of the reeds, the music
+stopped. He parted them and they closed, thick and blank, behind him.
+
+That evening, Roger and Anne took their last walk. They walked far
+along the lake, until a chill little wind crept out from the cañons, a
+jealous little wind, guarding the tremendous silence of the night from
+these paltry, human intruders.
+
+Roger and Anne turned back. The sheep were huddled a dark mass in the
+corner of the meadow. Over the embers of a campfire, the Basque herder
+and two half-breed milkers were playing cards. Against the door of her
+whitewashed shack the Indian girl leaned, her black hair in two great
+braids to her waist, facing toward the glow of the dying fire. As Anne
+and Roger crossed the front yard, she slipped inside and closed the
+door.
+
+The rotation of the days had fulfilled its promise. The perfect had
+come to its own end. Anne lay in Roger's arms.
+
+"I always felt there was something perfect somewhere," she whispered.
+
+Roger drew her closer to him.
+
+"I love you, I love you, I love you," he answered hotly. Anne's
+arms closed about him. Through the force sweeping him, almost to
+unconsciousness of Anne as a separate body, he felt her lips, warm,
+soft, as eager as his own.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+
+In the next weeks, it seemed to Anne that the world had been recreated
+while she and Roger loved by the lake. The old world of definite
+working hours, through which strangers claimed her physical energy and
+brain, as deeply strangers one day as the next; the old family life
+of repression, grown unconscious from habit; minute but never ceasing
+spiritual adjustment, strengthless rebellions against habits set in
+steel bands before one awakened to their cramping horror, all had
+dissolved in a community of interest in a larger and much simpler world.
+
+In this world, men and women tried to increase happiness. They worked
+with ideas; many ideas and many people striving to embody them in form.
+Often in the mornings, after Anne had watched Roger vanish round the
+corner of the street far below, she continued to stand on the porch of
+the little cottage they had found on a rocky crag that rose from the
+grass-grown cobbles to a view of the bay and Tamalpais. It was like
+her inner life here, high above the confusions of her mother's muddled
+thinking, her father's petulance, Belle's brutal experience. Above the
+confusion of The Niche, the unironed laundry, the unreasoned bursts of
+Hilda's extravagances, the intrusion of uninteresting gossip. The three
+white-painted rooms with their sweep of bay and hills, close to the
+stars at night, walled from the city below by the spicy fragrance of a
+tangled garden, was another world.
+
+Anne dreaded anything that might disturb its peace. No discordant
+note must enter the full day, when alone in her new home, she made it
+beautiful, or prepared for the guests Roger like to ask to dinner;
+nor the pleasant evenings when she and Roger read or talked before
+the fire, or went to the many meetings included in Roger's duty as
+Wainwright's secretary.
+
+But, at the end of two months, when Anne realized that this guarding
+of her new peace had excluded her family, that neither Belle nor her
+father had seen the place at all, and her mother only once, she was
+ashamed and decided to ask all three to dinner the first night Belle
+could take off and to make a little celebration of the occasion. On
+the next Thursday evening, when Roger was at a conference with Hilary
+Wainwright, Anne went especially to arrange the night.
+
+"Well! I was just wishing you'd phone or something!" Hilda hurried
+half-way down the stairs to meet Anne and walked back with her arm
+about her daughter's waist. "It was kind of lonesome to-night and I
+was just thinking of running down to Mrs. Welles for a minute, but
+this is the night she goes to church and it didn't seem worth while. I
+am glad." Hilda hugged her effusively; for, although Anne had made it
+a rule to go home once a week, if only for a few moments late in the
+afternoon, Hilda greeted each visit with such amazed admiration that
+Anne had been able to include it among the many responsibilities of her
+new life.
+
+For Hilda was now very deeply impressed with Roger's importance as the
+private secretary of a millionaire. Millionaire philanthropists had
+not existed in Hilda's knowledge of the social structure and Roger's
+close connection with one filled her with awe. The status of Hilary
+Wainwright in the financial world had done much, also, to reconcile
+James. And when, one day, shortly after Anne's marriage, he had chanced
+to see Roger in earnest talk with the president of the Coast Electric,
+James Mitchell had accepted Roger, in no generous apology to Anne for
+his attitude the last night before her marriage, but in a thinly veiled
+eagerness to know all about the schemes of the great man.
+
+Anne despised herself for yielding to this curiosity, but it was so
+much pleasanter when things moved smoothly, that she catered just a
+little to him. She admitted him, without apparent consciousness of
+his real purpose, to the projects of Hilary Wainwright for increasing
+the total of human happiness. She threw off carelessly such phrases
+as: "welding of classes," "the larger democracy," "the obligations of
+wealth"; phrases which James Mitchell heard with satisfaction, as he
+might have observed the social minutiæ of a class above him. As working
+theories he did not visualize them at all, but it gave him a feeling of
+Roger and Anne--hence vaguely himself--moving in high places.
+
+To-night he was specially interested, for the papers were full of some
+scheme of Wainwright's for getting sugar more cheaply to the market
+from his plantations in Hawaii. In the office, James Mitchell had
+spoken with authority upon the subject that very afternoon, and had
+enjoyed the respectful attention of the other clerks.
+
+He accepted the invitation with such unusual grace that Anne was
+ashamed for him; but when, a little later, as she said good-by to her
+mother in the hall and Hilda whispered: "It will be a great occasion
+for us, Annie. I never saw him so delighted," Anne forgave him. Her
+mother had so few pleasures and this mood of her father's was almost
+as great an event as the dinner itself. "I don't believe he remembers
+a word he said that night," Hilda went on in the same confidential
+whisper as she went with Anne down the stairs. "Anyhow he's never said
+another thing about objecting and now--everything's going to be lovely.
+I feel it in my bones. But three extra to dinner! I'm afraid it will
+make a lot of extra work for you."
+
+"Now, mamma, don't be silly. Besides, you haven't the least idea what a
+fine cook I am."
+
+"I don't doubt it a bit. Any one who can get up a dinner for a
+millionaire! Goodness, I should be scared to death."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Wainwright's simple. Roger says his god is simplicity." But
+as Anne herself was not quite sure how Roger sometimes meant this, she
+hurried over the puzzled stare in her mother's eyes. "Next Wednesday at
+seven."
+
+Hilda sparkled. She had never eaten later than six and the fashionable,
+if inconvenient hour, clinched her belief in Roger's efficiency.
+
+"I'll finish my new waist for the occasion and see that papa gets a
+good shave."
+
+She went as far as the street corner with Anne and gave her an extra
+hug.
+
+"Going to dinner with my married daughter. Why, I feel like a young
+girl going to her first dance."
+
+Anne kissed her. "You dear thing, you're going to eat a lot of meals of
+your daughter's contriving only--don't expect too much this first time.
+In spite of my boasting, I'm not always absolutely sure, especially
+about salad dressing and gravy."
+
+"I'll take a chance." Hilda nodded, her eyes so bright, that Anne drew
+her quickly back and kissed her again.
+
+"Don't forget, seven sharp."
+
+"We'll be there in cap and bells, never fear."
+
+She stood on the pavement until Anne had disappeared, then went smiling
+back to the flat. Hilda Mitchell was indeed deeply grateful for her
+daughter's happiness. In spite of her denial of the fear that Anne
+might have been an old maid, she had never been quite sure of Anne's
+powers of attraction. Anne was so "highfalutin'," what Belle called a
+"spiritual aristocrat"; and, like most women who refer to the physical
+relation with their husbands as "duty," Hilda considered spinsterhood a
+disgrace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Anne's relief, by which she measured to a hairline her previous
+anxiety, the dinner was a success. If Roger made an effort to meet
+the Mitchells on their own ground, his tact exceeded Anne's keen
+sensitiveness to discover. He kept the conversation at anecdotal level,
+apparently because that mood was his own. James Mitchell laughed as
+Anne had rarely heard him laugh, and reciprocated with uninteresting,
+tedious reminiscences of the office. In her delight at "papa's mood,"
+Hilda was sobered to quiet dignity. Belle was a little bored, as she
+always was when she did not direct the conversation, but content, for
+she had expected to shoulder the social responsibility at this initial
+dinner, and she was not in the vein. She watched Roger and Anne and
+wondered whether they were really as united as they seemed. Belle had
+had more experience than even Hilda suspected.
+
+Roger felt the evening glide pleasantly away and was glad that Anne had
+done this. The Mitchells interested him not at all. He thought Hilda
+a vapid fool, Belle pretentious and James a nonentity. They were a
+perfect illustration of the bewildered and confused sheep. Anne's birth
+among them was a miracle. But the miracle had happened and they would
+always be more or less in the background of life.
+
+A little after ten the Mitchells went. They kissed Anne and Anne
+returned their kisses while Roger tried not to resent this very natural
+act. They had kissed Anne and she had kissed them years before he
+had known of her existence, but now, she was so exclusively his, her
+delicate fairness so fully the outward expression of their love and
+understanding, that this intimate physical contact with the Mitchells
+echoed a discordant note in the perfect harmony.
+
+So he forced himself, in rebuke of his jealousy, to the unnecessary
+courtesy of seeing them down the long flight of stairs with a
+flashlight, because the porchlight just missed a weak spot below the
+second landing. But he came back three steps at a time to Anne.
+
+"Well, little hostess, that was some dinner you got up." He went about
+switching out all the lights except one, as he always did when people
+had gone. With this dimming of the light, he closed out intruding
+personalities, focussed life back to the points of himself and Anne.
+"How did I behave?"
+
+He had then felt the need to "behave."
+
+The unconsciousness of the confession chilled Anne's joy a little. It
+made her feel a traitor to her people and she moved away and stood
+looking thoughtfully down into the fire. Her mother, so stiff and
+subdued in the new waist, so happy in her happiness; Belle, bored,
+but generous always in her love; even her father so genial that she
+had wondered several times during dinner whether, if the conditions
+of his life had been different, he would have been quite so dull and
+gray-souled and selfish. Each in his own way was a little vain and
+proud of the way she now lived. To her father and mother, at least, she
+was a very real part of life; through her, they touched experience not
+their own. But they were no longer a needed part of her life. Across
+the chasm of the full present and her future with Roger, they stood
+apart in the past, a tiny group, a little isolated and lonely, even
+Belle.
+
+Her eyes filled with tears and Roger took her quickly in his arms.
+
+"Why, Princess, what is it?"
+
+"Oh, Roger, it is tragic, really. I felt it all evening, and when they
+followed you down the stairs and I knew you would come back alone
+and they would go to that cold, dismal flat--they seemed suddenly so
+cut off, so separate. They were the Mitchells and--and we were the
+Bartons--and it hurt."
+
+"But, honey girl, that's such a natural thing. It's always that way.
+How did you expect to feel toward your lawful husband?" he added,
+trying to force an answering smile into Anne's eyes. But she only
+burrowed deeper into his shoulder and he felt her body quivering.
+
+"It's awful the way children grow up and go away. Mamma hasn't anything
+really but me and Belle. She's gone on all these years--kind of looking
+forward, feeling in the midst of life--oh, I can't get it into words,
+but she doesn't seem to have anything. She's always been so cheerful
+and planning and doing the best she knew how--and now--there doesn't
+seem to be any reason for her to keep it up."
+
+Roger stroked Anne's hair gently. "I know, dear, but any one who hasn't
+anything of his very own in life, has to come to that point. And most
+people haven't."
+
+"But she did have something of her own. We were her own. She's lost it."
+
+"Nobody can be anybody else's own, not lastingly their own. Men and
+women who haven't anything but their children, haven't really anything
+at all. They're just vehicles for the next generation, a kind of
+machine to keep things running. And what's the good of keeping things
+running, unless you make them better?"
+
+Anne lay close to Roger, her nerves relaxing under the soft touch of
+his fingers.
+
+"Roger," she whispered after a long silence, "don't you ever want
+children?"
+
+Roger's stroking of her hair ceased. She looked up into his suddenly
+grave eyes. Already Anne was seeing life in relation to children, and
+he had not thought of a child at all. It seemed very necessary to be
+honest in his answer.
+
+"It's this way. I do, if you do. But there's so much to do in the
+world, and there are so many people in it already, that it seems to
+me selfish just to add to the numbers. There's a lot of talk about
+children being the highest work of the race and all that, but it seems
+to me it's on the part of people who can't do anything else. Most
+anybody can have children, and very few can do anything else; but
+what's the good of perpetuating a race on and on without time or space
+to grow in? As for the comfort of children, the selfish clutching at
+companionship or less lonely age--well--if the children are really
+worth while as human beings, if they're going to add anything to the
+sum of life, they have to be so far in advance of their parents'
+generation--that you just can't bridge the gap. And even if they're
+not, but just trudge along in the old groove--still they're themselves
+and not you really. They----"
+
+"Don't," Anne cried, "it breaks my heart."
+
+Roger held her closer still and began stroking her hair again. But he
+felt, for the first time, a difference between himself and Anne. Was
+this just the difference between all men and all women? Or was it a
+difference between one viewpoint and another? The natural growth of
+life, the widening of human outlook, the wrenching of any bonds, these
+were pain to all the Mitchells in the world. The sentimental, clutching
+possession of "family" was Love to them. Roger wished he knew exactly
+what Anne was thinking, drawn close to him, her arm creeping up until
+it circled his neck in a clinging hold.
+
+"Roger, let's never grow apart. Let's share always. Wait, if one of us
+has to, but never go on alone. I--I--couldn't bear it, Roger, now."
+
+"Neither could I, Princess." Roger took Anne's face between his hands
+and tried to smile into her eyes. But, at the cool firmness of her
+cheeks beneath his fingers, the smile burned to a flame that scorched
+Anne's eyes; with a little sigh she closed them and raised her lips to
+his.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER NINE
+
+
+It was a few weeks after the Mitchell dinner that Roger came back to
+the office one afternoon to find Hilary Wainwright pacing up and down
+in a frank perplexity that he did not often permit himself to show;
+although, as the months had passed, Roger had come to feel very keenly
+that Hilary Wainwright, who never doubted his own point of view on a
+business matter, was growing more and more uncertain of his former
+enthusiasm for carrying out what he always called "the responsibilities
+of wealth."
+
+Hilary Wainwright had been born to wealth, in a generation that had
+begun to question the right of such inheritance. Roger had always
+felt that Hilary was glad of this generation, which permitted him
+to enjoy his wealth, and, at the same time, by discussing his right
+to it, admitted him to the inner circle of intellectuals who doubt
+and lead civilization. He owned vast shipping interests, many sugar
+plantations in Hawaii and was often called upon by other capitalists to
+arbitrate their difficulties with labor. He went to strike meetings in
+a limousine.
+
+He lived in a great, old-fashioned, inherited mansion far out on
+Pacific Avenue near the Presidio, surrounded by lawns and clipped
+hedges and conservatories. He lived alone, except for the servants, and
+entertained in down-town hotels. Long ago mothers had ceased managing
+their daughters in his direction, but the upper social crust was dotted
+with matrons, mothers of grown girls, who still had, in the depths of
+their hearts, a soft spot for this "idealist." If they had married
+him, they were sure he would have understood them so much better than
+did their husbands. These women contributed largely to the charities
+and civic betterment schemes in which Hilary was interested, and never
+refused committee work.
+
+These schemes for the just treatment of labor and the improvement of
+living conditions among Wainwright's workmen, were Roger's special
+province, and he now saw them as a pond upon the surface of which he
+was paid to swim. Coming from an investigation into the justice of
+some strike, or from tense discussion with the leader of some industry,
+Roger felt like a diver bringing back strange fauna and flora, after
+which he had not been sent. Hilary always listened attentively, but
+sometimes he tapped his desk in a gesture that recalled John Lowell.
+He had a habit of saying "Yes. Yes," in an emphatic way, as if his
+mind were a hammer tapping each nail. But when Roger had finished, no
+completed structure ever rose from Hilary's agreement.
+
+"Of course, Barton, I, personally, agree with you. There is a lot to
+be said for the other side. But, after all, present society is founded
+on wealth, and one can't disturb the foundations without jeopardizing
+every one--every one," Hilary would repeat, unconsciously warning
+Roger that he himself might go down in the welter, if every Wainwright
+suddenly put his principles into operation.
+
+The first time he had explained this kindly to Roger, but, as the weeks
+slipped by, and Roger had continued to make the same suggestions for
+the adjustment of conditions which Hilary pretended were disturbing
+him, Hilary had gradually allowed his impatience to appear.
+
+"What's the good, Barton, of talking like that?" he had demanded almost
+angrily one day, about a week before the Mitchell dinner. "It's the way
+the man who has never had wealth talks, as if it were an excrescence,
+something that can be cut away from the possessor without injury to any
+one else. Wealth is an essential plank in the social structure of our
+day, the keystone in the arch. Redistribute wealth suddenly and the
+whole thing will fall."
+
+It had been a tiring day full of very clear deductions on Roger's part
+that something was fundamentally wrong with the whole economic system.
+He shrugged impatiently. "I don't know but what it might not be a good
+thing if it did--only the wrong people would probably be underneath."
+
+Sitting in the well-appointed office of his employer the man's
+manicured nails, his ostentatiously unconventional soft shirt and tie
+were as offensive as the smug personal safety of his theories.
+
+For a moment Wainwright had not answered. Then, with marked repression
+and annoying calm, as if Roger were a fractious child to be excused
+because of his usually good behavior:
+
+"That's rather wild talk, Barton. You can't knock out the essential
+plank of a structure and not make things worse for every one."
+
+"And you can't expect Tom and Pete and Jim to get all worked up over
+the luxuries Mr. Vanderbilt might have to go without under a new order."
+
+"Because the average workingman doesn't think clearly. His mind is
+untrained. He doesn't see beyond the food and clothes of the day."
+
+"No. The average man doesn't think--yet."
+
+"I'm afraid it will take many years." Hilary had reminded Roger of one
+perfunctorily mourning the death of a hated relative whose passing was
+to his financial advantage.
+
+"I'm not so sure," Roger had said shortly.
+
+"Ah--let us hope you're right."
+
+In the pause that followed, a feeling that Roger had always had from
+the very first interview suddenly crystallized. The man was spiritually
+smug, soaked through and through in unconscious insincerity.
+
+Why had he ever consented to work for Hilary Wainwright? Instantly
+Roger had pushed the question from him and never again had he allowed
+it to rise clearly before him.
+
+But now, as he came into the office and for a moment unobserved,
+watched Wainwright pacing slowly the length of the thick, rich rug, the
+well-kept hands clasped behind his back, frowning so seriously, Roger
+felt a positive repulsion of the man's smugness touch him, an almost
+physical inability to go over to his own desk and seriously begin
+consideration of one of Hilary's futile little problems.
+
+At the sound of the door closing, Wainwright turned.
+
+"That Sabatini case has bobbed up again, Barton, and I wish you'd look
+into it. All kinds of welfare committees are pestering me about it and
+your legal experience will make a report valuable."
+
+"He's that Sicilian fisherman who burned down the warehouse of the
+United Fish Company and incidentally almost killed Joe Morelli?"
+
+"That's the man. It's straight arson and attempt to murder, as far as
+I can see, but the Republicans and the Democrats are fighting for the
+elections and this thing has been dragged in. The fishermen worship
+Sabatini. He has power. Worse, he has a wife and eight children. There
+is no issue in the Latin Quarter at present to hang a fight upon and
+so Sabatini's friends are using him. The present district attorney is
+against him, but--the present district attorney wants to be reëlected.
+Sabatini speaks very little English, wears gold hoops in his ears and a
+red sash, and his children are really beautiful. The Settlement is very
+fond of the family and a lot of sentimentality is creeping into the
+thing, I'm afraid. Could you make it to-day?"
+
+"Certainly. There's nothing special. I'll report back to-night."
+
+"If you could. I'd like a clear, logical report before to-morrow. I'm
+being pestered a good deal by some people," Hilary smiled the smile
+that meant "women," "and I want to know more and take a stand."
+
+An hour later, Roger stood beside Angelo Sabatini in his prison cell.
+
+The man sat on the narrow cot, his elbows on his knees, his face
+buried in his grimed and broken hands. His broad, bent shoulders, the
+shoulders of a toiler from childhood, were hunched to the flat-backed
+head, covered with coarse, curly black hair. On the floor at his feet
+lay a little pile of torn paper, the citizenship papers of Angelo
+Sabatini. Roger stood silent, leaning against the steel door of the
+cell. Outside, a guard stopped every now and then in the monotony of
+his walking to stare.
+
+"You deliberately waited until you knew that Joe Morelli was in his
+office, then you set fire to the building and when you saw that Morelli
+had a chance to get away you tried to knife him?" Roger spoke very
+slowly and distinctly, so that Angelo Sabatini caught the drift.
+
+He nodded. "Morelli--he no buy and sell de feesh--he buy and sell
+de mens--me and Paolo and Giacomo--everybody--and de babies of me
+and Paolo and Giacomo. Many days--we have no meat--and no shoes--but
+Morelli have much meat and de childrens fine shoes. Ecco." With a
+gesture that laid before Roger the primitive justice of survival,
+Sabatini paused. "We work all night on the sea. We bring much feesh.
+Morelli he trow it all--all--back into the sea. Much feesh--too cheap.
+Ecco."
+
+Roger paced the short cell length and came back again to the steel bars.
+
+"Did you tell the judge all the circumstances, the meat and shoes of
+Morelli, your own children, the tons of wasted fish?"
+
+The small black eyes blinked. "Che disc'? No caspic' good Inglis. Too
+queer talk."
+
+Roger repeated slowly. The heavy face lit with a scorn before which
+Roger was ashamed. "Yes. I tell. And I show dat." A grimed and hairy
+finger pointed to the pile of torn papers. "I tell dat I come America
+to get good chance and I no get. All mens is de same and Morelli do me
+bad. Many times me and Paolo and Beppo go to Morelli and tell: 'Throw
+no feesh into de sea. We must live.' Morelli laugh. Den me and Paolo
+and Giacomo talk many nights in de cellar of Beppo. We make--I don know
+in Inglis--de leetle papers in a hat. It tells me. Ecco. I go."
+
+"And you told the judge?"
+
+"De seguro, I tell. I make swear on Libro Santo to say true and I tell.
+Ecco."
+
+Roger's body sagged against the steel bars with the hopelessness of
+this man's case. He had done this thing and confessed it. No twisting
+of ethics, no pointing of advantage, could make him change one comma.
+His code was dearer to him than all the complications of the law that
+might set him free. As long as Giuseppe Morelli lived and threw the
+fish into the sea, Angelo Sabatini would try to kill him. And Giuseppe
+Morelli would continue to throw fish into the sea and keep up prices,
+as long as society permitted him to do it.
+
+On the cot, Angelo Sabatini was leaning again with his face in his
+hands, the tiny gold hoop in his right ear twinkling through the black
+curls. He had told his story again, in spite of his lawyer's warnings,
+because Angelo Sabatini saw no reason to withhold the truth. In time,
+perhaps, some one would believe, understand that he had done this thing
+because he had been chosen to do it and his children needed as many
+shoes and as much food as the children of Giuseppe Morelli. But, the
+quiet form of Roger, leaning against the bars, his chin on his breast,
+Sabatini understood. This man was only another with the right to ask
+him many things and go away and leave him.
+
+Roger wanted to put his hand on the bowed shoulder and say something.
+But there was nothing to say. Tell him to hope? Against the United Fish
+Company? To brace up? Before twenty, thirty years in prison walls?
+Angelo Sabatini, who had lived all his life in the sun on the sea, ever
+since as a tiny boy in the old country he had gone out before dawn
+in his father's blue painted boat. Roger moved and the man looked up.
+Already the hope had gone from him. His small, black eyes were dead
+embers in the dull, brown face. He looked at Roger, stupid, dumb,
+confused. In five years, in less, he would be scarcely human.
+
+Roger beckoned the turnkey and without another word, went out. Angelo
+Sabatini did not move. As Roger passed the desk, a woman with a baby
+in her arms and a little boy of ten beside her was trying to make the
+man behind the desk understand. The little boy translated, in an awed
+whisper, what his mother said. The man behind the desk shook his head:
+
+"Tell her not to keep coming here. She can't see him except on
+visitors' day and if she keeps up this pestering she won't see him
+then."
+
+The child translated. The woman wrung her hands and pleaded. Under the
+torrent of harsh Sicilian dialect, the man behind the desk rose.
+
+"Get out!"
+
+The child pulled his mother's skirts and they hurried away.
+
+Roger went straight home. It was dusk, the wood fire was lighted, and
+the dinner table spread before it. Anne came quickly at the sound of
+Roger's key and he kissed her.
+
+"What's the matter?" she laughed. "It's me, not a wax image in a shop."
+
+Roger kissed her again. "I beg your pardon, Princess, but I'm all
+wrought up. I never want to have another afternoon like this one."
+
+While Anne put the finishing touches to dinner, Roger told her of
+Angelo Sabatini. Anne made no comment until, the dinner served, they
+faced each other across the little table.
+
+"But he's scarcely human now," Roger repeated. "A year of those granite
+walls--and he'll be a beast indeed."
+
+Anne shivered. Roger had drawn the man very vividly, hunched on the
+cot, his thick neck, his round, flat head.
+
+"If he'd only stopped to think," she said, "he must have seen that you
+can't go round burning property and murdering people."
+
+"No, he wouldn't have seen it. As Wainwright says," Roger spoke
+bitterly, "the average working man's mind is untrained. He doesn't
+think. He's too busy getting food and clothes."
+
+Anne thought of her father, his servile acceptance of rules and
+orders. His ever-haunting fear of losing his job, of a rainy day.
+
+"I think Mr. Wainwright's right, don't you? The average person does not
+think."
+
+"Then he's got to be made to think," Roger said with such sudden
+vehemence that Anne started. "It's not because he doesn't want to
+think. He hasn't got time to think. And he realizes the uselessness of
+thinking when he can't do anything with his thoughts."
+
+"But everybody has time to think, Roger. You're always talking about
+the way machinery affects men, they just do things over and over with
+their hands because it gets mechanical and they don't have to think
+about it. They can think while they're working, if they're the thinking
+kind."
+
+"Try it. Make the same motion over and over for eight hours and see how
+alive your brain would be. Make it for a week, a month, all a working
+life. You're dead."
+
+Anne looked thoughtful. She liked discussing with Roger and they
+usually agreed. But a note had crept into Roger's line of argument
+lately, that disturbed her almost physically, just as it did to hear a
+soap-boxer shrieking on the corner. It always made something inside her
+curl up and retreat, so that she could never stop and listen to what
+the man was saying.
+
+She got back again to particulars. "But he did do it. He burned a
+building and tried to kill a man."
+
+"Yes, he did it, just as a machine that is started by a clever mechanic
+does the work for which it is made. It obeys its law. Angelo Sabatini
+is obeying his law, the law that ground him and his ancestors down
+until there was only a spark left--the spark that brought him six
+thousand miles--to the 'Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave'.
+And then we tried to kill that spark and Sabatini kicked out. Why, it's
+this spark, this will and courage to kick, that's the only thing in the
+man worth saving."
+
+Anne felt a little frightened. "But, dear, I know things are all wrong
+and ought to be different, but they're not different yet. If you do
+wrong you have to pay the price."
+
+Roger pushed back his almost untouched plate and began walking up and
+down the pretty room. "But that's just the point. The guilty, the
+really ethically guilty, do not pay the price. Angelo Sabatini is a
+victim of society, just as much as he would have been the victim of a
+beam falling on him. This isn't a personal fight between one fisherman
+and another, it's the whole social revolution. And that's what fools
+like Wainwright don't see or pretend they don't. They patch and sing
+hymns while they patch."
+
+Anne laid down her dessert spoon hastily. "Roger," she said quietly
+after a silence, filled only by the dropping of the burned wood and
+Roger's even tread the length of the room, "you're not going to quarrel
+with Mr. Wainwright, are you?"
+
+Roger smiled. "Hilary Wainwright doesn't quarrel with his employees. He
+dismisses them."
+
+Anne looked quickly away into the fire. After a moment she asked,
+almost indifferently: "Do you think he will dismiss you?"
+
+Roger shrugged; then stopped and looked at the little figure turned
+toward the fire.
+
+"No," he said slowly. "He won't dismiss me--yet."
+
+Anne got up and began to clear the table. Roger came forward to help as
+he always did, but Anne insisted he was tired.
+
+"Besides you have to make the report to-night. I can do these few
+things quite well."
+
+Roger looked at the clock. "And I'd better hurry, too. It's half past
+eight now."
+
+Still he continued to walk up and down while Anne thoughtfully washed
+the dishes. She had just finished when he came to kiss her good-night.
+
+"Don't wait up, dear, I may be late."
+
+Anne went to the door with him, then came back, turned out the lights
+and made up the fire.
+
+Deep in the easy chair, Anne felt the battling and struggling far down
+under the pleasant surface of life. Rough men, like Angelo Sabatini,
+were striking blindly up at her peaceful security. Anne looked slowly
+around the quiet room, uncluttered by useless furniture, wide, clean
+and calm. She loved her living-room. It was almost alive to her. Anne's
+lips trembled.
+
+"He takes things so hard," she whispered to herself, "and one person
+can't really do anything."
+
+It was after eleven when Roger came in. He thought Anne was asleep and
+got into bed quietly. But after a little while, she turned to him.
+
+"What's Mr. Wainwright going to do, Roger?"
+
+"Nothing," Roger said heavily. "Nothing at all."
+
+Anne crept closer to him and stroked his cheek. "I'm so sorry, dear."
+
+Roger moved impatiently. "Don't do that, Anne, it fidgets me."
+
+Anne instantly withdrew her hand. Roger reached for it and clasped it
+listlessly. "Excuse me, dear, but I'm all tensed up. He was so damned
+judicial and--and 'just.'"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER TEN
+
+
+For several weeks after Roger's outburst, Anne sensed a new element
+in her life, as if she had come face to face with something hidden
+before. This element was a quality in Roger that changed the angle of
+their relations. She felt that she might be suddenly called upon for
+calm judgment, a need might arise for a balancing force between them.
+The foundations of her new life, of the deep peace and security she
+had felt for the last six months, were not quite so secure as she had
+thought them. There was something in Roger she was not quite sure of.
+
+Often during the day, Anne stopped her housework, and made
+conversational beginnings calculated to lead to an opening of this
+subject with him. But when she concentrated her uneasiness in words,
+it seemed always to gain more substance than it really had. Roger did
+not approve of Hilary Wainwright. He never had, exactly. But Hilary
+Wainwright was not crooked as John Lowell had been. At worst, his
+methods might be mistaken. He was trying to do something worth while,
+even if he went more slowly and cautiously than Roger's enthusiasm
+demanded.
+
+Again and again, Anne concluded that she was exaggerating the tension
+between Roger and Wainwright, only to have her fear reach out of the
+most unexpected situations and touch her with a small, cold finger.
+
+"I will not start managing him. It gets nowhere and does no good."
+Anne's logic always led her to this point, where, by an extra effort,
+she usually succeeded in leaving it for the time.
+
+And then, two weeks before Christmas, something happened that drove all
+other thoughts from Anne's mind. She was going to have a child. She
+knew it now beyond a doubt. The vague fears and tenuous analyses of the
+last weeks vanished.
+
+"It's what mamma would call 'my condition,' I suppose."
+
+The world had changed, suddenly, and Anne's relation to it and to
+herself had changed. Everything seemed bigger, wider and full of soft
+mystery. The universe, a great, shadowy stretch far beyond her or
+her immediate concerns, now centered in herself. She was the center
+of something beyond ordinary life, beyond any small, blind struggle
+of mistaken millions, almost beyond the law that governed the daily
+comings and goings of mere humanity. No mystic ever felt nearer to
+bodies unseen, heard far voices more clearly, than did Anne in the
+first days of her sureness; when, her secret guarded for the perfect
+moment of revelation, she sat hour after hour, looking out across
+the tangled garden to the Bay, to old Tamalpais, quiet, eternal,
+understanding.
+
+The Wednesday before Christmas the weather turned. The long period of
+sunshine was blotted by the first rain. All day it fell, soaking the
+garden and shutting Anne from the world behind a thick, soft curtain.
+Roger came early that night, less troubled than he had seemed of late,
+and after dinner sat reading before the fire, instead of staring into
+it as he had done so often since the Sabatini case. She felt small and
+happy and understanding, shut within the warm peace of her home by the
+pouring rain, very near to the man sitting so close beside her. She
+would tell him now. When he closed his book she slipped her hand into
+his and then, leaving her chair, curled up in his lap.
+
+Roger's arms held her gently, and he leaned his cheek against her hair.
+Anne waited, a little disappointed that he did not sense instantly the
+secret just behind her lips. Surely if Roger had had anything so vital
+to tell her, she would have known it. But he only stroked her hair
+and now that she was listening with every nerve in her for a key to
+Roger's mood, she felt that he was really far away. He was thinking of
+something that had nothing whatever to do with her, while she felt so
+strangely, almost terribly, one with him. She sat up.
+
+"What is it, Princess?" Roger drew his attention from some distant
+point. "Aren't you comfy?"
+
+"How do you know it was anything? You were miles away."
+
+"I guess I was. Not so far, however, not farther than the office."
+
+Anne frowned. "Has Hilary Wainwright come to live permanently in the
+house with us? It was really much nicer when we were alone."
+
+Something in Anne's tone made Roger look at her intently. He had come
+as near having a quarrel with Hilary Wainwright that afternoon as he
+could come, and still keep the secretaryship. He had intended to laugh
+off his seriousness and to say nothing until he was surer of himself,
+but, at the look in Anne's eyes, he changed his mind:
+
+"Anne, the man's false. I don't believe he really believes a thing he
+says. It's a pose, as much of a pose as those silly soft shirts he
+wears and those ready-made clothes. He thinks it brings him nearer to
+'The People.' He----"
+
+But Anne did not hear beyond the first sentence. Roger stood before
+her, defying John Lowell, giving up the law. She rose slowly from his
+knees and said quietly:
+
+"Let's not talk about that to-night. Roger,--we're going to have a
+baby."
+
+It seemed to Anne an hour that they stood staring at each other while
+she saw understanding dawn slowly in Roger's eyes. Understanding, and
+then such a blank look of helplessness, that Anne felt the fears of the
+last weeks form visibly before her and swarm down, almost suffocating
+her.
+
+"Good Lord!" he whispered.
+
+Tears ran down Anne's cheeks.
+
+Roger brushed his hand across his eyes and reached to her, but Anne
+stepped back.
+
+"You--don't--want--it," she whispered fiercely, "but I do. I don't
+care how many people there are already. I want my baby. I----" She was
+almost hysterical now.
+
+Roger took her firmly in his arms.
+
+"Of course I want it, too, Anne. There, dear, there."
+
+Just as if she were a child, crying for a toy, instead of a woman
+telling the father of her child the most wonderful news in the world!
+
+Anne lay close, afraid to move away, to make concrete to herself her
+own hurt and anger and separateness from Roger. He had not wanted
+it. His first reaction had not been joy, but fear. Fear of what?
+Over-burdening the world with one small baby more? Or fear for himself,
+the new weight of responsibility?
+
+"Please, dear, won't you believe me? I am glad. But it came so
+suddenly. Why----"
+
+It was Roger now who was suddenly afraid to voice his question. Why had
+Anne chosen that moment to tell him? Had she thrown the thing at him,
+a grapple to hold him fast in safe acceptance of Hilary Wainwright's
+insincerity? Roger pushed the thought aside.
+
+"This is not the usual way of whispering the 'sweet secret,' is it,
+dear?" He turned Anne's face up and smiled into her eyes, wet and hurt.
+"Whisper it now, Princess," and he bent his head.
+
+But Anne could not smile. It would take all her strength and courage
+to forget--and forgive--that first blank, helpless bewilderment in
+Roger's eyes. He might be glad--he had said he was, but he was glad
+for her gladness. He had none for the baby itself. He was cheating the
+baby of its full meed of welcome, accepting gracefully now for his own
+peace and comfort, something he could not escape. And she had hoarded
+her secret. She had even thought of saving it to Christmas day! Of
+giving Roger this, the biggest present in her power, early in the dawn
+when they always waked. She had seen it so clearly, herself creeping
+close to Roger. Then the rain had come, walling them in together, and
+Roger had seemed nearer than he had for weeks and the depth of her own
+happiness had forced the secret from her. And Roger had said:
+
+"Good Lord!"
+
+Anne moved away to physical freedom. In this spiritual isolation she
+did not want Roger's arms about her, nor to have him touch her in any
+way. Roger straightened at Anne's movement and they stood, one on each
+side of the fireplace, outwardly two people very near in the intimacy
+of the low fire and shadowed lights, inwardly far apart.
+
+Why had Anne told him, at just this moment? Why had she done it? Had
+she felt him slipping over the edge of Hilary Wainwright's insincerity,
+out from these months of his own uncertainty, into spiritual freedom,
+and thrown the silken lariat of her dependence over him, drawn him back
+to the safety of 'a job'?
+
+Without turning, Roger felt Anne standing small, almost prim, by the
+fireplace, distrusting him, clinging fast to her safety, as James
+Mitchell clung to his little job. Afraid to dare, clutching comfort at
+any price. Perhaps she had deliberately decided this thing should be.
+She so often understood his unuttered thoughts, clarified his reactions
+before they had emerged clearly to himself from their first chaos of
+emotion and enthusiasm. If Anne had done this, feeling the safety of
+their present comfort slipping! But, when he turned to her--she was
+so silvery fair, shame of his own thought rushed over him. Against the
+reluctance he felt in her, he drew her to him again. And Anne, in her
+desperate need to believe, came back. He kissed her and smiled into
+her eyes, and this time, Anne smiled too. But she was glad that Roger
+did not insist again that she whisper "the sweet secret!" She did not
+want to talk of it until this mood was dead in the past. After a long
+silence, she looked up.
+
+"Mamma phoned to-day. She wants us to go there for Christmas."
+
+Their first Christmas to be spent with the Mitchells!
+
+"It's going to be the first real Christmas party mamma has ever had,"
+Anne went on, "and she's as excited as a child. Dr. Stetson is back
+from the East, more successful and famous than ever and he's asked
+Belle to go out twice in three weeks. He's coming, and I believe moms
+has some kind of idea that when he sees how successful matrimony can
+be, he will be moved to go and do likewise."
+
+Roger tried to smile, but none of Mrs. Mitchell's ideas ever amused
+him. This was so exactly the kind of crude thing she would do. But he
+had hurt Anne too much to-night to do anything but pretend genuine
+pleasure.
+
+"We'll do our best to help the good cause along. Shall I hold your hand
+and murmur sweet nothings? Come on, let's practice."
+
+"Don't be silly. But I do wish Belle would marry him." Anne spoke in
+such a matronly tone that Roger laughed. "You needn't laugh. Belle's
+awfully independent and all that, but she'd make a corking wife for
+some man. And this Dr. Stetson does seem more persistent than most.
+She usually frightens them off. I shouldn't wonder a bit if something
+doesn't come of it." Anne looked oddly like Hilda for a moment.
+
+"Well, you can coach me up, or we'll arrange a code to entangle the
+gentleman in domestic felicity. I'll do whatever you tell me."
+
+"Then it's sure to be a success. But, Roger, I do want this to be a
+nice dinner. It's really the first effort mamma has ever been able
+to make at a jolly Christmas. And she would so have loved trees and
+Santa Clauses and all the regulation fixings. Only they cost so much,
+and it never seemed worth while, because it would have taken all the
+money--even if she could have scraped it together--just for the
+machinery and there would have been no party."
+
+Roger's own childhood had not been very full of treats, but at the
+picture of little Anne deprived of the usual Christmas, Roger's heart
+melted.
+
+"You sweet baby, you. Ours will have a tree the very first year."
+
+Anne nestled to him. "Oh, Roger, he will be cute, won't he?"
+
+"He?"
+
+"Of course. It's got to be a boy."
+
+"I rather hope so myself, although I should never dare to prophesy so
+vehemently. But I daresay you are right. What's his name? No doubt that
+detail's settled, too."
+
+"It certainly is. He is Roger Mitchell Barton. How do you like it?"
+
+"Great," Roger said very quickly.
+
+But after he and Anne were in bed, and he had held Anne and assured her
+of his own free will that he was glad, and Anne was sleeping with his
+arms about her, Roger whispered to himself:
+
+"Roger MITCHELL Barton!"
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+
+After days of tentative discussion, Hilary Wainwright decided on
+Christmas Eve to have a Christmas tree at his office for the children
+of the striking stevedores who loaded his sugar fleet. When he
+announced the decision Roger almost flatly refused to have anything to
+do with it.
+
+"The children really should not be made to pay for their fathers'
+obstinacy," Hilary said, and recalled to Roger the sanctimonious aunt
+who had brought him up, trying to force a cookie on him after she had
+unjustly spanked him.
+
+"Why not settle the strike?" he suggested, without looking at Hilary.
+"The men are only asking ten cents an hour more, and the right to
+organize."
+
+He felt Hilary's lips compress, exactly like that aunt's, and wanted to
+laugh, although he was angry and disgusted.
+
+"The matter is being arbitrated, and, in the meantime, Christmas is
+here. I don't like to think of children unmerry on Christmas day."
+
+"It would be uncomfortable," Roger said in a tone that made Hilary
+glance at him with the look of a financier considering an uncertain
+investment. But, whatever Hilary Wainwright's reaction to Roger's tone,
+he dismissed it and said pleasantly:
+
+"I guess we'll have to deliver the invitations personally. There's
+not enough time for notes. Could you take half? I have the names and
+addresses. They all live rather close together."
+
+For a moment Roger hesitated. Then he agreed.
+
+"I can probably cover the lot. They all live in one section."
+
+Hilary nodded. "That would be great, if you can."
+
+Years afterwards, when Roger recalled the thing that had made him most
+ashamed of himself before men, it was this house-to-house canvass of
+Hilary Wainwright's stevedores.
+
+They all lived in mean, dilapidated buildings, down close to the great
+wharves, on narrow side-streets, never free from the smell of tar
+and bilge water and refuse. The men were mostly physical giants, with
+badly shaped heads, small, close-set eyes, and brutal mouths. The women
+were worn and dull, although here and there, among those with fewer
+children, faint traces of an anemic, youthful prettiness were fading to
+shrewish angles and deep lines about the pale lips. The children were
+dirty and sharp-eyed, with the shifting look and the quick, darting
+movements of children who live in the streets, dodging policemen and
+irate parents and passing trucks.
+
+The men glared sullenly at Roger, and, for the most part, made no
+comment. Some of the women reviled Hilary Wainwright in gutter speech;
+some were confused; none were grateful. But in the end, they all
+accepted. If the "kids" did not go to this tree, they would have none.
+The kids would like it.
+
+On Christmas morning Anne went to the office and helped with the
+tree. It was the finest that Hilary could find and weighted under
+innumerable, if cheap, presents, and bags of candy and lights. It was
+finished a little before twelve, and the clerks and clerks' wives who
+had helped stood back and admired it.
+
+"It's a lot better than my children are going to have," one woman
+whispered to Anne.
+
+"It really is pretty, isn't it, Roger?" Anne had enjoyed hanging the
+thick, silver tinsel and concealing the colored electric globes in the
+most effective places.
+
+"Yes. It's pretty." Roger had made up his mind to see the thing through
+decently, but it was difficult.
+
+The lights were switched on for a trial view; every one exclaimed
+"O-h," and, after other appropriate remarks of appreciation for the
+beauty of the tree, and Hilary's generosity, left. Anne came close to
+Roger.
+
+"Next year," she whispered, "we're going to have one exactly like this,
+only a teeny, weeny one, aren't we?"
+
+Roger did not answer, but as Hilary called to him just then, Anne did
+not notice. In a moment Roger returned.
+
+"He wants me to come back after lunch and start things going. His
+sister can't get here until half past three and the tree's scheduled
+for three."
+
+"Half past three!" The Mitchell dinner was to be at four, to give Belle
+time to get back to her case at seven. Roger could not possibly be
+punctual and James Mitchell hated a meal to be delayed. But Roger could
+not refuse Hilary.
+
+"It's one now. There's hardly time to go home for lunch and get back
+here."
+
+"I tell you. I'll go round the corner and get a bite and then clear up
+a few reports I didn't have time for yesterday and stay right on until
+she arrives. I'll leave the minute she comes."
+
+"Try not to be later than you can help, dear, won't you?"
+
+"I'll try. But don't wait for me. I won't be much behind. I'll come
+right out."
+
+"All right. I guess you've got to stay, but--I wanted us to go
+together. Don't be any later than you can help," Anne again warned
+Roger as he took her to the elevator.
+
+"I won't." But coming back to the office, Roger wished that Miss
+Wainwright would not come at all. The Mitchell dinner, from a boring
+incident, had become in the last forty-eight hours, through Anne's
+constant reference to it, an ordeal not unlike the delivery of the
+invitations and the tree itself. He had wanted a quiet home dinner,
+with liberty of silence afterwards, a small space in the cluttered
+confusion of the last days, in which to take careful stock of his
+almost irrepressible scorn of Hilary Wainwright.
+
+But Hilda Mitchell had never had a pleasant Christmas!
+
+Roger frowned and tried to shrug off his unjust impatience. "I wish
+to the Lord they'd all go and live in China or somewhere. I suppose
+it will be worse after the baby comes. Roger Mitchell Barton!"
+he whispered. "Sabatini would be better." But at the impossible
+combination of Roger Sabatini Barton, Roger laughed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At two the children began to arrive, surprisingly clean and well
+dressed; the girls with bright hair ribbons and white stockings
+and patent leather shoes and the boys with plastered hair and neat
+suits. A clerk, with no family ties, who had come from the shipping
+office to help, made a running line of comment aside to Roger on the
+extraordinary and warped viewpoint of men who could afford patent
+leather shoes for their children, striking for higher wages.
+
+"If they came in the things they wear at home during the week, you'd be
+afraid of germs," Roger exploded.
+
+The man looked at him suspiciously, but ceased his comments.
+
+Anne waited for Roger until three and then left the house. By Hilda's
+concern at seeing her alone, Anne knew that her mother was not quite
+sure that Roger would come at all.
+
+"He's coming, but yesterday Mr. Wainwright sprang a Christmas tree for
+the children of his striking stevedores, and his sister can't get there
+to help him entertain until after three. The children will begin coming
+long before that and he needed Roger. I would have stayed too except
+that I knew you wouldn't like us both to be late."
+
+"Now, I think that's mighty kind of Mr. Wainwright. Not many rich
+people, men 'specially, would have thought of such a thing. Yes, dear,
+it would have made it a little awkward for you both to be late, but
+we'll wait a bit for Roger anyhow."
+
+"No, please don't. He won't be much behind and he'd rather you didn't."
+
+Anne and Hilda were in Anne's old room where she was taking off her
+things. In the front room, Belle and Dr. Stetson were talking. Hilda
+closed the door softly.
+
+"I believe there is something doing," she whispered with raised
+eyebrows and quick nods. "He's one of those thin, decided-looking men
+and he's got Belle going. I heard him tell her not to smoke so much and
+she actually threw her cigarette away."
+
+"They must be married."
+
+"Anne! No, they're not married. I don't believe he's asked her yet, but
+I hope he will. Belle says he's a wonder at his line, cuts the queerest
+things out of you, and never makes a cut for less than a thousand
+dollars."
+
+"Maybe he'll do it cheaper for the family. I couldn't afford a pin
+prick at that rate."
+
+"I hope you'll never need it. But papa seems to like him. Listen.
+That's him laughing. I like his voice, don't you?"
+
+Anne thought it was cold, rather like one of his wonderful knives, but
+she said it sounded pleasant and followed Hilda down the hall to the
+kitchen, where she gave her the black silk underskirt she had brought.
+Hilda's eyes filled with tears, and she touched the thick messaline
+lovingly.
+
+"It's the first real silk petticoat I've ever had, Annie. It's almost
+too nice to wear."
+
+"Now, mamma, you put it right on."
+
+Hilda hesitated, then dropped the torn gingham she was wearing, made a
+face at it, slipped into the new skirt, and waltzed about the kitchen
+holding up her dress skirt like a ballet dancer.
+
+"You're just a girl, yourself, mamma. I don't believe you'll ever grow
+up." Anne watched her mother with the deep tenderness and sense of
+protection. No piece of finery could ever make her as happy as this
+black silk petticoat made her mother. It was a shame that she had
+never been able to have pretty things. The old resentment against her
+father, somewhat allayed since her marriage, rose in Anne, and she
+was glad that Dr. Stetson's presence prevented her having to give him
+at that moment the box of good cigars she had brought. She had always
+resented giving her father presents, ever since, as a little girl of
+ten, she had discovered one Christmas morning, that the handkerchiefs
+with "papa's love" had really come from Hilda's manipulation of the
+tissue-wrapped allotments. She had succeeded in losing every one of the
+handkerchiefs before New Year, but she had gone on giving him gifts and
+thanking him for his.
+
+Hilda had waltzed into the bedroom, and now returned with the family's
+remembrances to Anne and Roger, a silver cigarette case from Belle, a
+necktie from James and Hilda to Roger. Three pair of silk stockings
+from Belle to Anne, a hand-embroidered nightgown from Hilda and James.
+
+And then, the matter of presents being over, they both felt a little
+freer. Hilda looked at the kitchen clock. It was five minutes after
+four.
+
+"If you don't think Roger would really mind, Anne, we'll begin. I want
+a nice, long talky dinner, and a little evening after." Hilda gave her
+petticoat a last flirt, twirled about on her toes, and began dishing up
+the turkey. "Belle came early and made the salad, something extra fancy
+she's learned. The plates are ready in the pantry, Anne. If you'll just
+carry them in, then I'll introduce you."
+
+Anne carried the salad into the dining-room, catching a side view of
+Dr. Stetson through the drawn portière. He looked as she imagined he
+would look from his voice; slim, and exceedingly well groomed. He was
+leaning back now in the rocker, his thin, strong white hands clasped
+behind his sleek, dark head. He was listening to an animated anecdote
+of Belle's and smiling. Anne thought he was the most collected,
+self-possessed being she had ever seen. He might have removed every
+nerve in his body by one of his own skillful operations.
+
+"If Belle marries him, she'll toe the mark." Anne smiled and went back
+to the kitchen. When the turkey and cranberries and sprouts were dished
+and in the hotplate, Hilda took Anne into the parlor. Dr. Stetson rose
+instantly, gave her a penetrating glance as if she were a patient,
+dismissed her as much less interesting than Belle, and they all
+followed Hilda into the dining-room beyond.
+
+"Why, where's Roger?" Belle demanded.
+
+"He'll be along shortly. Hilary Wainwright's giving a party, a
+Christmas tree to some poor children, and Roger had to help get the
+thing going."
+
+"If there were a few more Wainwrights in this country there wouldn't be
+any labor trouble," James explained, squinting and pursing up his lips
+as if he had private information of this certainty. Belle laughed.
+
+"Well, I'm glad I'm not a philanthropic millionaire if he can't even
+take Christmas off. It must be worse than nursing or surgery, don't you
+think so, Doctor?"
+
+"It must be if it keeps any one from a salad like this," Dr. Stetson
+smiled at Hilda, who was saved in the nick of time by Belle's look,
+from disclaiming the honor.
+
+Roger's absence was not further commented upon and the talk became
+general. Dr. Stetson had traveled extensively before the war in Europe
+and he described people and places well, always picking out with the
+unerring accuracy of his famous thousand-dollar cuts, the weak or
+ridiculous spots in people and conditions. James Mitchell scarcely
+stopped smiling. Belle's ringing laugh interrupted every few moments.
+Anne, too, was interested. She felt the charm of the man's culture and
+experience. It would be nice to travel and meet interesting people, go
+to wonderful concerts and luxuriate for a little while in pleasant,
+easy places. To meet people concerned in creating beauty or enjoying
+it; not only those always striving to divide it up. Perhaps, some
+day, when Europe had settled again to a semblance of what it had been
+before, she and Roger and Rogie would go. Anne began in imagination to
+travel.
+
+A loud peal of the doorbell brought her back from Rome, and stopped Dr.
+Stetson in the middle of a story.
+
+Roger came up the stairs two at a time, explaining to Hilda as he came.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, but I couldn't make it sooner. Miss Wainwright was
+later even than she expected. The train was stalled or something."
+
+"That's all right. We've only just about begun."
+
+When Roger had said he would come straight on, Anne had not thought of
+his clothes, and now, as he followed Hilda, she saw that he was in his
+everyday suit, rumpled and covered with a fine powdering of dust from
+the tree. A bit of wool and a scrap of tinsel clung to his sleeve. He
+looked tired. She saw Dr. Stetson size him up and a touch of annoyance
+cloud Belle's eyes. She was annoyed herself. Roger took the vacant
+place and Hilda made a great to-do about getting him salad, although
+Roger said, more emphatically than one usually refuses a course at a
+special dinner, that he did not want any. And when it came, he ate it
+as indifferently as if it had been plain lettuce. Anne saw her mother
+watching him and tried to catch his eye, but Roger's head was bent
+and she gave it up. Dr. Stetson had caught again the thread of his
+interrupted story, but Anne heard little of the rest. She wished that
+Roger would not sit so, absorbed in his salad as if he were alone at a
+lunch counter.
+
+The others, seeing that Roger was not entering the talk, abandoned
+their pretense of eating slowly until he caught up with them, took
+their second helping of turkey, and disregarded him. As Hilda removed
+his salad plate and passed him turkey, Anne managed at last to catch
+his eye. He looked puzzled, frowned slightly, and with a distinct
+effort banished his thoughts and turned to the doctor.
+
+"It's the same in all countries," the doctor was saying, "there's just
+a small group of people who really care for what's beautiful. We hear
+a lot about the artistic French and Italians. The average Latin--the
+ordinary man--doesn't respond to beauty, pure beauty, in itself, any
+more than does the average Saxon. They grub along with their eyes in
+the dust in exactly the same dull way."
+
+"What is pure beauty, in itself?" Roger demanded, as if he were
+heckling a witness on the stand. "What is impure beauty, or beauty out
+of itself?"
+
+Dr. Stetson regarded him for a moment with a smile of forced amusement,
+as if this were a joke, in poor taste, but to be condoned in a family
+gathering.
+
+"The Latin past," he elaborated, "was very closely tangled up with
+Art, and, as they have nothing to be proud of now, they fall back a
+few centuries and rave about their paintings and marbles, which never
+did interest more than a very few of them. And it's the same thing
+with other nations which have not much now to boast of. They go back
+to something centuries ago and find comfort in it. You can't talk ten
+minutes to an educated Portuguese before he's referring to the dead
+glories of the Portuguese fleet and dragging in Vasco da Gama as if
+he lived to-day. A Spaniard--at any rate up until the time of the
+Spanish-American War--would talk as if Mexico and all South America
+were still theirs. Nations, like people, the less they have as a whole
+to boast of now, the more they blind themselves with the dreams a few
+choice souls among them had generations ago."
+
+"Just as we, in America, blind ourselves with the dream of liberty and
+equality that Washington and Lincoln had," Roger interposed so quietly
+that his inference was lost for a moment in the echo of Dr. Stetson's
+sweeping assertions. The doctor himself was the first to catch it, and
+turning to Roger with a look as if he were diagnosing an unexpected
+symptom said, with the same smug assurance with which Hilary Wainwright
+regretted the slow coming of the Average Man's ability to think:
+
+"No, I don't think the cases are parallel. At least I, personally, am
+old fashioned enough to believe we have liberty and equality for all."
+
+"You're right." James Mitchell threw out his narrow shoulders and
+glared at Roger. "Liberty and equality! There's too much of them now,
+allowing every dirty foreigner and crack-brained native to stir up any
+fool that will listen. Let me tell you," and James Mitchell cut the
+heart of the problem from the air before him with his knife, "if there
+isn't a little less 'liberty and equality' pretty soon, this country's
+going to be in the same rotten mess as Russia. The people are half
+asleep. If I didn't know that down at bottom, the great middle class of
+America is really sane----"
+
+"----we might get somewhere," Roger spoke almost sadly, so that
+Belle and Dr. Stetson looked toward him, puzzled; but Anne, her face
+flushing, looked down. "It's the great, sane, middle class that's
+holding back liberty--killing it. The rich, to a certain extent, have
+it. The poor are struggling for it. It's only in the middle that
+they're dead, and safe. The middle class. There is no middle class,
+really. It is the dividing class. It's the blow-neither-hot-nor-cold.
+It's the lackey-souled. It's the misfortune of any country that has
+it, this great, sane, safe, middle class."
+
+"From your point of view, whatever that is, it may be. Not from mine."
+Dr. Stetson now spoke in crisp, sharp tones; like tiny glittering
+knives they seemed to pare the emotion from Roger's words. "The
+lackey-souled are, on the whole, the clean bodied. Your struggling
+poor, battling for so-called liberty, are unfit, humanly below par.
+They can't function efficiently as humans where they are, much less
+direct matters. Perhaps you don't know the number of mental defectives
+there are in this country. The draft records showed a tremendous
+proportion of men with the mental capacity of children. They work
+at trades requiring little skill, they marry and raise others like
+themselves. It's ridiculous to talk about increasing the liberty of
+these people. It ought to be restricted, anyhow redirected. At the
+other end of the scale, we have, of course, the effect of over-license,
+but, it may surprise you to know that in school tests taken through all
+classes, it was the children of the rich who, on the whole, averaged
+highest."
+
+"It doesn't surprise me at all," Roger said quietly, while Hilda
+fidgeted and made little clucking noises, as if trying to swallow the
+too large portions of mental food offered by Dr. Stetson. "It's exactly
+what I would expect under the present system."
+
+"Which system is the result of these conditions, not the other way
+round. The upper class, using it in a broad sense as the directors of
+the world, are there because they are most fit."
+
+"Exactly," James Mitchell interpolated like a stinging wasp. "Look
+at the directors of any corporation, quiet, clean, sharp-eyed men.
+Look at the soap-boxers, the I. W. W.'s, the union organizers--all
+shifty-looking, as if they'd never had enough baths or enough to eat."
+
+"Maybe they haven't," Roger said slowly, while Anne's face flamed and
+with difficulty she kept back the tears.
+
+Why did Roger persist? What did it matter anyhow who was right or who
+wrong, at this first real Christmas of her mother's?
+
+"Perhaps they haven't," Dr. Stetson conceded, "but that doesn't alter
+the fact that, socially, they are not fit to function as directors.
+They are mentally below par," he repeated in clean, crisp finality.
+"They are to be classed roughly, to the layman, in the same general
+division as idiots."
+
+"Idiots!" Hilda murmured with a shiver.
+
+"Nonsense, mamma." Belle's hand pushed away Hilda's excited, intruding
+interest. "They're not idiots. That's just the point. Idiots, real ones
+that everybody recognizes, get locked up. These people--why you meet
+them every day. You wouldn't know them, very likely. You----"
+
+"Why, Belle! I certainly would know an idiot when I see one."
+
+"They're not idiots, not driveling idiots, Mrs. Mitchell," the doctor
+hastened to her aid; "they are--well, just the average unskilled
+worker, the laborer, the migratory worker, the seasonal worker. Many
+stevedores and longshoremen, fruit pickers, the simplest work in
+machine shops--an appalling percentage of these men aren't over ten
+or twelve years of age really. From these sub-normals or variants,
+come the criminals. Criminology is only just beginning to associate
+itself with psychology, but I could tell you some apparent miracles
+worked in prisons by small, minor operations. Which proves," he turned
+now, including Roger, "that it is not a question of opportunity or
+will--Nature isn't romantic or emotional--it's a scientific question.
+Deficiencies, variations, do exist. Perhaps, in time, all this may be
+correctable, but only by scientific methods--not by talk." He allowed
+himself the last thrust, covering it by a genial smile. "A clinic is
+enough to make one doubt the right of the democratic principle."
+
+"Not unless you refuse to look below the surface. Nature may be
+scientific, but she's not insane. She doesn't turn out millions upon
+millions of human beings that a few may scramble to themselves all the
+beauty of the universe. I grant you all the mentally inefficient you
+claim, but, what started it, what caused it? Why?"
+
+"A thousand things, many too intricate, too subtle to explain. And
+remember we know very little about it. The field is new. There are a
+thousand threads tangled in the problem, pre-natal influences, going
+back for generations, malnutrition of mothers, early environment of
+the baby, nervous stimuli--dozens of influences. A psychopathic clinic
+in any of the big, free institutions, a ward in a baby hospital,
+a maternity ward--it's enough to make one doubt the right of the
+democratic principle," he repeated as if he found the phrase so exact
+he needed no other.
+
+Roger looked at him. "It would be very hopeless, if it were true:
+I mean if nothing preventive could be done." Hilda moved uneasily
+and James Mitchell cleared his throat. Anne's flaming face was still
+lowered. "But since, according to science, malnutrition, pre-natal
+conditions, unhealthy nerve conditions, do play a part, it seems to
+me there is a chance. As you say, the children of the rich, under the
+best physical and educational conditions, do average higher; if these
+conditions, or even approximately these, were extended, it ought to
+help some, don't you think?"
+
+Dr. Stetson saw where Roger was leading and looked at him coldly.
+"Really, Mr. Barton, it's such an intricate subject, and, on the
+whole, so impossible to discuss with a layman, that"--he beamed round,
+his charming smile of culture and advantage--"I think we'd have to
+give more time to it, and more seriousness, than I, at least, am
+able to give under these conditions." A gracious gesture laid the
+responsibility for this upon the well-cooked turkey.
+
+Hilda got up to remove the dishes and Anne rose quickly to help. Out in
+the kitchen, Hilda closed the door and whispered:
+
+"What on earth is the matter with Roger?"
+
+Anne shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. He simply can't take those things
+lightly. He gets all wrought up about the state of the world."
+
+"Do you think he's dropped it now?" Hilda said hurriedly, detaining
+Anne as she was about to pass back to the dining-room.
+
+"Yes," Anne said shortly. "He won't say any more."
+
+"Really, it's enough to scare one to death," Hilda went on in her
+hurried whisper, as she slipped the mince pies from their pans to the
+serving plates. "Idiots and criminals lurking round and you can't tell
+them from sane people! Sometimes I think Christian Science must be an
+awful comfort. Look at Charlotte Welles, she never gets all stewed
+up. She just goes round saying--All is Love--and she doesn't have to
+bother about fixing it. What with Dr. Stetson saying you can almost cut
+wickedness out of people, and Roger wanting to feed it out of them,
+and Charlotte saying there is none in them--one doesn't know what to
+believe."
+
+Belle's laughter drifted from the dining-room. Hilda heaved a sigh of
+real relief. "That's nice. I guess everything'll be all right now.
+Belle has a lot of tact."
+
+The rest of the meal went off pleasantly. Although Roger made no
+definite contribution, he no longer sat frowning and crumbling his
+bread. It was after six when they rose from the table, and, according
+to a prearranged scheme of Belle's, had black coffee in the other room
+before the gas log. But Anne saw that Belle did not quite trust Roger
+yet, because she so evidently kept the conversation in her own hands.
+
+"It's a shame," Anne decided. "He couldn't change them, and this is
+the first time Belle has ever brought any of her friends home and had
+things pleasant."
+
+As soon after the black coffee as she could, she let her eye catch
+Roger's and, at the question in his, nodded faintly. The others would
+have a better time when he had gone, and they would all be going soon
+anyhow. She slipped out as Hilda took the empty coffee things.
+
+"I think we'll have to go now, mamma. Roger has had a tiring day and
+there may be reports to do yet. This is Mr. Wainwright's busy season."
+
+"Do you have to go, dear, really?" Hilda could not keep every atom of
+relief out of her voice, for neither was she sure of Roger. Perhaps
+James would let the dinner pass, but not if Roger annoyed him any more.
+
+"I think so. It was a lovely dinner. I'd like to help you with the
+dishes, but I suppose you'll leave them till morning."
+
+Hilda laughed. "I'm not going to do them at all. Mrs. Welles' Jap
+schoolboy's coming at half past eight for an hour."
+
+"Good for you!"
+
+"It's papa's present," Hilda said proudly. "Really, Anne, papa's
+changing quite a bit."
+
+Anne put her arms about her mother. "You dear, patient thing. I wish I
+were more like you."
+
+"Go on, you flatterer. There's Roger coming to look you up."
+
+"They're going to play bridge for a while. Do you want to play, dear?"
+he asked.
+
+"No. We'll just slip out the back way. They won't notice."
+
+"Why, Anne, that's awfully rude. Of course they'll notice."
+
+"Is it?" Anne asked coldly, as Hilda disappeared for a moment into the
+pantry. "Well, I don't think it matters if it is now."
+
+She got her things quietly and joined Roger again in the kitchen. Hilda
+leaned over the porch railing and waved as they disappeared into the
+covered tunnel that led to the street. On the sidewalk, Roger slipped
+his hand under Anne's arm, but Anne drew violently away.
+
+"Why, honey, what's the matter? Surely you don't----"
+
+"Surely I do care for common decency and politeness. Mamma got up a
+lovely dinner; every one was having a good time, until you got one of
+those excited streaks on. You might know they wouldn't agree with you.
+What sense was there in insisting? Besides, Dr. Stetson is an authority
+and you don't know anything about subnormal psychology or criminology."
+
+Under the stream of Anne's anger, Roger's nerves quivered. Like fork
+lightning, fears cut across his mind, phrases of Anne's, moods, likes
+and dislikes, resemblances to the Mitchells. He had been longing to
+get away from the house, now he wanted to get away from the stream of
+Anne's invective. But, once started, Anne clung to her hurt.
+
+"Please, Anne, quit it," Roger said as they reached the corner where
+they had to take the car. "I don't want to hear any more about it."
+
+The car was just coming into sight. "No," Anne said hurriedly, "you
+never do, after you've had your say."
+
+Side by side, hurt and angry, they sat through the long ride home. But,
+as they climbed the hill, quiet at this hour, the earth sweet with long
+rain, the stars clean and shining from a densely blue-black sky, Roger
+took Anne's hand.
+
+"I'm sorry I hurt you, dear. I really never meant to."
+
+"I don't see how you could have helped meaning it," Anne said coldly,
+and then, because she too was afraid of this their first real
+disagreement, pressed his fingers faintly.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+
+They did not mention the dinner again, but for weeks it hung in
+the background of all Anne's thought. The long silences and sudden
+irritations of Roger she interpreted by it, as well as her own growing
+inability to discuss his work with him. All their talks now were
+touched with the same dislike, almost fear, she had always had of
+dropping the curtain of Hilda's Niche behind her, and being left alone
+in the dark confusion of the interior.
+
+Beyond the brilliant light of her own happiness in the coming of the
+baby, the still positive joy in her pretty home, there was something
+dark, hidden and unclear. It was as if Roger himself had absorbed some
+of the dumb hatred, the bitterness of revolt that saturated the outside
+world.
+
+The longshore strike hung on; other strikes threatened in sympathy. The
+newspapers clamored for settlement. Through January and February, Roger
+was out almost every evening with Hilary Wainwright, attending useless
+efforts at adjustment. From these he returned, his anger throttled to
+consideration of Anne's condition, a consideration so palpable that
+Anne felt the foundations of her peace tremble.
+
+Finally, one night at the beginning of March, when, after a brief rest
+of exhaustion, the rain was again pouring hour after hour, a mass of
+water from sky to earth, Anne spoke:
+
+"A penny, Roger. You've been staring into the fire half an hour by the
+clock. I spoke twice and you never heard a word."
+
+Roger turned to her. "Didn't I? I was thinking."
+
+Anne put aside the tiny white nightgown she was hemstitching and drew
+her chair closer. "I should hope so. I'd hate to think you were just
+gazing blankly. You're getting awfully quiet, Roger."
+
+"Am I? I suppose I am. There's so little time to really think in the
+day. It's so cluttered up doing--nothing."
+
+"I thought Mr. Wainwright used to overwork you at first. It's about
+time he did a little more himself." Anne watched Roger's face, with
+something of the same tense interest with which one waits for a stage
+curtain to roll back.
+
+"Oh, he gives me enough to do. It's not that. It's the kind of thing."
+
+"What's he want now?" Anne was going to say: "Another Christmas tree?"
+but the subject had closed itself naturally on Christmas night and
+neither had again referred to it.
+
+"He wants to call a meeting of the strike leaders; the heads of
+the other unions he's afraid are going out in sympathy--a bunch of
+charity buttinskies, Rockefeller Foundation people and Russell Sage
+investigators, and--some of his own stock-holders. The thing's to be a
+cross between a directors' meeting and a church social. He's going to
+have refreshments served--after a friendly, informal talk, served by
+his private butler, brought down from the house for the occasion!"
+
+Anne laughed. Roger smiled, and then laughed with her. "If it wasn't
+pitiful, wicked in a way, it's so dense and stupid, it would be
+a scream. Black Tom O'Connell, and the Reverend Kenneth Peabody
+Smythe--being buttled with expensive sandwiches."
+
+Now that he had really started to talk about it, Roger felt the
+enthusiasm of communication sweep him. It was nice to talk again
+like this to Anne. The habit had dropped out lately, ever since the
+Christmas dinner.
+
+"He's obsessed with the idea that if he can persuade Capital and Labor
+to eat a sandwich together, all will be harmony and brotherly love."
+
+"The men will swallow their claims with their sandwich, as it were?"
+
+"Exactly. And his directors will swallow their just grievances at the
+men's obstinacy, and everything will be exactly as it was before."
+
+"Did you try to dissuade him?"
+
+"No. It would do no good. He cannot or will not see the thing as an
+indicator. To him, each strike is a separate act of obstinacy, or
+anger, or a monetary demand on the part of the men. He concedes some to
+be just and some unjust, but the just ones are getting fewer, rapidly
+fewer. He sees the whole labor situation as a kind of rising shriek on
+the part of the workers, higher and higher, like angry and perverse
+children who have found a way to terrify their nurses. He's looked
+the shrieking baby over and can find no pins in its clothing and so
+he's going to give it a lollypop and tell it to be good. If it doesn't
+obey--he'll set it down with a thump and leave it to itself."
+
+Under the grotesque figure of his speech, Anne felt Roger's anger. He
+now hated Hilary Wainwright with a personal bitterness Anne had not
+believed in him. After a little, she asked quietly:
+
+"When's this meeting coming off?"
+
+"To-morrow night. The invitations went out days ago; off-hand,
+'comradely' notes to the labor people; beseeching little appeals to the
+Russell Sagers, et al. 'to help out'; I didn't see those to the company
+directors; he managed them himself."
+
+Again there was a short silence, filled to Anne with cold little puffs
+of anxiety blowing from beyond the warm security of their pretty rooms.
+
+"Can outsiders go, Roger? There wouldn't be any real objection, would
+there?"
+
+"Why, no. I don't see that there would. Why?"
+
+"I'd like to go."
+
+"Really?" Roger turned to her, his eyes full of a pleased surprise that
+hurt Anne a little.
+
+"Of course I would. It sounds interesting."
+
+"Interesting? Yes, it will be interesting as a psychological problem--a
+kind of clinic for studying the blind stupidity of Hilary Wainwright
+and his kind. It may be rough, too. I wouldn't answer for Black Tom
+O'Connell--if he comes."
+
+"I guess it won't be so rough that I can't stand it--if you can," Anne
+added in an emphasis that escaped Roger, visioning again the absurd
+sandwich that was to unite Labor and Capital.
+
+But the next evening, as she followed Roger into the already
+well-filled room, Anne forgot her personal interest in the feel of
+suppressed antagonism that filled the very air. Almost abnormally
+sensitive to hidden currents, as Anne passed down the empty space so
+clearly separating the two factions of the audience, she felt the
+currents playing across her.
+
+On the right, in little knots and groups about Hilary Wainwright's
+desk, were the directors and their wives, the Russell Sagers, et al., a
+few thin, rather pale young men and a woman with horn-rimmed glasses,
+stringy hair and a note book. On the left, a fat man with a red face
+and very black hair and two women, one scarcely more than a girl, with
+bobbed chestnut curls, and great violet eyes, child-like eyes above
+the scarlet lips of a woman.
+
+As Roger led to seats just opposite this girl, Anne noticed that the
+girl looked at them, and said something to the woman beside her, but
+the latter did not answer, nor even turn to them. She was a squat,
+heavily built woman, with a swarthy skin, and densely black, living
+hair, without a thread of gray, although Anne judged her more than
+forty.
+
+She gripped Anne's attention and held it. She was so still. She looked
+as if she could wait forever and, in the end, the thing she waited
+would come. She was like the earth, silent, indifferent to all the
+play of light and shadow in life. She lived for a purpose. Whatever it
+was, Anne felt it like a thick, brown shell about her. Again the girl
+with the bobbed hair spoke to her. This time she frowned and shrugged
+aside the girl's remarks. It was like the motion of a tree disturbing
+the poise of a bright insect lodged for a moment upon its leaves. The
+girl laughed and the heavy woman lit a cigarette. She smoked in deep,
+violent draws that obscured her face in a cloud of stinging blue smoke.
+
+At the odor, a short, bald-headed man rose on the other side of the
+room and opened a window. When he came back to his chair the woman
+beside him bowed her thanks. She was a large, gray-haired woman,
+conspicuous as the one bright spot amid the dark tailored suits of the
+other women and the business clothes of the men. Her amber-colored
+tunic, of soft silk, blended into the golden tint of her rounded,
+unlined face. Her skirt of golden-brown broadcloth toned in perfect
+harmony with her brown suede boots. When, through her gold lorgnette,
+hung on an amber chain, her brown eyes smiled their thanks to the man
+for his service, she seemed to come down from some height for the
+special purpose. She was like a rich, perfectly-ripened apricot, hung
+beyond reach. Next to her, on the left, the black-coated slimness of
+the Reverend Kenneth Peabody Smythe stood out like an exclamation
+point, calling attention to his presence in this extraordinary
+gathering.
+
+At his desk, Hilary Wainwright kept glancing anxiously from the door to
+the group of men talking together in the third row. These men were all
+beyond middle age, with well-brushed gray hair, white, well-kept hands
+and tailored clothes. Two of them were lean, sharp-eyed men, their
+bodies tightened like springs, perfect mechanisms for the gripping
+and adjusting of any obstruction before them. The other was shorter,
+with a heavy neck and predatory eyes, the cheap cartoonists' favorite
+illustration of a capitalist.
+
+Hilary Wainwright was just moving to join them, when the door opened
+and a large, raw-boned man in an untidy overcoat entered hurriedly
+and, without looking to the right or left, came straight to the seat
+beside the bobbed-haired girl. His boots left a muddy trail across the
+rug, and, as he shrugged himself out of his overcoat the ashes from
+his cigar stub fell on the girl's lap. With a dainty flip of her white
+fingers she brushed them aside, leaned close to the man, and whispered.
+He nodded, and the girl patted his knee. With a tap of his gavel,
+Hilary Wainwright called the meeting to order.
+
+Under cover of the preliminary remarks on the present situation among
+the longshoremen, Anne whispered to Roger:
+
+"Who's that man?"
+
+"Black Tom O'Connell. The idol of the laboring world."
+
+"Who's that heavy woman this side?"
+
+"That's Katya Orloff, the inevitable Russian Jew."
+
+Anne looked beyond her to Black Tom. He, like Katya, was sitting
+perfectly still, the unlit butt of the cigar hanging from his lips.
+His long, thin face was badly shaven and grayish from overwork. His
+worn clothes hung loosely on his large frame, bent and gnarled from a
+childhood of work and the passions which Anne felt were always tearing
+the man. Again and again, Anne tried to look away, to listen to the
+smooth flow of Hilary Wainwright's studied periods, but her eyes always
+came back to the still, slouching form next to the pretty girl. Their
+physical proximity disturbed her. She felt an element in the girl
+reaching to this man, scarred, untidy, old enough to be her father.
+When the girl for the second time laid her soft, white hand on his
+knee, Anne felt herself flush and looked quickly away to Hilary.
+
+Whatever he had been saying, he had now reached the end of the first
+period. With a distinct bracing of his shoulders, and a decided
+hardening of his lips, he went on:
+
+"And so it seemed the best thing for us all to get together and talk
+the thing out frankly and honestly. The situation is serious and it
+concerns us all, every one of us and the whole city," he added, to
+impress the fact that it was not his peculiar position as main owner
+in the sugar fleet, not the financial interest of the other keen
+directors, that had brought them there, but their world interest in all
+that touched humanity. "Until now, the strike has been fairly orderly,
+but it will not continue so much longer. The city, the common people,
+cannot be made to bear much longer the brunt of curtailed sugar supply,
+or idle shipping. The boats have got to be run." He paused. Anne felt
+Katya Orloff move for the first time, a slight movement toward them.
+She turned slightly and saw that Katya was now looking with faint
+amusement at Roger, the only one in the room listening intently to
+Hilary.
+
+The directors, bored by having to give up their evening to this
+"hare-brained scheme of that idealist, Wainwright," but realizing the
+importance of having every morning paper blazon the fact that they
+had met with Labor and tried to reach a sane compromise, sat back in
+noncommittal placidity. The Reverend Kenneth Peabody Smythe looked
+worried, and the lady in apricot disgusted. The thin woman with the
+notebook chewed her pencil while studying the severely plain and
+expensive suit of the woman in front of her. It was impossible to tell
+whether Black Tom even knew where he was, and the bobbed-haired girl
+toyed with a string of jade beads and yawned. Anne moved a little and
+so obstructed the view of the squat woman. Hilary continued:
+
+"There was, of course, no written and official agreement that the men
+would not strike, but it was understood, by the law of good will and
+decency. The world has been through a period of bitter suffering and
+now it is the duty of every one, from the top to the bottom, to pull
+and pull together. That it is no longer possible to pay the war time
+wage, when labor is scarce, is not the fault of any one individual. We,
+those who happen to be the hirers of labor, regret this as much as any
+one. The men ought to understand. They refuse to do so. Every method
+has been tried, short--of strike-breakers." Hilary paused to let the
+significance sink in. "But the country is full of men eager to work,
+desperate for work, with a right to work. The mayor understands the
+situation. He will protect the right of these men to sell their labor.
+He----"
+
+Black Tom was on his feet, his long, narrow head thrust forward, the
+stinking ash of his cigar falling again on the bobbed-haired girl,
+who again brushed it off with an exquisitely dainty fillip of a white
+finger.
+
+"He will, will he? How long does he think he's going to run this town?"
+
+Hilary Wainwright tapped with his gavel, a little sound like a
+woodpecker. Every one but Katya was looking at Tom now.
+
+"Just--about--as--long as it will take to bring in those
+strike-breakers." Black Tom's stained hand moved in a quick, drawing
+motion, gathering the strike-breakers to him. "Just that long and no
+longer. Bring them on," he commanded. "You can't bring them too soon.
+Bring them, dozens, hundreds, thousands--you will need them all."
+
+The heavy hands moved now in a low, undulating wave, the wave of
+advancing thousands. Anne felt Roger rigid beside her and her own heart
+was beating thickly. The force of the man was terrific. It rayed from
+his gaunt body, burned in his deep-set, brown eyes. "Bring them, I tell
+you, bring them, the poor, starving victims you'll fool with higher
+wages than you're paying the present ones; hand out the promises you're
+laughing in your sleeves to see them believe. But--they won't believe
+them long. They'll take the jobs because they have to, with shame in
+their hearts, the decent ones, and in the end they'll come to us." He
+paused, and a smile, so sad, so understanding, so full of pity lit his
+face that Anne saw Roger's hands grip the chair arms.
+
+Instantly Hilary Wainwright seized the opening. "That's the spirit
+that's doing so much harm. We came here to-night, each to take
+advantage of the other's greater knowledge along certain lines, but we
+can get nowhere unless----"
+
+"Unless liars like you get out," Black Tom thundered, filling the room
+with the fury of his anger, although he scarcely raised his voice. It
+was the warning rumble of thunder, distant, rolling nearer. "You've
+held the power, until the best of you have forgotten that God Almighty
+didn't create the world for you. But he didn't and He's getting sick
+of seeing the mess you've made of it. Not much longer, not so very
+long now." In the pleasantly warmed air before him he seemed to see a
+vision, a vision that suddenly quelled his anger. He smiled a slow,
+understanding smile of love and forgiveness. "You can't do it; why do
+you try? It's not you against us; can't you see that? It's the new
+against the old, the worn out, the rotten. It's not this strike, or any
+one strike; it's men, men beating their way up out of the dark below.
+They're coming, coming." His head, bent now, seemed to hear them in
+the stillness that filled the room. "Coming slowly, with bleeding feet,
+the way your God marched on to Calvary, but--nothing will stop them.
+Nothing." And then he laughed, so genuinely amused, that the terrible
+silence shattered in little clicks of disgust. "Strike-breakers! Good
+God, a bunch of starving boobs--to hold back the Social Revolution!"
+
+The apricot-colored woman was the first to move. With a decisive
+gesture she snapped her gold lorgnette and motioned the bald-headed man
+to bring her cape. At his desk, Hilary Wainwright looked helplessly
+about for a moment, then rose and walked down to the group of directors.
+
+Katya Orloff drew on the jacket she had only partly loosed. The pretty
+girl was already pulling a grass-green tam over the chestnut curls.
+
+"Come on, Tom. Pete and Ikey are having a blowout. Let's beat it.
+There's lots of time."
+
+The man did not seem to hear, but he followed her. Too impatient for
+the elevator, whose driver, expecting a protracted "row," had gone into
+the pool parlor in the next basement, they ran down the stairs. Before
+they turned the first flight, Anne heard the girl laughing gayly.
+
+Katya stepped up to Roger with a look that Anne resented personally.
+It was the smile of an older person to a small boy, not a precocious
+annoying small boy, but the kind of boy one refers to as "an
+exceedingly bright little chap."
+
+"Your meeting was not a success." She spoke with a soft burr,
+impossible to reproduce, a thick, throaty tone with an odor of
+foreignness in it.
+
+"No," Roger answered shortly. "It wasn't."
+
+She seemed to be going to say something else, changed her mind and
+clumped off alone.
+
+The elevator man had come back to his post. In a few moments the room
+was empty of all save Roger and Anne.
+
+"I suppose you have to wait," Anne began, when a long, pale face,
+apparently disconnected from any body, appeared at the door of Hilary's
+private office.
+
+"No need, Williams; they're gone."
+
+"Gone, sir!"
+
+"Gone. Slipped. Vamoosed," Roger added in an urge to shock the frozen
+composure of that face. "Sandwiches all wasted unless--you eat them
+yourself."
+
+The face retreated in shocked but respectful silence. Roger laughed and
+Hilary Wainwright entered. There was a short, awkward silence, and then
+Hilary said hurriedly, as if, in the interval of his absence, he had
+accumulated unforeseen but important duties:
+
+"Would you mind locking up, Barton?" He took some papers from his desk,
+his raincoat and umbrella, and, with a gracious smile to Anne, moved to
+the door. "See you in the morning, Roger," he threw back and was gone.
+
+Williams had already disappeared. The untouched sandwiches Roger put
+into a box, switched off the lights and locked the doors. When he
+presented the astounded elevator boy with at least a hundred very
+delicately cut sandwiches, the boy grinned; but Roger did not smile in
+return.
+
+"Let's walk," Anne suggested.
+
+"Do you feel like it? I'd like to."
+
+They went on in silence.
+
+"Who's that pretty girl with the bobbed hair that went out with Black
+Tom?"
+
+"Merle something. I don't know her last name. She lives with Black Tom."
+
+Anne stopped. "Lives with him! Do you mean--that--that they live
+together?"
+
+"Yes. He has a wife somewhere who won't divorce him. He hasn't even
+seen her for years, I believe. But I don't know much about it."
+
+Anne shuddered. "She's so young and clean and pretty. He's all worn and
+old enough to be her father."
+
+Roger shrugged. "Sex is queer. You can never tell a thing about it."
+
+Disgust touched Anne. She had felt the man's spirit, but now his body
+obstructed her vision. She could think of nothing but those scarred
+hands, and wide, rather heavy lips caressing the clean daintiness of
+the girl.
+
+"It makes me sick," she said in a tight, hard tone. "A leader of men, a
+kind of prophet of the oppressed living like that! It's sickening."
+
+Roger looked at her quickly. "What has his private life to do with it?
+He is a leader, a prophet."
+
+"It has a lot to do with it. For a moment there, he looked as if he
+were really seeing visions, clean, high, unselfish ideals. It's a pity
+he can't see himself and--and that child."
+
+"Rubbish, Anne. She's no child. He probably didn't kidnap her."
+
+"Nor will Hilary Wainwright and those men Tom O'Connell despises kidnap
+the strike-breakers," Anne went on hotly. "They will come of their own
+free wills--'the poor, deluded victims, fooled with promises.'"
+
+Roger looked at her helplessly. He wished he had not taken Anne's arm,
+because now, he could not very well drop it. If he did, Anne would
+think he was angry. And he was not angry.
+
+They walked on again in silence, until Anne asked with a pecking,
+personal intrusion into the calm he had captured again in the silence:
+
+"Does Katya Orloff live with some one too?"
+
+"I don't know," Roger answered impatiently. "Really, Anne, I don't know
+anything about the private lives of any of them."
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+
+The next morning Roger reached the office at half past nine but Hilary
+was already there. It was the first morning of a clear sunshine after
+weeks of rain, and Hilary, even more groomed and manicured than usual,
+looked as if he, too, had emerged into a new mood. There was a new
+crispness in his manner; business efficiency sparkled in his quick
+movements, his hasty finishing of a memorandum, the way he nodded to
+Roger.
+
+"Just a moment, Barton. I'll be through in a jiffy." Usually Roger
+passed on to his own partitioned end of the room, and began on work
+arranged the night before. But now he sat down and waited for Hilary.
+Seated so, to one side and just a little behind Hilary, Roger saw him
+spiritually foreshortened in the reflection of last evening. He looked
+tight and secure, encased in his own assurances of safety as in a
+spiritual corset. In a moment he had blotted the paper and turned to
+Roger.
+
+"Well," he began genially, "we didn't put it over, did we? Not
+discouraged, I hope?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+Hilary seemed balked, reconsidered what he had arranged for his next
+sentence, and said instead:
+
+"I rather over-reached myself in having Tom O'Connell. He's an
+uncertain quantity, a regular firebrand. And he isn't the power he
+thinks he is. When it comes to a pinch, the men will desert him.
+They're more level-headed than he gives them credit for."
+
+"The men forced to scab," Roger inquired, and, at the sharp look Hilary
+darted to him, added "by the pinch of hunger?"
+
+Hilary tapped for a moment, then made his decision with a quick frown.
+
+"Barton, just where do you stand on that meeting last night?"
+
+"With Tom O'Connell," Roger said and rose.
+
+Hilary rose too. They looked at each other. Roger smiled first.
+
+"I suppose it was bound to come," Hilary said, relieved.
+
+"Yes. I have thought for some time--yes--it had to come." Roger almost
+respected him for his honesty and when, with a truly regretful smile,
+Hilary held out his hand, Roger was able to return the shake without
+scorn. "We see things too differently to work well together."
+
+"Yes. I feel like a fish out of water, more so every day."
+
+Hilary twinkled. "Well, if you're going to jump into the sea I think
+you're headed for--I hope you won't drown," was his comment.
+
+"I'll try to swim," Roger agreed, and then followed a short talk of
+work Roger was leaving undone. "If it will help out, I'll stay till you
+get some one."
+
+"N-o, you needn't. I'm taking on Hawthorne from the auditing department
+as my private secretary. In fact, I'm thinking of changing the angle
+of some of the work quite materially. It's no good wasting brains and
+money on conditions that aren't ripe for them."
+
+"None at all," Roger agreed.
+
+At the end of a quarter of an hour it was over. Roger was out again in
+the warm morning sunshine. And then he thought of Anne.
+
+Would Anne understand? Once he would have been sure. Now he did not
+know. He was getting to know less and less how Anne would stand on
+many questions. Last night she had seemed to grasp the power and soul
+of Tom O'Connell, and then, when the one great fetish of the sane
+and respectable middle class was violated, when the conventional
+sanctity of marriage was imperiled, Anne had retreated behind the
+great bourgeois virtue of "decency," as smug and prim and spiritually
+corseted as Hilary himself.
+
+Roger went slowly up the long flight of steps and came on Anne, weeding
+the trailers from a border of violets. Bent so over the bed, her hands
+and arms spattered with rich black earth, her silvery blonde hair
+shining in the sun, Anne looked like a little girl. Tenderness touched
+Roger. Anne looked up.
+
+"You've quit," she said quickly.
+
+Roger nodded.
+
+"I think I knew you would--last night." Anne rose and shook the loam
+from her fingers. Still her tone had told Roger nothing.
+
+"Do you think I did wrong? Are you angry?"
+
+"Why, Roger, what a silly question. If you felt it was wrong to work
+with him, of course you did right. And I would never be angry at your
+doing what you thought was right. I don't think that's quite fair, do
+you?"
+
+And still Roger did not know how she really felt.
+
+Anne picked up the basket and trowel and Roger took them from her.
+
+"Finished? You look as if you had just started in." Ten minutes earlier
+Roger would have been disappointed that Anne could go on with the
+ordinary day's work in face of the great event; now he resented her
+silent attitude that the course of the day had been terminated by his
+act. He walked beside her to the kitchen door, but it seemed impossible
+to go in between walls and leave the pungent earth and blue sky.
+
+"I say, let's celebrate. Let's go over to Tamalpais. We've never taken
+that scenic trip. We'll make a whole day of it, have lunch at the
+inn." Still, in her centuries of rest, the Sleeping Beauty lay along
+the ridge. "Look at the old girl, isn't she clear? I was always a bit
+uncertain about her nose, but there it is. Quite a feature; looks as if
+she were sniffing this gorgeous day. Well, do we sniff too?"
+
+Anne smiled and put her gardening things on their shelf by the door.
+
+"Can't, dear, not to-day. Mamma's been waiting for me to come up and
+finish that house dress. To-day's the best for her. Pretty soon I won't
+have a thing I can wear."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't do so much sewing, Anne. Can't you buy baby
+things and--and maternity clothes? I'd a lot rather you did or would
+hire somebody, than refuse to go on picnics with me," he ended with a
+pleading, boyish look, that did not influence Anne in the least. It
+seemed hardly the time to suggest buying clothes or hiring help.
+
+"Yes. But it's so much cheaper. I don't mind sewing."
+
+Roger felt his pleasure in the picnic die. "All right, honey, run along
+if you really want to. But let's go to somewhere for dinner to-night. I
+feel spaghetti-ish. How's Ramillotti's?"
+
+"Let's wait and see how we feel then," Anne parried. "A celebration
+that's all cut and dried beforehand isn't much of a celebration, is
+it?"
+
+And then, because Anne did look so pretty in her big gardening apron
+standing in the full sunshine, Roger picked her up and kissed her.
+
+"Don't sew too hard and get all tired out. I think I'll go down to the
+library for a while. There's a lot of reading I've been wanting to do
+for a long time. I'll get a chance now."
+
+Until Anne reached Hilda's front door, she wondered what she would do
+if her mother were out. She could scarcely sit on the front steps and
+she would not go back. But she was just in time. Hilda was half way
+downstairs when Anne rang.
+
+"Of all people! I just knew something nice was going to happen to-day."
+Hilda trilled with a gay laugh, for Anne rarely came in the morning,
+and Hilda adored all-day visits.
+
+"You were going out, mamma."
+
+"Not any place I had to. I just couldn't stay in alone to-day." They
+went upstairs hand in hand.
+
+"I thought, perhaps, we might finish that gingham. The idea of it's
+hanging round half done has gotten on my nerves."
+
+"Never felt more like sewing. A nice long day ahead always seems to
+have so much more time in it than the same number of hours chopped up
+during the week. You ought to be glad Roger doesn't come home to lunch,
+Anne. When I was working at Belle's baby clothes it seemed to me as
+soon as I got started it was time to stop and fix lunch. I'll just put
+these dishes out of the way and we'll get right at it."
+
+She took off her things, carried the unwashed breakfast dishes into the
+pantry and closed the door on them. The broken egg-shell and scraps of
+toast on the stove she swept into the coal-scuttle, the crumbs from
+the oilcloth-covered breakfast table followed, and the scuttle was
+deposited on the back porch. While she rolled the sewing-machine in
+from the hall, Anne swept the floor.
+
+"This is nice." Hilda's eyes danced; even the gray curls on her neck
+seemed to bob merrily. "Now, if you'll just slip off your dress, I'll
+fit it."
+
+When it was pinned to the right length, Hilda leaned back on her heels
+and admired.
+
+"That's a fine pattern. Wonderful how they get things regulated now--no
+riding up in front as you get bigger. Why, you won't scarcely show in
+that at all, right up to the end."
+
+Anne felt the same touch of distaste she always did when her mother
+referred to her physical condition. There was something in Hilda's
+manner that stripped the miracle to its physiological basis, and,
+although she tried not to, Anne always felt naked before it. She had
+endured a really difficult half-hour when she had first told Hilda of
+Roger Mitchell Barton.
+
+"It's pretty. What's more important, it will keep clean a long time
+without washing."
+
+Hilda laughed. "Getting practical at last. Nothing like a baby for
+doing that. Do you remember the arguments we used to have when you were
+fourteen, about that black sateen petticoat? You always insisted that
+it must be just as dirty as if it were white, and wanted to send it to
+the laundry every week?"
+
+Anne nodded. How she had loathed dark clothes supposed not to show the
+dirt! "I must have been a nasty child, always fussing about something."
+
+"You weren't at all. But you were pretty finicky and highfalutin. I
+never did know what was going to send you off. And how you loved pretty
+things! Even as a tiny baby, I always felt you enjoyed having your best
+things on. You used to feel one dress, rub your little hands up and
+down it softly--it was really a lovely cambric; papa's boss's wife sent
+it; her baby had outgrown it--and goo and smile. I suppose you would
+have a fit to see his Highness dressed in any one else's cast-offs, but
+I was glad to get it. How far along's the layette?"
+
+"Most of the under-things are done, not quite all. I haven't begun on
+dresses."
+
+"I thought you were going to buy those, the best ones?"
+
+"No--I don't--think I will. They'll be cheaper to make."
+
+"But they're such close sewing and you don't like that kind of work,
+tucks and hemstitching. Don't be a penny-wise and a pound-foolish and
+get all frazzled out, Anne."
+
+"No--at least--I won't be a pound-foolish. Roger's left Mr. Wainwright."
+
+"Oh!" Hilda gasped. "Oh, Anne, when did it happen?"
+
+Anne tried to laugh. "This morning."
+
+"Don't you think you'd better go right straight home, dear?" she
+whispered as if Anne had communicated Roger's sudden death.
+
+"Why? There's nothing to do."
+
+"N-o. I don't suppose there is. But--what happened, with the baby and
+everything?"
+
+"Nothing special. They don't agree. It's been coming on for some
+months. Roger doesn't feel that Mr. Wainwright is sincere and he can't
+work with him."
+
+"Well, I must say----"
+
+"And I wouldn't have him stay a minute when he feels like that."
+
+"No, dear, I don't suppose you would," Hilda hastily conciliated Anne's
+"condition." "But it does seem too bad that his conscience got worked
+up just at this time. A few months more----"
+
+"This is the best possible time," Anne said decidedly. "There's no
+extra expense now."
+
+"No. But when a woman's carrying, she likes to feel a good safe road
+ahead. It's nature, I suppose, like birds building nests and all that.
+If papa had suddenly given up his job when I was in your condition,
+like as not you would have been an idiot. I should have worried myself
+sick. But you always were a cool little customer."
+
+Anne forced a smile and slipped the gingham over her head.
+
+"If you'll stitch the skirt seams, mamma, I'll baste this collar.
+That's the only tricky part in the whole thing. Perhaps we can finish
+it to-day."
+
+"We certainly can. We'll stay right with it till it's done."
+
+And they did, stopping only for a cup of tea and some very stale cake,
+about one o'clock. At three the dress was finished.
+
+"Now, you go lie down and take a nap and when you wake phone Roger
+to come up for dinner. He hasn't been round for ages, not since
+Christmas." Having become involved in the exact date, Hilda slipped
+over it quickly.
+
+"We will some other time, moms, but I can't to-night."
+
+The long day of sewing and chatting, and constant steering away from
+the subject of Roger, had exhausted Anne and she wanted her own quiet
+home, which, even if its peace were now disturbed, held its past
+security, and a calm, quiet cleanliness that her mother's never had.
+"I've got all the things in for a fussy kind of supper and they'd
+spoil."
+
+"Then of course you can't." Death itself could not have been a greater
+deterrent. "What-all are you going to have?"
+
+"Oh, a fussy pudding, and mayonnaise and things."
+
+Anne was putting on her things in the bedroom and Hilda stood watching,
+a little envious of Anne's calmness. Mayonnaise and fussy pudding!
+Perhaps, if she had dared, years ago----
+
+"You certainly have learned to be some cook, Anne."
+
+"I like to try new dishes." Her things on, Anne moved from the room and
+when she had passed Hilda, said, "but it's the so-called fussy things
+that are easiest. Whipped cream and eggs make a great show, but any
+fool can beat them up. Lots of things are harder. I don't believe I
+could make a decent pot-roast, if I tried. I don't even know what part
+of the animal to buy."
+
+"There are different parts. Cross-rib's fine, but chuck's cheapest, and
+I like it just as well."
+
+"And it takes hours and hours, doesn't it?" Anne was still moving
+toward the stair-head, her back to Hilda.
+
+"No, it doesn't. Lots of people think it does and they make those dry,
+leathery roasts. A piece big enough for us never took more than a
+couple of hours, going slow, with plenty of suet."
+
+"Chuck, going slow, two hours, plenty of suet," Anne entrenched it in
+her memory, and then Hilda was saying:
+
+"You never used to like it, but I'm sure I don't know why. I don't
+think there's any gravy like the gravy of a good pot-roast. And there's
+always plenty of it."
+
+As usual, she walked down the stairs with Anne and kissed her again at
+the front door.
+
+Roger was not in when Anne reached home. She lit the gas-range and put
+the pot-roast on before taking off her things. When it was simmering
+at the right rate, she shut the kitchen door to keep the odor from the
+living-room, changed into a kimono, and lay down on the living-room
+couch.
+
+It was dusk, with the first faint stars winking uncertainly in the
+deepening twilight, when Roger came running up the stairs. He was out
+of breath, cool-skinned and glowing. He came straight to the couch and
+kissed her.
+
+"Well, Princess, which is it, Pietro's or the Pheasant? I felt
+spaghetti-ish this morning but it's gradually worked round to planked
+steak."
+
+Anne sat up and said gayly, "It's neither. It's pot-roast, and it'll be
+ready about six."
+
+Roger stared, the sparkle in his eyes receding slowly. Still Anne
+smiled gayly at him. "It's the first one I've made and it's going to be
+a dandy."
+
+But Roger took her hands in his, and Anne's gayety died. They looked at
+each other, and then Roger said:
+
+"Anne, please, never do a thing like this again. Don't you trust me,
+dear? We believe in the same things, don't we? We're not afraid of
+anything, are we, honey?"
+
+Something in Anne urged her to stand her ground. Something else made
+her want to cry and creep close to Roger and be held safe from her
+own fears and "common-sense." She was very tired. Her lips trembled.
+Roger drew her quickly into his arms. They clung so for a moment, as
+if holding fiercely against a force reaching toward them. Then Roger
+turned Anne's face to his.
+
+"Princess, let's throw that damned pot-roast out."
+
+Anne smiled faintly. "That would be silly. It's really an awfully good
+pot-roast. There, you can smell it. It must be going a little too fast."
+
+But Roger did not smile. "I won't eat it. It smells--like death."
+
+"Do you really feel like that?"
+
+"I do, Anne, really."
+
+"Then we'll go and have planked steak."
+
+In the sweetness of reconciliation, Roger forgot to throw out the
+pot-roast. They had a gay and expensive dinner at the Pheasant and went
+to the theater afterwards.
+
+But, for the rest of the week, Roger ate savoury ragouts, and meat
+pies which taxed Anne's ingenuity to the utmost, especially when the
+pot-roast had dwindled to a dry, outer rim.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+
+There were times in the next month when Roger seriously considered
+going back into the law. He even went so far as looking up Walter
+Marsh, an old college chum with whom he had rather grown out of touch,
+now a very successful corporation lawyer. But at Marsh's hints that
+there was an opening with him if Roger cared to consider it, Roger
+always hurried away from further discussion. Nor did he tell Anne of
+these visits.
+
+Anne never referred to his leaving Wainwright, nor did she ever again
+serve pot-roast. Apparently their method of life was unchanged. Roger
+could not put his finger on any one incident, recall a single allusion
+of Anne's, but he now felt encased in an atmosphere of watching, of
+tight guardedness, and of economical maneuverings. Outwardly Anne
+seemed as cheerful as ever, but Roger could feel unexpressed criticism
+moving shadow-like about him, and his nerves tightened. He often grew
+irritable and then desperately contrite. Irritation at this time
+was brutal, but Roger could not shake off the feeling of breathing
+imperceptible particles of objection. Sometimes he started to talk
+out their situation frankly, but it always ended in a fog. He felt as
+if he were beating with exaggerated violence in a cloud of dust. The
+air was full of minute, subtle differences, sudden closings of Anne's
+lips, sentences caught and deftly turned from their first intention;
+and of Anne's patience. This patience was the hardest to stand without
+reference.
+
+Again and again Roger tried to explain this growing tensity between
+them by Anne's nervous condition. But Anne had never felt better in her
+life. Always pretty in a cool, silvery way, there were moments now when
+Anne seemed to send from within a living, golden flame. Often, in the
+evenings, when Anne sat, her head bent above the small, white sewing in
+her lap, Roger trembled, awed and a little frightened before the marvel
+of this thing that was happening to Anne.
+
+It was after a sudden, stabbing vision of Anne like this, that Roger
+went to Walter Marsh's office for the second time in one week.
+
+"Hello." Walter Marsh put away some important work to greet Roger.
+"Well, what's the decision?"
+
+Up to the very door, Roger had intended to accept the good opening
+Marsh had definitely offered him at the last visit, but, now, as he
+looked about the beautifully furnished office, the hard processes of
+the law softened by the tinted walls, the thick rugs, the great bunch
+of chrysanthemums in the old-blue, China vase, he sparred for time.
+
+"Haven't made one yet."
+
+Marsh frowned. His genuine admiration for Roger's ability was scarcely
+proof against a certain quality in Roger that he had always felt might,
+and now feared had already, swamped Roger's sense of proportion. As
+he put it to his wife, Helen: "Roger's got that dog-goned idealist
+sophistry in his bean, that nothing can be right or just or fine--if
+you make a decent living at it. And the joke of it, or the tragedy for
+men like Roger, is that it's only outsiders like him who feel that way.
+You can't get a real radical to do a thing without paying him up to the
+hilt. I'll wager that Labor god, O'Connell himself, has a pile salted
+down safely." For, like all financially successful men, Walter Marsh
+had a fixed belief that no able, sane person worked long for an ideal
+alone.
+
+"Well, it's up to you," he said shortly.
+
+For, although he was willing to talk the matter over with Roger for the
+rest of the afternoon if it would lead anywhere, he was not willing to
+waste more time even on Roger, who, after seven days' consideration
+of a decidedly advantageous opening, still announced that he had
+reached no decision. He picked up his pen, not quite indicating the
+interview over, but very clearly expressing his feeling toward Roger.
+Years after, Roger used to wonder what he would have done, if Walter
+Marsh had not picked up his pen in just that way, at just that moment.
+He looked quietly at Marsh, only a few years older than himself, but
+already with the fine lines of nervous concentration about his eyes,
+blue eyes glazed in assurance of their owner's mental processes; the
+eyes of a very successful man who realizes the uselessness of fretting
+his conscience over conditions beyond his personal power to change.
+
+"But I don't think I'll take you up," Roger went on as if no interval
+had intervened. "I've grown too far away from the law. I can't go back."
+
+"Or ahead," Walter almost snapped in his honest disappointment.
+
+"Perhaps not." For a moment Roger felt very much alone.
+
+"Well, I can't change you and I won't try. I hope you'll make a go of
+anything you settle to." Unconsciously Marsh intimated his doubt of
+Roger's ever settling to anything worth while.
+
+Roger smiled, his momentary sadness dissolved in Marsh's solicitude.
+Walter Marsh might have been an elderly uncle, washing his hands of a
+wild nephew.
+
+"Thanks, just the same, old chap. Your offer was certainly generous."
+
+For a moment the other felt inclined to tell him that it would remain
+open, changed his mind, and took Roger's out-stretched hand.
+
+"When you get settled, let me know. And come over to dinner some night,
+you and Anne. Helen's always asking me why I don't make you."
+
+"We will."
+
+Roger left the office, glad that he had not told Anne where he was
+going.
+
+Dinner was ready when he reached home and they sat down at the daintily
+set table on the porch. Now that spring was come they had gone back
+to the pleasant custom. To-night, in his relief at having put the
+possibility of Walter Marsh behind him, Roger was gayer than he had
+been for weeks. Anne noticed and wondered and tried to edge the talk
+around to discovery, and finally, to Roger's astonishment, mentioned
+Marsh.
+
+"I see Walter Marsh's been engaged for that big Southern Pacific case."
+
+"Yes, he's getting ahead wonderfully. He'll end way up yet."
+
+"Do you think he's honest?" Anne asked after a moment filled with
+pouring the black coffee into the small cups.
+
+"Y-e-s, in a way. Personally, he's as straight as a die. But he's
+divided his life into sections, private and public. He'll do as
+corporation lawyer for the Southern Pacific what he would never dream
+of doing for himself."
+
+Anne drank her coffee slowly. "I suppose he compromises by being 'a
+mild progressive' and making things better 'along the line they are.'"
+
+Roger leaned back in his chair and laughed until Anne joined him.
+
+"Princess, you'd make a first class lawyer yourself. Walter calls
+himself a liberal already."
+
+"And you're--a Socialist, I suppose?"
+
+Roger stopped laughing. "I suppose I am. Are you?"
+
+"I--don't know. I don't know enough about it."
+
+"I don't know much myself, not the technical details. But it seems to
+me it's the only thing that isn't trying to patch a rotten piece of
+cloth. It wants to weave a new one, from what I understand."
+
+"Some job," Anne said and lit the single cigarette she ever smoked, the
+after-dinner cigarette that Roger had taught her to take soon after
+their marriage, when they had done all things together.
+
+"It certainly is. But a worth-while one. Anne, suppose we frankly join
+some radical group and begin weaving, too."
+
+Anne puffed, flicked the ash into the tiny lacquer tray, and said with
+more calmness than she felt:
+
+"I don't think I will, Roger. Not till I know more about it. I don't
+believe in jumping in and out of things."
+
+Roger looked away. He felt that he had again been caught in the cloud
+of dust. Anne smoked her cigarette and lit a second. Only by this
+extraordinary act could she bring herself to the point she had decided
+upon that afternoon. When it was smoked quite through, she said calmly:
+
+"Why don't you go and see Tom O'Connell?"
+
+"What?" he echoed stupidly.
+
+"Why not? Your sympathies are with him."
+
+Now that Anne had worded it, Roger recognized the longing he had been
+stifling for weeks. To do something he believed in with his whole soul.
+His eyes softened and coming quickly about the table he knelt beside
+her.
+
+"Princess," he whispered, "you're the most wonderful thing in the
+world."
+
+Anne looked down into Roger's eyes and wondered. Why did he think it
+wonderful for her to suggest this thing that she had felt in him for
+weeks? Had he been waiting for her to do so? Why? What would he have
+done if she had not?
+
+Before her quiet, searching look, Roger's eyes fell.
+
+"Forgive me, honey," he whispered.
+
+Roger had mistrusted. His plea for forgiveness proved it. Something
+deep in Anne hardened, but she patted his cheek and said cheerfully:
+
+"Why don't you look him up to-night? It's early yet."
+
+"Do you want to get rid of me?" Roger teased with a look in his eyes
+that had not been there for a long time.
+
+"No--of course I don't," Anne said, and he kissed her.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER FIFTEEN
+
+
+The next day Roger went to Tom O'Connell. Through a cloud of tobacco
+smoke, Roger saw him at the end of the dusty loft, sprawled on the edge
+of a table behind a low railing and listening to two short, heavy men
+talking at once. Some maps and statistical charts hung from the rough,
+wooden walls; a magazine-stand stood close to the door, piled with
+papers and pamphlets, red-bound, or with glaring red splotches in their
+cover designs. Close to the bench on which Roger waited some one was
+pounding a typewriter behind a partition. The east end of the loft was
+enclosed as a separate office and from this enclosure came the voices
+of men and women talking loudly. The whole room vibrated to the feel of
+a rushing force, of many violent plans being made and driven through to
+execution in an incredibly short time. No restraint here, no polish,
+no modulation. Right or wrong, these people believed in themselves.
+Society was a wall through which, by brute force, they would drive
+the spike of their ideal. Roger's excitement grew. He felt like the
+unfortunate son of the leading citizen in a small town, watching a
+magnificent back-alley fight by "de gang."
+
+Suddenly the typewriter beside him stopped, and Katya Orloff peered
+over the top of the partition. If she was surprised she did not show it.
+
+"Come in. Tom will be through in a minute." She disappeared and Roger
+went round to the gate she opened. Katya's desk was piled with papers,
+carbons, and cigarette ashes. Teetering on one edge, the dregs of a
+cup of black coffee, into which Katya had dropped the crust of a ham
+sandwich, threatened to destroy a pile of clean copy, but didn't.
+
+"Sit down." Katya motioned to an upturned apple box and Roger sat down.
+Then, for the first time, Katya smiled. A spark lit in the little brown
+eyes, but the heavy mouth remained unmoved. It was as if her power
+to smile was slowly dying. The eyes alone refused to petrify in the
+devastating seriousness of Katya's purpose. Roger smiled back.
+
+"I thought you would come. I expected you sooner."
+
+"Did you?" Roger withdrew his smile, resentful of her assurance. He
+felt that Katya caught his feeling, but she did not apologize. Instead
+she offered him one of her vile cigarettes. Roger refused.
+
+"They are beastly, but I can't smoke anything else any more." She
+inhaled and the cigarette was gone in a few deep breaths. "But I'm
+really glad you didn't come any sooner. It means you've thought it
+out carefully. We're overloaded now with enthusiasm, twigs not strong
+enough to keep the pot boiling. Hear them crackling?" Her frowsy black
+head jerked toward the voices of the two men talking to Tom. "Poor Tom.
+He'll have to pour water on them and then--two more vanity-wounded
+enemies."
+
+Katya's voice, husky from too much loud speech-making and the vile
+cigarettes, had unexpected soft spots, rest places, quiet corners of
+pity in the roar of her faith. Roger felt that the woman might have
+many of these hidden places, little corners of pity and gentleness, and
+forgot his resentment.
+
+"I'll promise not to crackle."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Twenty-nine. Almost thirty."
+
+"You're married, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Katya lit another cigarette. "Got any ideas?"
+
+"No." Roger began to feel like a small boy again.
+
+"That's good. You're too inexperienced to have any worth while; too
+obstinate to put up with having any rooted out. What do you know about
+the movement, anyway?"
+
+"Practically nothing," Roger snapped. After all, Katya had not invented
+her Social Revolution. It was not her personal property.
+
+"'Virgin Soil,'" Katya grinned. "Ever read it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Like it?"
+
+"Not much."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It didn't get me."
+
+"Russian literature is a fad with most Americans, only they won't own
+it. But some day you will like it."
+
+She might as well have said: "Some day you will develop to the point of
+understanding Russian literature."
+
+For the present, however, she had finished with him. She rose now above
+the fence and gave a long, clear whistle. Instantly the two men stopped
+talking.
+
+"No more time to-day, boys." Black Tom answered the whistle with two
+short notes and Katya opened the gate.
+
+"I say, you're not going to let the thing hang in mid-air, are you?"
+one of the men demanded belligerently. "You think you've got the whole
+thing in your own pocket. Well, you haven't. The rest of us----"
+
+"Get out," Tom thundered. "Neither of you has a suggestion worth
+listening to. I tell you we're not ready yet. You're like a lot of
+kids with firecrackers, can't wait till the Fourth to make your little
+splutter. I'm not going to fight just for the sake of fighting."
+
+"You tin Czar----"
+
+"Get out."
+
+The men banged out of the loft and Katya led Roger over to Black Tom.
+
+"Roger Barton."
+
+The big man stared at him, still concerned with the others, until Katya
+laid a hand on his arm and drew him back to the present.
+
+"Hilary Wainwright's secretary. Sent out those invitations." They
+smiled at each other, and Roger bristled. The courtesy of these people
+was an extraordinary thing. "He's left and wants to talk to you." Like
+a nurse delivering her charge, Katya clumped away.
+
+Black Tom glanced at the desk clock, frowned and said shortly:
+
+"I suppose that means you want to look us over with a view to coming
+in?"
+
+"I don't know whether I do or not," Roger flung at him.
+
+Black Tom seemed to see him for the first time. He smiled and sat down.
+
+"I beg your pardon, but we get pretty gruff in this thing. So you've
+left Wainwright? Consequential ass. What do you want to do?"
+
+"Anything that will stop the output of more--consequential asses."
+
+Black Tom leaned back in his chair and laughed, a laugh so deep and
+eternally young, that Roger knew the man could never seriously annoy
+him again.
+
+"You've come to the right place. That's our specialty," and added, "any
+party affiliations?"
+
+Roger shook his head. "Not yet."
+
+"That's all right. Don't--till you're ready. When your faith needs to
+sign itself to some register, do it. Right Wing, Left Wing Socialist,
+Syndicalist, Communist, I. W. W., they're all headed right and there's
+something the matter with them all. It doesn't matter really; start
+a new party if you like. Names, names," he added, a little wearily,
+"all names for the same thing--the new world that's struggling to be
+born. Science, art, religion, politics, we're all fighting for the same
+end--to root out the dead old forms, give new growths a chance. We're
+all beating in our different ways toward the same thing--Understanding,
+Beauty, Unity. One fits in where he can." He looked across the dirty
+loft to a group of men waiting for him on the bench where Roger had
+sat a few moments before. "This is mine. I had no special training,
+nothing but physical strength and longing." His gaze came back to his
+own hands, broken and sparsely covered at the wrists and knuckles with
+stiff black hair. "I worked in a Pennsylvania coal mine when I was
+twelve. I read at night. When I was nineteen I went for a while to
+night-school with kids thirteen and fourteen. I never had three square
+meals a day until I was twenty-three. I lived in mines and shops and
+libraries."
+
+He paused, and it seemed to Roger that he had gone away, back down the
+years, alone. In those crowded years, herded among men, he had learned
+to slip away, leave his gaunt, over-worked body to the crowd. Privacy
+was a spiritual possession, free to his will.
+
+He jerked himself back with a motion of his bowed shoulders.
+
+"Have you had any special training along any line?"
+
+"Yes, I'm a lawyer."
+
+"Great. We need----"
+
+"But I'd rather not practice, anyhow not plead in court for a while. I
+don't feel that I understand enough about the thing as a whole. I want
+to soak in it, feel myself honestly a part before I undertake to defend
+men. Is that an out-of-the-way request?"
+
+"It's an out-of-the-ordinary request. I wish more men felt as you do.
+There wouldn't be so many misunderstandings and shiftings around and
+party splits. I guess we can fit you in somewhere. How little can you
+work for?"
+
+Roger did not answer instantly.
+
+"Married?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Perhaps you'd better talk it over with your wife."
+
+"It's not necessary. She--she's with me in this."
+
+"We need lawyers, but we can't pay what the meanest scrub can't better
+in a very few years. What have you been getting?"
+
+"Fifty a week."
+
+"About ten beyond our possible limit--with expenses when you
+travel--but not fancy ones. You can take outside cases on the side--if
+you get them once you're known as one of us. That will have nothing to
+do with us."
+
+"I don't want any 'cases on the side,' not for the present anyhow."
+
+Black Tom smiled. "When do you want to begin?"
+
+"Now."
+
+Black Tom hesitated. Roger felt his first resentment returning. He
+leaned forward.
+
+"This thing doesn't belong to any group," he began. "We all happen to
+be at the same point at the same time. I know what I'm doing. I----"
+
+Black Tom laid a hand on his knee. "Boy, you'll have to excuse a lot of
+manner when you're one of us. Our material's men and we get to handle
+them sometimes as if they were--pig iron." He whistled and Katya popped
+above the fence. "Bring me the Anderson case."
+
+When Katya brought it he said briefly, "Barton's going to work with us."
+
+Roger noticed that he did not say Comrade Barton and wondered whether
+Black Tom did not quite trust him yet. But he found later that Black
+Tom tagged no man with artificial distinction, except in addressing a
+meeting whose sympathy he was not quite sure of. In a few moments he
+had explained the case to Roger, and turned him back to Katya.
+
+"You can work here if you like. It's noisy at times, but we can fix
+you up with a kind of office down in the corner. Or you can work
+elsewhere."
+
+"Here. I don't mind noise."
+
+"Tell Jim to fix up the office Philips used to have," he ordered Katya,
+took his hat, and was gone.
+
+"Let's go and have lunch," Katya suggested. "Tom's probably forgotten a
+lot of details you ought to know."
+
+But Anne was expecting him and anxious to hear. "Suppose you come home
+and have lunch with us?"
+
+Roger thought that Katya smiled, but was not quite sure. One never was
+sure whether Katya smiled unless her eyes actually twinkled, her face
+was so swarthy and still.
+
+On the way home Roger listened with interest to Katya's history of the
+Anderson case, but, as they came to the bottom of the long flight, he
+wished he could run ahead and prepare Anne. He led and Katya followed,
+still talking. At the door they met Anne. For a moment she looked
+disturbed and then greeted Katya with such ease that Roger felt all
+responsibility for the lunch drop from him. While she skilfully reset
+the table and twisted the menu to include three instead of two, Katya
+talked on.
+
+Nor did she stop when Anne summoned them, and only for short periods
+during lunch. From the Anderson case and the Labor Movement, she
+drifted to Russia, to her native village, to the Jewish pogroms, her
+struggles for an education, her imprisonment under the Czarist system,
+her escape and flight from Siberia through Sweden to Finland and
+the United States; her gradual migration westward, from an eastside
+tenement in New York, through New Jersey, to Chicago, to San Francisco.
+She talked vehemently but without bitterness. In her long fight for an
+idea, she had become impersonal.
+
+She ate almost greedily, but neither Anne nor Roger felt that she knew
+what she ate. She smoked cigarette after cigarette, lighting one from
+the other, and drank cup after cup of black coffee without noticing
+that Anne refilled her cup. Anne was considering making more coffee,
+when at last Katya broke off.
+
+"You're a perfect hostess, Mrs. Barton. I don't believe you've said a
+word."
+
+Anne flushed. Evidently this woman had not expected her interest.
+
+"It's fascinating," she said, with just a touch of primness that
+brought an odd look to Katya's eyes. Roger felt uncomfortable.
+
+"We've never had a chance before to get it first-hand," he said
+quietly, and saw Katya's eyes twinkle. She rose and, to Roger's
+embarrassment, ran her hand over his thick, wavy hair.
+
+"You're a nice boy."
+
+She put on her things, waited a moment for Roger to join her, but when
+he made no motion, shook hands with both and went clumsily down the
+stairs without looking back.
+
+"Almost as conceited as Hilary Wainwright, in her own way, isn't she?"
+Anne said demurely.
+
+Roger laughed. "You're a wiz. I hope you never take a dislike to me."
+
+"Not much of a wiz to get that slam about a perfect hostess. As if one
+couldn't believe in Man and fruit salad at the same time."
+
+Roger put his arm about her. "We can, but then, you know, we are
+exceptional people."
+
+"Because, really, I should loathe beet soup and pickled fish and those
+Russian foods."
+
+"Honey and violet stems for ours." Roger bent to kiss her and Anne ran
+her fingers through his hair, stopped abruptly and said:
+
+"She's really a terribly lonely soul, for all her world interests."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder. She didn't mention any relatives, after her
+childhood, did she?"
+
+When they came again into the house Roger picked up the Anderson case
+and went over to the couch. Anne began clearing the table. As she
+gathered up the doilies, she asked carelessly:
+
+"What's the salary?"
+
+"Forty. And expenses," Roger answered, making notes on the margin of
+a sheet. "Outside cases if I want to. But I shall not take any for a
+while--anyhow."
+
+Anne went into the kitchen without comment.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER SIXTEEN
+
+
+Through the next three months Anne thought more about money than she
+had ever thought in her life before. During the Wainwright days she
+had often been able to save ten dollars a week, but now that this sum
+was abstracted before it reached her, the remainder refused to include
+all that it had included then. Their small bank balance Anne refused
+to count an asset. She never mentioned it and was not sure that Roger
+remembered they had it. When he suggested some extravagance, a week-end
+trip, or absurdly expensive theater seats, treats that in the past had
+been supposed to be made possible by this balance--but which, in the
+end, Anne had always managed without touching--she now escaped on the
+plea of fatigue. Nevertheless, when Roger stopped suggesting them, Anne
+was hurt and angry.
+
+Each week she put aside something for little Roger's need. And if
+gradually his clothes began to be finer, his bassinet more elaborate,
+his weighing scales unnecessarily expensive, she did not allow herself
+to word the reason. Only when Roger donated with extra liberality to
+some strike benefit or defense fund did Anne deliberately go out and
+buy something little Roger could very well have done without.
+
+In their daily intercourse there was now more of the old comradeship
+than there had been for months, but often, her light housework
+finished, Anne sat in a shady corner of the garden, spicy and sweet
+again in the hot spring sun, and wondered whence had come this feeling
+of silently and strongly holding out against something that was always
+in the background of her mind. Once she had felt this something to be
+in Roger himself, a kind of accidental quality that circumstances might
+or might not develop. But now she felt it as something beyond Roger,
+something permanent functioning through him. Between herself and Roger
+there was some essential difference. Their attitude toward the coming
+of Rogie, to Black Tom O'Connell and Merle, to the futile efforts of
+Hilary Wainwright, even their union against the duplicity of John
+Lowell, had held this germ of difference. Hour after hour Anne pried
+into her own motives for action and Roger's, trying to find the source
+of this difference, but when, in an entirely fictitious future, she
+sometimes glimpsed its possible scope, she fled back to the concrete
+present and Rogie.
+
+It was always after one of these exhausting exhumations of motive and
+impulse that Anne gripped more firmly the old habit of discussion with
+Roger; that they went to one of the many protest meetings which, now
+that Anne refused concerts and theaters, had come to be Roger's chief
+interest outside the direct round of his work; or that Anne called for
+Roger at the loft, and, while she waited, tried to feel a little of the
+enthusiasm mounting sometimes almost to fever heat in him.
+
+But the force and driving power that Roger felt as an almost concrete
+thing never included Anne. She could never lose herself in it, nor be
+carried away on its flood. It was too loud, too insistent, too hot,
+like hissing black steam, screaming through a narrow vent.
+
+It did not frighten, but deadened something within, so that Anne,
+waiting quietly on the bench where Roger had first waited for Black
+Tom, felt her effort to believe in the ultimate aim of all this
+striving shrink and grow cold within her. To hear the violent click of
+Katya's typewriter depressed her. To see Black Tom suddenly rise, and,
+with the same sweeping gesture with which he had opened before her the
+advance of strike-breakers, throw clear to Roger some new plan, made
+Anne feel that the man's broken and unkempt hands had actually drawn
+her with them. Nor could she ever look at him without thinking of Merle.
+
+Like a brilliant bird, Merle flitted about the dusty place, getting in
+every one's way, interrupting at her own whim, indifferent to their
+amused tolerance or irritation. Birdlike, she perched on the gate of
+Katya's den and chirped through Katya's clicking, or disturbed Roger
+with her flutey recital of a movie she had taken the afternoon off to
+enjoy. Only Black Tom's absorption did she respect, but sometimes,
+when she came and chattered to Anne, Anne saw her watching him with a
+wistful longing that was not in the least birdlike or gay.
+
+Anne grew gradually to feel a protecting tenderness for Merle, quite
+distinct from her realization of the girl's shallow mind and different
+moral standards. It had a little of the same personal tenderness she
+felt for Hilda's confused thinking and perpetual gayety. When Merle
+referred to some mass meeting of protest that had fired the enthusiasm
+of the others to fever heat as "a beastly bore," and Roger or Katya
+demanded to know why she went, Anne felt that she understood.
+
+For neither could Anne enter the spirit of these meetings. The hatred
+of the men and women, massed to demand justice for this and that, swept
+on high above Merle's head, but it weighted Anne and stuck to her like
+an unclean substance. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of bodies smelling
+of sweat and dust and the day's toil in factory and machine shop,
+nauseated her and stifled the purpose of their rebellion. Alone, high
+in the clean sweetness of her own home, Anne could rebel against the
+blockade of Russia, the forced toil of little children, the throttling
+of free speech and liberty. But the air, thick with human breath, the
+shrill voices of boys and girls selling revolutionary pamphlets, the
+mass weight of their hatred, woke in her a rebellion against the stark
+ugliness of its expression that took all Anne's control not to express
+by rising and leaving the hall. When, inflamed by what she came to
+feel, as the weeks passed, was deliberate manipulation of this human
+capacity to hate, protest broke in that mounting cry of rage, that
+long-drawn, rising bellow of hatred, that inhuman baying with which
+they greeted the name of some oppressor, Anne shivered with actual
+cold. "B-o-o-o," it rose and fell and rose again like an icy blast,
+freezing Anne's capacity to share their anger.
+
+Like bells, certain words and names rang out in signal--war-lords, wage
+slave, master class. Through the months with Hilary Wainwright Anne had
+heard them often and used them herself glibly. Now she felt that she
+would never again be able to utter them. As Hilda stripped the facts of
+birth and love to their biological skeletons, so these men and women
+stripped the words of their conventional acceptance, their usefulness
+as tags of common understanding, and released raging genii to perform
+their tasks. After such a meeting the surface of her body was covered
+with a clammy dampness.
+
+But no torrent of unleashed hatred chilled Roger or made him cold and
+weak. Coming, at the end of May, from the largest meeting they had
+attended, Anne felt Roger throbbing with enthusiasm, even after they
+had walked blocks under the peaceful stars.
+
+"Wasn't Tom great?" he demanded for the third time, unconscious that
+Anne had not answered. "When he talks as he did to-night he makes me
+think of Christ driving the money changers from the temple."
+
+"The Bible would never have remained literature if Christ had ranted
+like that."
+
+"It isn't ranting, Anne. He sees things like that, literally sees the
+workers slaves, just as bound and owned by capitalistic pressure as
+ever a black African savage was owned by a Southern cotton planter. He
+sees the 'masters' in their great Wall Street offices just as clearly
+as any master with the legal right to beat his slave." Roger tried to
+speak patiently, but sometimes the shadings of Anne's sensitiveness
+rasped him as much as this "ranting" rasped Anne. Was it really her
+dislike of Black Tom, what she insisted on calling the "coarseness of
+his moral fiber," that made her blind to the man's sincerity? Could
+not, or would not, Anne see above and beyond this single breach of the
+world's standard? Roger did not know. And, like Anne, fleeing before
+the definite revelation of the difference between herself and Roger,
+Roger, too, hurried away.
+
+There was a pause and then Roger said:
+
+"That was the biggest collection I've ever seen taken up at a meeting.
+Carson certainly can get the cash."
+
+Anne saw, as if he had been there in the night before her, the thin,
+bowed shoulders of Robert Carson butted out over the edge of the
+platform in the final gesture he always took before defying the
+audience not to "give and give their all." His lank, black hair fell in
+a long side lock across his high forehead, his black eyes burned in his
+pale, thin face. She shivered.
+
+"It's terrible to use hate like that, or pain, or any feeling, fan it
+to that white heat and then mint money from it."
+
+Roger bit his lip. "It isn't hate or any pain. It's not a destroying
+force. It's the demand for universal justice and the right to Beauty
+that centuries of oppression have not been able to kill. It's love,
+Anne, not hate."
+
+"Maybe," Anne said drearily, with such an unexpected cessation of
+personal interest that Roger turned to her quickly.
+
+"You're tired, Anne. You ought not to have gone."
+
+His eyes were concerned for her, for her personally, her body and her
+comfort. Anne swallowed the lump that rose suddenly in her throat.
+
+"I guess I am. It was so hot and noisy and they last so long. It must
+be almost twelve."
+
+Roger drew her arm into his. "I ought not to have let you go."
+
+"I don't think I will any more--before Rogie comes."
+
+"I sha'n't let you," Roger warned, and Anne smiled up at him. Roger
+smiled back: "You're nothing but a baby yourself."
+
+But he was glad that Anne had decided not to go to any more meetings
+until after the baby came. Perhaps, then, he and Anne would go and
+understand together, as they had understood that day on the Bluff in
+the sweeping wind; and by the lake in the green and scarlet dawn.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
+
+
+In July the baby was born. Anne was very ill and Hilda fluttered about
+looking reproachfully at Roger. But, with the least impatience of Roger
+toward her, she propitiated him with assurances that many women were
+worse, that Anne would not die or be a wreck for life; and when, at
+the end of two weeks, Anne took a decided turn for the better and the
+doctors let him go in for a few moments to see her, Hilda acted as if
+she had personally managed this for his peace of mind.
+
+Anne was so small and white, so exhausted and utterly content, and his
+son was such a mite of a thing; although the nurse assured him that
+little Roger was an "exceptional" fine and healthy boy, Roger felt
+that any life encased in such a tiny and strengthless form must be
+precarious. They were so small and helpless, dependent so completely on
+him. It frightened Roger. Now that his son was there before him, Roger
+was humble. His own part in this creation no longer seemed a thing of
+choice. He had been used by the force of Life, which refused to stop.
+It would go on and on and on, through little Roger and little Roger's
+sons; on, in its majestic stride indifferent to the means it used, to
+him as an individual, on to the fulfillment of its own purpose.
+
+Roger went back to the office and was glad that Katya was alone.
+
+"It's a boy," he said queerly, "such a wee mite of red. He fumbles with
+his clenched fists and sucks in the air. He doesn't seem human."
+
+She listened without looking directly at Roger and did not ask after
+Anne. Just then Merle came in and Katya began to work again.
+
+But Merle announced that the moment Anne was home she was coming up to
+see the baby. Roger laughed:
+
+"You wouldn't know which end to take hold of, Merle. He's not bigger
+than a minute."
+
+"You clumsy brute. I'll bet you're afraid to touch him yourself."
+
+"I am, just about."
+
+Merle giggled. "Well, I'm not and I'm going up to play with him next
+week."
+
+"You'll be two of a kind," Roger teased, "only don't teach him any of
+your swear words. They're picturesque--but remember, he's a pure soul."
+
+"Don't worry. I wouldn't teach him or any other living soul a thing.
+He'll get enough of that before long, poor little devil. This place
+reeks with instruction."
+
+"But you've escaped," Roger teased on; "the first axiom of the Social
+Revolution never got under your skin."
+
+"Oh, yes it did. Only it started to fester--and I cut it out." On that
+she went whistling, the green tam pulled coquettishly to one side.
+
+When Anne was home again Merle kept her promise. At first she stayed
+only a few moments, but gradually the habit formed for her to drop in
+late in the afternoon, several times a week. As Anne grew stronger and
+began again to get regular meals, she often let Merle undress Rogie and
+make him ready for bed. It seemed to please the girl to take off the
+tiny garments and feel the soft, warm roundness of the strong little
+body.
+
+One night in mid-October, a warm evening of glowing sunset, Anne came
+into the bedroom from the kitchen at the sound of Merle's low crooning.
+Merle's single song was Tipperary and she had mangled the martial notes
+to a strange lullaby. Anne laughed and Merle turned quickly, Rogie
+clasped tight as if from intrusion. Then she laughed, too, not quite so
+gayly as Anne, and together they put him to bed. When he was tucked in
+and the window open, Merle followed Anne back to the kitchen.
+
+"Did you really want Rogie, Anne, or was he an accident?"
+
+Anne flushed at the unwarranted intimacy. But Merle was leaning against
+the wall, her full throat rising so young and white from her brilliant
+smock, her eyes so serious, that Anne relented.
+
+"I wanted him," she said hastily.
+
+Merle did not answer for a moment. She seemed to be looking at
+something in no way connected with Anne.
+
+"I wonder if it would have worked out all right--if I had gone ahead.
+But I haven't your grit, Anne. And I was bugs about Tom; oh, nuts,
+simply nuts. I believed he was God. If he'd told me to jump off the
+ferry boat, I'd have done it without waiting to ask him why." There was
+no bitterness, just the bewildered statement of a fact, a fact that had
+once been true and that Merle wished were true now.
+
+It was the first reference she had ever made to her relations with
+Black Tom O'Connell. Anne wished she had not said anything but it
+seemed unkind to cut her off.
+
+"Didn't--he--want--one?"
+
+"Well, not so you could notice. He has some of his own, you know, so
+perhaps that makes a difference. I don't suppose if it had been the
+third or fourth I'd have been as excited myself as I was. But when I
+told him, he said 'Good God!' and looked so solemn I was scared to
+death. Having a baby seemed the most terribly serious thing in the
+world; and then he began to talk of all the suffering and poverty in
+the world, just as if we were responsible for it, until I saw the poor
+little beggar starving to death under my nose. Well, perhaps he might
+have," Merle added with a shrug. "We were sure in a hell of a mess. We
+were broke, as usual. The police were watching Tom--it was the first
+months of the war when they were locking up everybody--and I never knew
+when Tom went out whether he would come back. I own that I felt pretty
+solemn myself at times. The world seemed to have gone mad. It's died
+out now, but you remember that feeling as if the bottom of life might
+drop out at any moment or the heavens open and sweep us all away? There
+did seem to be so many needless millions in the world already. And what
+for? Gunfodder. So--I--had it done."
+
+There was no mistaking Merle's meaning. Anne put the saucepan down on
+the sink very slowly and stood with her back to Merle. She felt the
+girl's eyes on her rigid body, but it was beyond her power to move or
+speak.
+
+"I suppose you wouldn't have done it. Nobody could scare you like that,
+but I must say that Tom didn't force me. He didn't even suggest it.
+He just frightened me to death with the responsibility and left the
+decision to me. But he never said afterwards that he wished I hadn't,
+although--I got to feel that way myself. I got to thinking about it,
+seeing it--and although I knew it wasn't really alive, it kind of grew,
+in the night specially when I was waiting for Tom and didn't know
+whether he had been arrested or not--staring at me with those big,
+bulging eyes. You know--kind of seeing nothing and yet knowing all the
+time what I had done to it. I got woozy----"
+
+"Stop." Anne dragged herself round and, gripping the sink board,
+stared, white and sick, at Merle. Merle flushed.
+
+"Oh, come off, Anne; you needn't look like that. Thousands of women do
+it; a million a year, here in the United States alone, and you know it.
+Because they're too lazy to have them, or want to gad, scores are doing
+it all the time. Everybody knows it. Besides, it's not nearly so bad
+to----" Merle hesitated, and then at the loathing in Anne's eyes, threw
+the words at her, "to abort it before it's really alive at all, as it
+is to let it come and then see it starve or go to the devil."
+
+"Please don't say any more about it, Merle. I can't stand it."
+
+Just then Roger turned the key in the latch.
+
+"I'm--not blaming you, Merle, but it--makes me sick all over."
+
+Quick to forgive, Merle came and put her arm across Anne's shoulder and
+Anne succeeded in not shuddering. "You're just like a little silver
+fairy, Anne. And I bet you spoil Rogie like the devil."
+
+"But you forget this stern parent," Roger laughed from the doorway.
+"I'll discipline him; he's going to be the finest young revolutionist
+you ever saw."
+
+Merle grinned: "Aren't you and Tom and Katya going to get the poor old
+world straightened out before that?"
+
+"You're a scoffer." Roger came to Anne and kissed her, but she wanted
+to take little Rogie and run far from every one; far from those
+terrible, bulging eyes; those blind, embryonic eyes, resentful,
+unseeing, so eternally wise.
+
+She served the dinner, but ate little, and was grateful when Merle
+went. Until she had gone Anne did not feel that she could go near
+Rogie. But the moment after she had left, Anne went softly into the
+bedroom. Kneeling by the baby's crib, she looked so long that he seemed
+to feel it and frowned and moved in his sleep. He was there, safe,
+alive and hers. But Anne felt all the babies in the world, the babies
+thwarted of life, staring at her in the warm blackness of the night.
+
+She had wanted him and he was there, but she felt as if, somehow, he
+had missed a great danger. As if he had won to life by a chance.
+
+Had Roger really wanted him?
+
+Anne rose quickly. Again she saw the look of stupefaction in Roger's
+eyes. Heard his "Good Lord!"
+
+Anne went slowly out of the room. Roger was reading under the shaded
+light. He was very strong, very sure of himself, sure that he was
+right. She stood looking at him speculatively. For the first time since
+her marriage Anne thought of Roger as the man she had married.
+
+Feeling her eyes on him, Roger glanced up.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Did you ever wish--before--after I told you that Rogie was
+coming--that--that--I--that some way----?"
+
+"What on earth are you talking about," Roger asked after a pause in
+which he waited bewildered for Anne to finish.
+
+Anne moistened her lips. "Did you ever
+feel--like--suggesting--that--I----?"
+
+She could not say it. Roger frowned and then understanding came to him.
+
+"What are you trying to say, Anne? Do you mean did I ever wish that you
+wouldn't go on with it?"
+
+Anne nodded.
+
+Roger rose and put both hands on her shoulders.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Anne? No, of course I didn't."
+
+"Not--once, not even once--the least wish----"
+
+"No," Roger said quietly. "I never thought of it once."
+
+"Are you glad now, really glad we have him?"
+
+"I certainly am, Anne; what on earth is the matter with you?"
+
+Anne began to cry. "Merle told me--Tom--oh, Roger, it makes me sick
+all over. I--I loathe that man. How can he care about the world
+and--and--be like--he is?"
+
+Roger's hands dropped from Anne's shoulders. "Let's not discuss Tom,
+Princess; we never agree."
+
+Anne flared. "You don't think it's wicked or disgusting, you don't
+really--you wouldn't have--minded."
+
+"Stop it, Anne, please. You're being awfully unjust and you know it.
+He was poor, broke, hunted, everything was chaos. The cases aren't the
+same at all. Besides, Merle isn't fit to be a mother."
+
+"She's fit to be a mistress."
+
+Roger turned to the couch again and picked up his book.
+
+Anne stood where she was, tense, her lips drawn.
+
+"So you knew it? Perhaps he boasts of it--as one of his 'sacrifices for
+the Revolution.' When did he tell you?"
+
+"He didn't tell me," Roger answered patiently. "Katya did, one day when
+we were talking about Merle."
+
+Anne's small frame tightened. "Well! Of all things to discuss with
+another woman!"
+
+"Oh, hell," Roger exploded, "come off that pedestal, Anne. It's
+ridiculous."
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
+
+
+For a week the tension between Roger and Anne lasted, pulling a little
+weaker each day under the pressure of proximity, little Rogie, and the
+habit of agreement. Anne did not mention Merle again and tried not to
+think of the staring, embryonic eyes of what might have been Merle's
+child. She knew such thought was morbid and unhealthy. As Merle had
+said, one million women a year, in the United States alone, recognized
+this as their right of escape. To Belle it was perhaps a very ordinary
+occurrence. Anne herself would have hesitated to call it "wicked."
+She called it "horrible" instead. But she was glad when Merle stopped
+coming and never asked about her.
+
+Autumn passed and the holiday season came with early rain. Hilda spoke
+tentatively of another Christmas dinner, although Belle was in Europe
+now with a rich patient. But Anne evaded these suggestions and did not
+even mention them to Roger.
+
+On Christmas Eve Anne bought a tiny tree and decorated it, but Rogie
+was fretful and squirmed away from it, crying; so that Anne put out the
+candles and did not light them again.
+
+On Christmas morning she and Roger exchanged their presents and
+immediately after the late breakfast Roger began work on a complicated
+case that was to come up right after the New Year.
+
+Just before noon it began to rain again, a thin, icy drizzle that
+soaked all the cheer and hope from life. Anne tried to read or sew, but
+the thin, cold, inexhaustible rain washed away all interest. She could
+not even make up her mind to go to Hilda, although it was Christmas day
+and she had not been for a week. No decision could crystallize in that
+icy drip, never condensing to a real downpour, never ceasing, trickling
+into one's courage until it washed away desire.
+
+They had planned to go to a theater in the evening, but a little after
+five the woman whom Anne had hired to stay with Rogie phoned that she
+could not come, and the tickets were cancelled. Roger had worked all
+afternoon in order to have the evening free, and now that the evening
+was to be his he decided to take a nap. He slept until Anne waked him
+for dinner at half past six.
+
+After dinner he helped Anne with the dishes and they smoked an extra
+cigarette in honor of the day. But he was so plainly anxious to get
+back to the work he had not quite finished that at last Anne's taut
+nerves could no longer stand his generosity and she urged him to finish.
+
+"Otherwise you'll want to sit up all night, and you've been up late for
+days."
+
+"I would like to get it through to-night," he conceded. "But what will
+you do? I'm afraid I've been pretty absorbed all day."
+
+"That's all right. I may go 'round to mom's for a little. I haven't
+even phoned and I sent the presents by post."
+
+"Has it stopped raining?"
+
+"I don't know. It doesn't matter." Anne went to the door and the sweet
+dampness of the garden flooded the warm room. "Yes, it's stopped;
+thickened to a heavy mist. I won't be long."
+
+"Then I'll try and finish by the time you get back."
+
+Almost before the door closed Roger was at the typewriter. As Anne went
+down the stairs she heard it click, click, as fast as Katya's.
+
+She found Hilda and James alone, Hilda crocheting and James reading
+in the silence that always lay over their evenings. For a few moments
+her entrance shattered it, and they came together in interest of her
+news, the health of Rogie, the presents Anne had sent. Then James went
+back to his paper and Hilda rummaged in her disordered work-basket for
+Belle's last letter.
+
+Would she and Roger some day meet like this for a moment on the coming
+of Rogie, a grown man?
+
+Anne scarcely heard the letter Hilda had found, not in the work-basket
+at all, but in the pocket of her kitchen apron. It was only the
+postscript that drew Anne's attention in time to comment intelligently:
+
+"We're leaving Marseilles to-morrow," Belle wrote, "and may go on to
+the Far East."
+
+"Now, if that isn't just like Belle's luck," Hilda smiled and folded
+the letter. "Traipsing 'round like a millionaire with nothing to do.
+The lady has her own maid, and Belle only has to see that she takes her
+drops and things and doesn't get too tired. I'll bet Belle has a high
+old time."
+
+Hilda looked like an excited child, prematurely gray-headed, as she
+nodded her assurance of Belle's ability to have a good time in any
+circumstance.
+
+"I don't doubt that, but, personally, I can't imagine anything worse
+than trotting about with an invalid, looking after her pills and
+sandwiching all the lovely things in Europe into the spaces between her
+patient's rests."
+
+Hilda laughed. "If I know Belle, by this time she's got that maid
+trained."
+
+"She's tried, anyhow," Anne agreed, and they smiled together in
+appreciation of Belle's "efficiency."
+
+Just as Anne was leaving Charlotte Welles came in, and Anne stayed on
+a few moments. Charlotte Welles was a slight woman with great dark
+eyes under cloudy brown hair, a pale skin, and pale, sweet lips. She
+had a soft voice, but her manner annoyed Anne. Her gentleness was so
+insistent, and although she never mentioned her belief in Christian
+Science, Anne was sure she never forgot it for a moment. She seemed
+always to measure one's remarks up against eternity, to discount any
+opposition as the meanderings of a clouded mind; to be quite sure that,
+in time, one would see Truth. To-night she was particularly annoying,
+although as Anne walked home she could not repeat a single annoying
+thing Mrs. Welles had said.
+
+"She affects me as the sight of a limousine or a fur-lined overcoat
+affects the man with a dinner pail trudging in the street, I suppose.
+She's a kind of spiritual 'capitalist' with an unfair advantage
+over the rest of the world. Because she started with an illogical
+mind she's been able to accumulate this 'peace,' and never earned
+it through a real trouble in her life. I can't imagine what she and
+moms have in common, but she seems to be always dropping in. Perhaps
+she hopes to convert mamma to Science." But at the picture of Hilda
+converted to Science and moving thereafter in calm assurance through
+the perversities of James Mitchell, Anne laughed aloud. "Dear old moms,
+she'd never keep her mind on one thing long enough to demonstrate it
+into existence, even if she could decide what it was she wanted most."
+
+But the calm face of Charlotte Welles continued beside Anne until
+she reached her own door. After all, the "capitalist" did enjoy his
+viciously accumulated millions, and Charlotte Welles' peace was real to
+herself.
+
+The typewriter was covered now, and Roger was reading before the fire.
+As Anne came in he laid his book aside and looked up.
+
+"Well, what's the news?"
+
+"Nothing special. Belle's going on from France to the Far East. She
+seems to be having a wonderful time."
+
+"Trust Belle."
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Belle works hard for her money. You wouldn't like to
+trot a nervous millionaire around the world, would you?"
+
+"Not on your life." Roger was about to add that neither would he like,
+if he were a nervous millionaire, being trotted about the world by
+Belle. But he never, if he could avoid it, referred in any way to the
+Mitchells. He always asked after them when Anne had been there, but he
+never went himself. He felt at times that Anne understood his feeling,
+and he wished he could have been more honest with her about it. But at
+the first hint of criticism Anne flared to their defense; and often,
+when the Mitchells themselves had been far from his intention, Anne had
+interpreted his scorn of intellectual narrowness as direct criticism of
+her people.
+
+The subject of Belle dropped, but Roger did not take his book again. He
+felt Anne beside him, aloof in some interest acquired at the Mitchell
+flat, something she would guard from him if he tried to share it. Roger
+felt a little sentimental and lonely, too, as he searched about among
+the topics of common interest for a meeting ground with Anne. But this
+meeting ground had grown narrower and narrower and what remained had
+dangerous spots, slippery places from which they were sure to slide
+from generalities to personal recrimination--if Anne let it get that
+far. Usually, just as they were about to plunge into an anger that
+Roger often felt would clear the atmosphere, Anne would retreat behind
+the patient calm that closed him from her as effectually as a barred
+door.
+
+The silence grew until Roger felt that he must break it at any price,
+when unexpectedly Anne sighed. She had been wandering through the
+lovely places of Europe.
+
+"Tired?"
+
+"No, not very. But this rain is getting on my nerves I think. I can't
+get out much with Rogie, and I feel all cooped up."
+
+"Couldn't we make some arrangement? Couldn't you get Mrs. Horton to
+come round for so many hours a day? That would leave you free. It's not
+right to drop all your interests, even for His Highness."
+
+His voice was so concerned, his eyes so gentle that Anne forced back
+the statement that His Highness was now the only real interest she had.
+
+"I suppose we could. But I really don't know what I would do. I thought
+the other day of taking some extension lectures again, afternoon ones.
+I got the prospectus for French literature and history--but I don't
+know. It seems finicky and dilettantish somehow."
+
+French literature, when Roger was always talking about the drama and
+tragedy of life about them! History, when the people round her were
+engaged in making it!
+
+For a moment Roger thought of suggesting that Anne come for a few hours
+a day and help out in the loft. They were deluged in work. Merle was
+getting more and more careless. Some days she never appeared at all.
+She had been away a week now, no one knew where, unless it was Tom, and
+he had offered no explanation. Katya had done Merle's work in addition
+to her own, but even Katya was not so good a stenographer as Anne.
+While he turned the suggestion about, making sure it hid no pitfall of
+antagonism, Anne went on:
+
+"I guess that the real reason is I'm too lazy."
+
+"You're certainly not that. You keep Rogie like a prince and this house
+is a regular jewel-box."
+
+And yet, less than two years ago, he had planned to do high things
+with Anne. One planned, and something, faint as breath, impalpable as
+a mist, crept in, and one did not do those things. The burned log fell
+apart. The rain beat again on the roof as if striving to reach within.
+In the rising wind the acacia lashed at them. Anne came from her
+thoughts with a little shrug.
+
+"Perhaps I will. I don't know. In the meantime, let's go to bed. The
+jewel-box has to be thoroughly overhauled this week and I want to get
+up early to-morrow."
+
+In the darkness they listened for a while to the rain. Then gradually
+Roger ceased to hear it. His breath came in long, steady sighs, even
+and assured. Anne rose quietly on her elbow until she could see his
+face faintly in the blackness. He looked very young in his sleep and
+remarkably like Rogie.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER NINETEEN
+
+
+It was a windy March afternoon when Anne, having secured the services
+of Mrs. Horton's oldest daughter to look after Rogie while she did some
+necessary shopping, came face to face with Merle, a Merle she scarcely
+knew.
+
+"Going right straight by me," Merle began gayly, but at Anne's
+astonishment Merle quieted to sincerity. "I don't blame you. I scarcely
+know myself," she went on with a whimsical gesture that included her
+own person, from expensive hat and furs to dainty shoes. "I say, Anne,
+come and have tea. If I don't talk to some one, I'll bust."
+
+But even after she had given the order for an elaborate tea at the
+exclusive shop where she was evidently known, Merle did not begin. She
+asked after Rogie and chattered of everything she could think of, until
+Anne said finally:
+
+"I've only got a few minutes, Merle. Betty Horton can't stay with
+Rogie after four. She has to be home when the other children come from
+school."
+
+And then, almost without a break or change of tone, Merle said:
+
+"I've been thinking a lot about you, Anne. I came near 'phoning you
+twice. I've left Tom."
+
+"Left Tom!"
+
+Merle nodded. "Anne, do you know how Tom took it? Did Roger say
+anything? I haven't seen a soul of them for three weeks."
+
+"No. I don't believe Roger knows it. He would have said something."
+
+Merle shrugged. "Perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps Tom hasn't noticed it
+himself."
+
+Her eyes misted, but she tossed her head with a cynical smile. "Oh,
+well, it doesn't matter. I wouldn't want him to go lallygaggin about it
+to others--even if he did any lallygaggin to himself."
+
+Anne flushed. Merle and Tom together had seemed so ugly, but Merle like
+this was even worse.
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"Nothing," Merle said in fierce whisper, "nothing and everything.
+Anne, I couldn't stand it another minute. I tried, for the sake of the
+past and everything, but I couldn't." She was like a child begging
+forgiveness and Anne softened.
+
+"Do you really want to talk about it, Merle?"
+
+"Yes. It won't do any good, but I always did love to talk. I'm a good
+revolutionist, as far as that goes. I can babble and babble with the
+best of them till the cows come home. But where we part is that I
+do something in the end. Oh, I know they all think I'm Merle, the
+bobbed-haired fool, but I'm not such a fool as to sit tight and let
+Life run by, the one and only Life we'll ever get, and make no stab
+at anything in it. Anne, I'm so sick and tired of the Brotherhood of
+Man and the wicked capitalist and the abused proletariat, I could eat
+my hat. I can't live up on those holy heights and I don't want to. I
+always belonged down in the dust, gold dust if I could get it. And
+now--I'm there."
+
+Anne waited in silence, and after a moment Merle went on:
+
+"Of course, Katya and the rest will just believe I was tempted--if
+they think at all, but I wasn't. I worked it all out. I even made a
+kind of trial balance--what would happen if I stayed, on one side of
+the sheet--what would happen if I went, on the other. And I went. I'm
+going to keep that paper and some day I'm going to compare the results.
+Anyhow, I'm gone; Merle, the bobbed-haired fool, is no more. Behold
+Mrs. Benjamin Wilson, at least on hotel registers, and in private
+life--if I choose."
+
+Anne did not move. She did not even turn her eyes from the angry violet
+eyes opposite.
+
+"I'll do a little 'crushing under the heel of capitalism' myself,
+before my heel gets too old and shriveled and ugly to be hired for the
+job." The bitterness of Merle's voice cut.
+
+"Don't, Merle. I mean don't talk like that, please. If--if you have
+left Tom because you want to--don't--don't make it any worse."
+
+"But, Anne, it's true," Merle spoke more quietly now, and quickly, as
+if the things she had to say must be said instantly, once for all. "I
+do want money, because money is the only way to get the things I want,
+to get my kind of Beauty. To Tom it may be beauty to be always dodging
+jail, to live in the kind of rooms we have lived in, to yell himself
+hoarse four nights a week about Russia or India or longshoremen,
+anything that's far enough from him. But it's not to me. When there's a
+play in town I want to see it, and I want decent clothes to go in and
+a fairly decent seat, and I'm not waiting for any old 'adjustment' to
+give it to me. I'm going to take it while it's going. Why, Anne, when I
+first went to Tom, I used to wake in the night, afraid the 'Revolution'
+would hit us before morning, and that's five years ago and we're still
+dashing after its tail. Katya, poor old thing, has been kicking at the
+world for fifteen years, until she couldn't stop if she tried. And when
+they get it all done, how do I know it'll be any better? People will
+only be kicking about something else then. No, I'll take my million
+dollars now and hang on to it."
+
+"But you loved Tom. You can't----"
+
+"Y-e-s--I loved him. And what did I get for it? Not in money. I--I'm
+not that bad, Anne, but Tom doesn't know half the time whether I'm
+alive or not."
+
+"That can't be true, Merle. He's always busy----"
+
+"Oh, shucks, Anne, you can't tell me anything about Tom. I know he's
+busy. Doing what? Saving the world; wearing himself to skin and bones
+for millions of people he has never seen. But if all these 'oppressed'
+were there in one single soul he had to see and touch and be with all
+the time and do little loving things for, he'd hate them. Bah! they
+make me sick. They're all the same. They're monomaniacs. It's the
+fighting they like. If they had it all fixed to-night they'd mess it
+up again just for fun, or go insane because they had nothing to do. I
+know. I've been through it. You're only just beginning. Wait and see.
+Roger's the same stuff, floating 'round in the clouds with those blue
+eyes and that square chin. It'll get him too, Anne, if you don't watch
+out."
+
+Anne's lips set tightly. "You're hurt and mad, Merle. You----"
+
+Merle laughed. "All right, call it that. It's been a long time coming,
+but it's come to stay. I'm going to Europe, Anne."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Just as soon as Mr. Wilson can arrange his business. I went once
+with Tom--steerage, before the war. Good Lord! I'm going to have a
+stateroom, Anne, and I'm going to tip, God, how I am going to tip. Pay
+human beings, 'lackeys,' 'wage slaves,' to do the most menial things I
+can think of. I hope I'm seasick all the time just to----"
+
+Merle broke off and her eyes invited some one who had just entered the
+door. The next moment a heavy young man whose well-cut clothes and
+expensive tie could not refine the overfed body, came forward.
+
+"Anne, let me present Mr. Wilson. Ben, this is Anne you've heard me
+speak about, Mrs. Roger Barton."
+
+His bold, brown eyes summed up Anne's fair delicacy, and he smiled
+approval of Merle's friend. But Anne felt that as long as Merle wanted
+him he would find no real interest in any other woman. He was shrewd
+and would know when Merle worked him, but it would please him to be
+so worked at his own pleasure. Merle's childish curls and violet eyes
+and scarlet mouth saying bitter, worldly things, had caught his jaded
+interest and filliped it to stinging passion, so far above the torn and
+frayed sample he had bought at extravagant prices, that the man was
+humble and grateful. Perhaps he, too, in his own way, was searching for
+Beauty. Besides, it gave him a pleasant sense of the security of the
+world he helped to make to have taken Merle from Black Tom O'Connell.
+In some way it justified the existence of things as they were, proved
+the tottering foundations of the movements that had begun to give him a
+good deal of trouble with his labor.
+
+He was so plainly in love with Merle, it surprised Anne that his look
+was no grosser than it was, for it was evidently difficult for him
+to sit near and touch her in no way. If Merle were conscious of his
+restraint she did not show it, but after a few moments it got on Anne's
+nerves, and she rose. Merle rose too, insisting that Mr. Wilson stay
+where he was and finish the tea the waitress had just brought.
+
+"I'll be back. I'm just going to the door with Anne. You wait here,
+honey."
+
+Merle hurried after Anne.
+
+"When's Tom coming back, do you know?" she whispered. "I saw in the
+papers he is out of town."
+
+"Yes. No, I don't know; in a few days I think."
+
+Merle's small, white teeth marked the crimson lip in a faint line.
+Slowly her black brows drew down in a frown. Her hands clenched.
+
+"Anne, I would have died for him--I really would have once."
+
+"Merle, don't go on with this. You're doing it in a fit of anger.
+You'll be sorry."
+
+"I'm not doing it in a fit of anger. Didn't I tell you I thought it
+out, wrote it out? And do you know what was the last item on the
+balance sheet for Ben? Well, if I stay and marry him, it's a baby,
+a warm, cuddly thing like Rogie. And I'm going to dress him in the
+loveliest clothes, and nobody will kick about the starving Russians or
+the dying Roumanians. I'll feed him out of a gold-monogrammed nursing
+bottle if I take the fancy, and Ben will think it's grand."
+
+At the exaggerated picture Anne smiled. Merle smiled, too, and then her
+eyes darkened again, just for a moment, as if a shadow had crossed them.
+
+"Anne, you might let me know if Tom puts over that case he's gone on. I
+used to listen to it till I most went frantic, but it's--well, the last
+thing I'll ever hear of the crowd and I'll feel more finished, neat and
+tidy-like, to know. I'll be here another two weeks, anyhow."
+
+"All right. I'll let you know."
+
+But Anne did not keep her promise, because two days later she saw in
+the society news that Mr. Benjamin Wilson was leaving unexpectedly for
+Europe. The next day Black Tom came back. He had lost his case.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER TWENTY
+
+
+The days passed. Roger did not mention Merle. He was often at the
+office now in the evening and Anne knew he and Tom were working harder
+than ever. Some Hindoo revolutionists had been arrested and an almost
+hopeless fight to free them was under way. Picturesque men with sad,
+dark eyes came to the cottage to talk to Roger, and Roger made quick
+trips to adjoining towns to see strange men in secret places.
+
+One day, about a month after Anne had met Merle, Roger came home
+earlier than he had come for some time, and very gay. He had succeeded
+in getting an appeal for the Hindoo revolutionists and that was more
+than any one had expected.
+
+"Tom's like a small boy. I never saw him so excited."
+
+"And Merle, I suppose, is flitting all over the place, trying to talk
+Hindustani?"
+
+"No. Merle isn't 'round these days. I haven't seen her for weeks. She's
+been dodging work for some time, coming and going when she liked. Come
+to think of it, I don't believe she's been there at all for ages. Katya
+was saying something about getting another stenographer. Merle's bad
+enough, but she was better than nothing."
+
+"Katya'd better go ahead and get one then, because Merle won't come
+back. She's gone away with another man."
+
+The amazement in Roger's eyes struck at Anne's control. Merle was
+right. She had flitted among them and flitted away. Concerned with the
+affairs of distant India, Roger did not even know it. And he had liked
+Merle with her gay slang, her flippant comment.
+
+"Do you suppose that Tom O'Connell has happened to notice she's gone?
+Perhaps you'd better not tell him. He may never find it out at all."
+
+"So--that--was it," Roger said slowly, putting together the pieces of
+a puzzle that had caught his attention the day after Tom's return from
+the South. "Poor Tom--poor old Tom. But it had to come. Merle had gone
+as far as she could--and Tom couldn't stay behind."
+
+"Certainly not," Anne said quietly, "an Indian woman in Burmah might
+have died."
+
+"What? What about an Indian woman?"
+
+But Anne did not answer. She was afraid she might cry, and after a
+brief pause Roger went back to the thing that had puzzled him.
+
+"I saw Tom, the day after he came back, sitting all bowed over his
+desk. It was late in the evening and the others had gone. He was
+expecting me, but he never moved when I came in and I thought he was
+ill. I went over to him and he looked up. I never saw a man so torn.
+His face was ash-gray and those lines he always has down the sides of
+his mouth were deep like scars. And his eyes, they were like a hurt
+dog's, so dumb and crushed and puzzled. He didn't even try to cheer up,
+just said: 'I won't be doing any work to-night; I don't feel well.' I
+said something about getting him a drink, but he shook his head and I
+went. I was rather afraid--he was going to cry."
+
+"It wouldn't have hurt him if he had," Anne said in a hard whisper.
+"He's killed Merle's soul, and if she goes to the dogs it will be his
+fault."
+
+"Killed Merle's soul? She never had one, at least not much of a one."
+
+"No. There are no individual souls, I suppose; just one great, big
+world soul--though what it's made of if it isn't individual souls, I
+don't know."
+
+Roger moved impatiently, but when he spoke it was with weary acceptance:
+
+"You never liked Tom. You never understood him, the real man, or tried
+to."
+
+"No? I understand what he claims to be, but not what he is."
+
+"What is he?"
+
+"A monomaniac." The word slipped from Anne and frightened her.
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Anne."
+
+"He's gone mad on social injustice, just as mad as any capitalist has
+on accumulating money. He's lost all sense of individual values. He's a
+machine, a machine for fighting for his own theory."
+
+Roger's lips set. It brought the squareness of his chin into terrible
+relief. "Roger's the same stuff, floating around in the clouds with
+those blue eyes and that square chin." Anne's body began to quiver, but
+she kept her eyes steady.
+
+"Let's not talk about it. We don't agree."
+
+"Evidently not. There don't seem to be many things we do agree about
+any more."
+
+Anne tried to speak gayly. Otherwise the tears would come. But she
+sounded like Hilda Mitchell, pecking at a tragedy with her silly giggle.
+
+"Not many," Roger said shortly. "I've got to go back to the office and
+I may be late. Don't wait up for me."
+
+He kissed Anne as usual, and as usual she went as far as the door with
+him. But long after his step had died she stood looking out over the
+city's lights, lonelier than she had ever been in all her life.
+
+She remembered coming home with Roger once, very late, on just such a
+night. They had sat hand in hand, far in the prow of the almost empty
+ferry, and Anne's head had rested on his shoulder. She was tired after
+a happy day, one of the old picnics they had found time to take. She
+had been glad of the lights coming nearer and they had traced the
+row up their own hill. The twinkling lights had beckoned them to the
+warm, human comfort of others. Now they burned on indifferent to her,
+lighting the way for hurrying crowds, the creeping, inimical confusion
+of the world. The twinkling lights lit the ways of men and men were
+cruel.
+
+Anne went in and sat down before the fire, without turning on the lamp.
+It was so still she could hear her own thoughts moving about her.
+Gradually, from the rustling crowd, one emerged:
+
+"I've been through it. You wait and see."
+
+She was not like Merle. Roger was not like Black Tom. And yet----
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was after twelve when Roger came.
+
+"Why, Anne!"
+
+Anne lifted her face. Her lips trembled.
+
+Roger came quickly to her in real concern. "You haven't been sitting
+here alone worrying, have you? I didn't mean to be harsh."
+
+Anne clung to him. "Roger," she whispered, "I don't want to grow apart."
+
+"Neither do I." Roger stroked her hair, the old tenderness moving him.
+"And since neither of us do," he said after a moment, with a smile, "I
+guess we won't."
+
+Anne answered his smile weakly. "Roger, I don't believe it is right
+just to sit up here keeping the 'house like a jewel-box' and looking
+after Rogie. I'm going to work."
+
+"What?" Roger had never very clearly heard when Anne looked like that,
+and she had not looked like that for a long time.
+
+"I--am--going--to work," Anne repeated with exaggerated distinctness,
+and laughed.
+
+"Oh, you are, are you? Who said you could?"
+
+"Myself. And you--in a minute."
+
+"Oh, I will? That depends. I won't have you drudging in some office."
+
+"No? How about that extra stenographer Katya's looking for?"
+
+"Anne!"
+
+"Don't you think I could do it? I don't believe I've lost much speed.
+I----"
+
+But Roger's kiss silenced her and Anne did not try to finish. At last
+he loosed her.
+
+"Do you really want to do this, sweetheart?"
+
+Anne turned her eyes away. "Yes, Rogie's old enough to leave now and I
+believe Mrs. Horton would be glad of the place. I would get a salary, I
+suppose--enough to pay her."
+
+Roger grinned. "You would--most of the time, anyhow. How much would she
+do it for, do you think?"
+
+"How much would I get?"
+
+"Eighteen or so."
+
+"That would be plenty--more than she would ask. I'll talk it over with
+her to-morrow. You would really like it?"
+
+"Anne! There's nothing in the world I would like so much. Why
+I--I--thought lots of times of asking you just that thing."
+
+Remembering his reason for not doing it, Roger, too, looked into the
+fire, his arms still close about Anne.
+
+But Anne did not press for the reason of his silence. Against the long
+evening alone with Merle's words singing in her ears--"Wait and see.
+It'll get him yet"--his hold was strong and full of comfort.
+
+Suddenly Anne gripped him close and kissed him, as she had kissed on
+the Bluff, her lips seeking fiercely, through his, the thing beyond
+them both.
+
+
+
+
+                          CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+
+The following Monday Anne went to the loft with Roger. Another niche
+was partitioned off for her and she began to take dictation.
+
+Now that she had definitely come among them, joined her interest with
+Roger's, Anne tried to shake off the feeling that had held her in the
+past when she waited for Roger, and to get below the surface of this
+violent enthusiasm. But she could not do it.
+
+So many orders were given during a day, so many plans made, so many
+contingencies prepared for that never arose. It was an exhausting game,
+the enthusiasm created by the players themselves. It was an insane May
+dance, Black Tom in the center holding the ribbons.
+
+And such strange people danced at the end of the strings. Anne had
+never seen so many different nations and kinds of individuals in one
+spot, nor imagined they could so exist. Ministers who had given up the
+Gospel of Christ to preach this gospel of Man; teachers weary of the
+narrow round of instructing; a college professor who had discovered
+that the Social Revolution had really begun with creation, and written
+a pamphlet to prove it. A chemist who had discovered with equal
+suddenness that the social revolution was the newest and perhaps the
+last stage in man's evolution from the lower types.
+
+There were men and women who saw some great change in the conduct
+of world affairs looming in huge, vague mass, but had no clear idea
+as to how this vague mass was to be shaped. Others who saw only the
+small, unimportant details and these groups argued for hours accusing
+each other of wrong methods that delayed progress. There was one
+young man with mild, kind eyes who forgave all bigotry and personal
+misunderstanding and wrote fierce, revolutionary songs, clarion
+calls to these people whom he forgave for not hearing. There was
+one plump little widow, raised in rigid Boston, who for the first
+time in her life had found an opportunity to berate car-conductors
+and minor officials in a loud voice. These she called publicly, in
+piercing tones--"the wage slaves of a rotten system"--and urged them
+to organize. She could always be relied upon at a moment's notice to
+picket, carry banners or distribute leaflets. The "rottenness of the
+system" excused her from contributing to any charity, but, until the
+arrival of the millennium, she invested her income with remarkable
+shrewdness in bonds.
+
+Above this conglomerate of excitement Katya rose like a mountain in
+her belief and patience. Katya never attacked car-conductors nor urged
+telephone girls to strike, or bothered whether the social revolution
+had begun with creation, or whether it was the last stage of progress.
+Katya worked, often far into the night, and rarely spoke to any one but
+Tom or Roger. Anne she ignored, not with definite rudeness but with an
+unfathomable disregard of her existence. In her dark corner Katya was
+like a brown bear that had been taught to work. So incessant was the
+click of her machine that it was noticeable only in its rare intervals
+of silence, as one notices the momentary lull of the sea forever
+breaking on a rocky coast.
+
+At first it was almost impossible for Anne to take Black Tom's
+dictation, to speak to him, or be near him. Merle was always there
+in her brilliant smock. Or the staring, embryonic eyes asking their
+eternal Why?
+
+It was not until July, when a heavy cold forced Katya to stay home and
+Black Tom's personal dictation fell to Anne, that the faith of the man
+at last reached through her repulsion and she reluctantly conceded
+his sincerity. It was impossible to be admitted even so slightly into
+his confidence and not feel his faith. It was stark, like a granite
+headland, unornamented with scholastic theory. Its rough surface bore
+no intricate carving of historical or philosophic research. The man saw
+and believed. As the weeks passed, Anne came to feel that if he ever
+thought of Merle, he thought of her as a victim, neither of himself nor
+of her own nature, but of this colossal social injustice to which he
+referred all the ills of life.
+
+But she never grew to like him, and months after she had come to take
+his dictation with no thought of Merle, any over-emphasized admiration
+of Roger's stripped her feeling back to her original disgust.
+
+"The trouble is that you demand perfection in people you don't like,"
+Roger said to her one day, when her annoyance at one of Black Tom's
+schemes for propaganda had driven her to biting criticism. "You measure
+every quality in them by their highest peak, and when they don't
+measure up to this standard all the way down, you reject them."
+
+"Rather subtle, but not true," Anne said in the voice that always
+reminded Roger of a small, sharp gimlet. "I don't see anything for you
+to take offense at. Tom O'Connell is a monomaniac. Merle was right."
+
+"Any one who believed utterly in an abstract principle would be a
+monomaniac to Merle."
+
+"Any one who believes in only one aspect of a principle is a
+monomaniac."
+
+"Tom does not believe in only one aspect; he is concerned with only one
+application of his principle. And no human being can be interested in
+more. If that's being a monomaniac then Tom's one, with all the other
+people in the world who have ever accomplished anything. You can't
+spatter your interest and energy all over the earth and make it count.
+A scientist is interested in science and an artist in art. Tom's medium
+is the present condition of the world. He doesn't want to win strikes
+for themselves, or stir up disorder, but only that greater order may
+come. His eyes aren't always fixed on the sores and confusions under
+his eyes, but on the perfect body society might be. If Jesus Christ had
+lived to-day and worked in a Pennsylvania coal mine when He was twelve,
+instead of two thousand years ago on the sandy plains of Syria--he
+would have been rather like Tom, I think."
+
+"That's ridiculous, Roger. You're getting to be a monomaniac too."
+
+"It's not ridiculous. And if that's what you call being a monomaniac,
+I'd just as soon be one. In fact, I hope I am."
+
+"Well, I don't. I've always been sorry for Christ's family. I think He
+must have been dreadfully annoying to live with. Didn't He tell His
+mother to go home and mind her business while He went and lectured to
+men old enough to be His grandfather?"
+
+"Nice, old conservatives, gripping their traditions like crabs hanging
+to their rocks."
+
+"Making their application of their principle."
+
+"No. Not making it at all. Just hanging on to its corpse long after it
+had ceased to have a spark of life. Once the Syrians had needed their
+philosophy, but they were petrifying in a social system that human life
+had really outgrown. They had lived so long in a barren land, fighting
+for their means of living, fighting against their sand wastes and rocks
+and neighboring tribes, that the whole of life had become a kind of
+arena. Their Jehovah was only another brigand of the Syrian hills.
+Those old men you sympathize with were like the militarists of to-day.
+They can't think except in terms of gunpowder. 'War always has been'
+and so it's always going to be. Then Christ happened along and saw that
+Life was wider than the barren wastes of Syria and that they were at
+the wrong end of the solution. Those old Syrian War-lords had applied
+the principle of physical conquest to all kinds of spiritual problems
+and Christ saw that it wasn't getting them anywhere. He was really
+telling them how to get the things they had started out after and lost
+the way of finding. When I was a kid He used to annoy me awfully--an
+anemic young Jew with a silly beard and girl eyes--but I've gotten to
+like Him."
+
+"You'll get to like any other monomaniac who's been dead long enough."
+
+"Are we quarreling?" Roger asked impatiently, exasperated by this
+eternal twisting of a general path back to the personal point. "I
+thought we were discussing that measure Tom's going to try and put
+through the convention."
+
+"We are--as far as I am concerned. You dragged in Christ."
+
+"I didn't drag Christ in except to try and make you see why Tom
+wants to get this particular measure across. I don't understand you,
+Anne. You say sometimes that you believe the man's sincere and yet
+you're always trying to measure him up with some little yardstick of
+inherited social convention. Tom's like the great central wheel of some
+high-powered machine, and you pick flaws because he's not the spring of
+some jeweled and useless little watch."
+
+Anne shrugged and began to gather up the dinner things. What did it
+matter? If she and Roger talked half the night they would only branch
+from one difference to another. In the exhausting day behind her there
+was not one still spot wherein they could meet in perfect accord.
+To her, the day had been filled with whirling, human particles that
+obstructed her vision and stimulated Roger. All day Anne had felt
+choked by these particles; the mannerisms, the shop-worn jargon, the
+unrestrained enthusiasm, had gotten into her ears and eyes and down her
+throat like sand. She had meant to keep the dinner hour free from this
+sand, but it had filtered in. It always did. Anne was coming to feel
+that these people with whom she passed the day followed her home at
+night.
+
+As Roger watched her moving, slight and graceful, about the room,
+putting it in evening order, he wondered why Anne had ever offered to
+come to the loft. She did the work well, as she had done John Lowell's,
+but with no more personal joy in it. And yet Anne had once felt a
+larger world calling for more than perfection of mechanical detail or
+conscientious accomplishment of the day's stint. At what point in their
+lives had that Anne slipped away into the fog in which he groped now
+without finding her? Behind his book Roger grappled with this problem,
+growing larger week by week.
+
+Two years before they had started from the same point to walk along a
+road together. At no spot had they left the way. No emotional side-path
+had lured Roger from his faithfulness to Anne; no other way of life
+had tempted her. Their hope had been the same--to live beautifully a
+beautiful life. They were not living it beautifully. It was growing
+ugly, full of impatience on his side, suppressions on hers. Sometimes,
+for a few days, even a week, they managed to step from stone to stone
+of personal agreement, and then, on some little hidden rock, they stood
+and grew bitter toward each other.
+
+In the kitchen Anne stacked the dishes for Mrs. Horton's coming in the
+morning, clicked off the light, and came back. She, too, took a book
+and curled up in her favorite spot on the couch to read.
+
+Was she reading? Didn't she feel this fog closing in about them? What
+would happen if he asked her why she had wished to work with him, or
+suggested that she leave it? Would Anne be honest and tell him? Did she
+know herself?
+
+But Roger did not ask. At ten he stopped reading. A few moments later
+Anne finished her chapter. They went to bed. From habit, Anne lay close
+for a little, with his arm about her. Then he kissed her and turned
+over on his side. Once more the harmony of sleep covered the tangled
+knots and broken threads of the day behind.
+
+
+
+
+                          CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
+
+
+So the weeks passed until one afternoon in early August, when James
+Mitchell was taken suddenly ill and Hilda sent for Anne. She found her
+mother sitting in the kitchen, crying helplessly as if she would never
+stop. Anne knelt beside her.
+
+"Mamma. Dear. Don't. You mustn't; you'll get all worn out."
+
+Through the running tears Hilda's frightened eyes clung to Anne.
+
+"It--it was terrible. I've never been through such a thing in my life.
+I had such a time to get you. They--brought him home--oh, I wish Belle
+was here."
+
+Anne took the shaking hands in hers and held them firmly.
+
+"Mamma, you must stop crying. It won't do any good and I want to know.
+Who said it was a stroke?"
+
+"Dr. Fletcher, the company doctor. Thank goodness the company gives a
+doctor. What would we do, Anne, if they didn't? What we'll do anyhow--I
+don't know. And I never would have dreamed of a stroke. Papa, of all
+people! He isn't the build. He isn't the kind that gets strokes. He----"
+
+"But momsy dear, he has it. Don't, don't go worrying about other
+things. And the company has a doctor. Let's just take one thing at a
+time."
+
+At the calm assurance of Anne, Hilda's sobs lessened. She wiped her
+eyes on the corner of her apron and spoke more quietly.
+
+"I was just ready to go out, down town shopping at that cut-rate
+market--it's beef bargain day--when the phone rang and some one at
+the office said papa wasn't well and would be coming home. Of course
+I thought he had been killed and the girl got so impatient and ugly
+with me. I don't believe now they were at the office at all, because
+in a few moments, I had scarcely time to take off my things, the bell
+rang and they had him in a taxi. Oh--Anne--he was all kind of purplish;
+papa, who's too pale if anything, and his eyes were twisted like,
+but he knew me, and--and--he didn't want me to do anything for him.
+It--it--seemed to make him nervous just to have me near him, and he
+kept trying to say something and I couldn't understand."
+
+"Can't--he--speak?" Anne's lips were dry but she kept her tone level
+for Hilda's comfort.
+
+"He can now--but it's not like it was--although it may come back almost
+as good as ever, in time, the doctor says. But--Anne--he can't--ever
+work again and what shall we do? There's the lodge and perhaps they'll
+take up a little collection in the office--papa seemed always donating
+to collections for families, but then maybe he was only fibbing--and
+there's some small pension scheme they've just put through. But--it's
+so--scrappy and he'll need so many things."
+
+Behind the fact of her father's illness, towering over the misfortune
+of his never again being able to speak quite clearly, or to walk
+unaided, loomed this ghastly reality--never again to work; never to
+draw a monthly salary again. All her childhood this possibility had
+existed in the background of life, as it existed in the background of
+all the lives she knew--the cessation of income, the wage-earner's
+power suddenly cut off. Dependents on unearned money. Life continuing
+with the source of supply not in one's own hands, beyond one's control.
+Now this fact was no longer in the background. It had stalked to the
+very front of life and demanded all their thought. Two aging people,
+dependent on others! Anne shivered away from it.
+
+"Don't think about that now, mamma. Perhaps it won't be so bad as the
+doctor says. They're often mistaken. You know how little faith Belle
+has in them."
+
+"If only Belle were here."
+
+"But she isn't, mamma. You'll have to do the best you can with me."
+
+"Don't be sharp with me, Annie. You know I don't mean it that way. I
+don't know what I would do without you. I could scarcely get to the
+phone quick enough to call you. But I wish we knew where Belle was. I
+haven't had a card ever since that one when they were just starting
+for Jerusalem or some other heathenish spot. She--she'll help if she
+can, but she never has anything laid aside. And that was one thing papa
+always did try to impress on you children--to look out for a rainy day.
+I hope you and Roger will never do that, Anne, live right up to the
+last cent, not with Rogie and all. It's a temptation when everything's
+all right, but the minute sickness comes----If only papa hadn't thought
+that miserly little lodge and his life insurance would be enough--if
+anything happened--we might have had a snug bit aside."
+
+"He still has the life insurance, has he? You remember you used to be
+afraid sometimes--he'd try to raise money on it. You----"
+
+"Oh--Anne----" Hilda clutched her in sudden fear. "I--I--suppose so. I
+never dared ask papa things like that. You don't suppose--he couldn't
+have--oh, Anne----"
+
+"Hush, dear. I'm sorry I asked. Of course he has. He would surely have
+told you if he hadn't."
+
+"He surely would have done nothing of the sort. It's exactly what he
+would not do. He would have thought he could make it up, get it back or
+something."
+
+Anne rose and began taking off her things. "I'll stay to-night, momsy.
+I'll just go and phone Roger and Mrs. Horton. She can take Rogie for a
+day or two until we see how things are."
+
+Hilda looked so relieved, almost cheerful, that Anne bent and kissed
+her.
+
+"It will be all right, dear. We'll manage."
+
+Hilda clung to her hand. "Annie--you don't really think--he might
+have----"
+
+Anne took a sudden decision. "I'll ask him, mamma." It would be
+difficult enough the next few days without this constant, harping
+anxiety of her mother's.
+
+"Annie! You can't ask him a thing like that. Not now. The doctor said
+he must have absolute rest, not be worried or annoyed in any way. He
+would think we were counting--Anne! It's horrible."
+
+"I won't do it that way, moms. I won't do it at all if it doesn't work
+out. Please trust me."
+
+"I do, Annie. And I would like to know. I sha'n't be able to think of
+anything else until I do. You won't be long phoning, will you?"
+
+"Just a minute. Suppose you make some tea. I'd like a cup."
+
+Happy to do something definite, more, to be told exactly what to do,
+Hilda began to make the tea.
+
+Roger had come in and Anne told him briefly what had happened and that
+she would stay a day or two. He was not to phone as the bell might
+disturb James and the doctor had said he was to have absolute quiet.
+She would phone instead, the following evening.
+
+The tea was made and they drank it, Hilda's spirit reviving in bounds
+at the knowledge she was not to be left alone in her dilemma. Anne
+tried to talk of other things, but again and again Hilda came back to
+the question--had James Mitchell disposed of his insurance? At last
+they heard a sound from the sick room.
+
+"He's waking, Anne. Don't--don't tell him you can't understand what he
+says--it seemed to vex him so. He----"
+
+"I won't vex him." Now that she was about to see her father, changed
+perhaps almost beyond recognition, Anne's voice shook. At this sign of
+weakness Hilda began again to cry. Anne went quickly out of the room.
+
+At the sound of some one entering, James Mitchell tried to turn his
+head. He was very weak, and his neck seemed twisted and stiff, but his
+eyes moved and when he saw who it was they lit faintly.
+
+"Annie," he said in a low, thick tone, but much more clearly than she
+had expected.
+
+She sat down on the bed-edge and took his hand in hers. It was strange
+to be taking her father's hand, offering him any physical demonstration
+of affection. As if the act generated the impulse, a welling pity rose
+in Anne. His fingers closed on hers and he tried to nod.
+
+"Don't try to talk, papa. Just rest. It will do you lots of good."
+
+Anne was not sure whether the faintest smile of scorn touched his lips
+under the ragged gray mustache, or whether they were curved forever
+into that faint bitterness.
+
+"I'm glad you've come, Annie. You can stay a while, can you?" It took
+him a long time to say this and Anne felt her nerves tighten between
+the words.
+
+"As long as you need me. But you're not going to need me long. If you
+do as the doctor says, you'll soon be about. These things don't--don't
+mean anything permanent." Anne spoke cheerfully, but the dawning hope
+in her father's eyes shamed her to silence. She longed to turn her eyes
+away from that pitiful hope, but dared not.
+
+"No--Annie--I won't get better." It begged again her assurance.
+
+"Well, we'll do what the doctor says anyhow, papa."
+
+"I've--never been sick----" James mumbled, "always--lived
+sensibly--just--my luck----"
+
+"Don't worry about anything now, papa," Anne said soothingly, and
+disengaged her fingers.
+
+"I--want--a drink, Annie."
+
+She brought a glass of fresh, cold water, held it for him to drink and
+then, supporting him with one arm, deftly shook up the pillows and
+placed him comfortably on them.
+
+"That--was fine--don't let mamma--she makes me nervous. She doesn't get
+what I say. Do I talk very thick, Annie?"
+
+"No. I understand."
+
+"Of course you do," he mumbled. He held her fingers again and she could
+not draw them away. Nor could she ask him about the insurance while
+he clung like that, so weak, so changed, so suddenly dependent upon
+her. And she had never loved him. She did not love him now. She could
+never love him. The tragedy lay in that--she never could. He might grow
+better. He might grow worse. She might be there a long time, doing
+the horrible, intimate things nurses did for hire, to Anne revolting,
+except for deep love. She would do them to save his nerves from Hilda,
+the woman with whom he had lived for more than thirty years; who did
+not understand his blurred speech, whose every motion disturbed him;
+Hilda, sitting in the kitchen waiting to hear whether he had gambled
+away her only hope of independence when he had gone.
+
+Anne slipped her hand from his, covering its withdrawal by soft little
+taps on the back of his. She must ask him now, while her presence still
+held something of the unusual. In a few days he would have accepted her
+ministering. All the small tyranny of him would have risen in defiance
+of his dependence on them. She must do it now, or not at all. Without
+preamble, Anne asked quietly:
+
+"Papa, things may be a little tight for the present. Do you think we
+might raise a little money on your life insurance? As soon as we can
+reach Belle----"
+
+With sudden strength his fingers clutched her arm, and he gripped it
+until she felt the bones press into her flesh. His eyes were full
+of anger, fear, defiance. With a terrible effort he drew her down,
+motioning with his slightly twisted lips not to let Hilda hear.
+
+"I haven't got--it--Annie. I--thought--I had a sure--thing--it was
+sure--and I staked--it's gone," he ended in a squeaking note of fear
+and anger.
+
+Anne patted his shoulder and tried to speak cheerfully, "Never mind,
+papa. Never mind. Don't think about it."
+
+That fearful squeak, like a mouse caught in a trap.
+
+"Don't--tell--her, Annie. She'll fuss me about it and--I meant it
+right. It--was for her--I don't want anything for myself--it was a sure
+thing. Just my luck--any one would have taken--the tip."
+
+And there was nothing Anne could find to say, although she seemed to be
+tearing her brain apart in an effort to find a thought. She could only
+whisper absently, over and over:
+
+"Never mind, papa; we'll talk about it later." At last the monotony of
+repetition soothed him, and he freed her to tuck the clothes about him.
+But Anne could not bend to kiss him. With all her strength she tried.
+Her muscles would not obey. She stroked his cheek and, with an extra
+little pat, said good night and left him. Almost before she was out of
+the room he was asleep.
+
+Anne went slowly the short distance from the bedroom to the kitchen.
+The door was ajar and she saw Hilda crocheting, a wad of lace in a
+soupbowl by her on the table. Years ago Anne and Belle had rebelled
+against the monstrosity of pineapple edging or star pattern upon their
+underclothes. Still Hilda persisted in "not wasting time." The darkest
+crannies of the Niche were filled with these rolls of crochet; they
+were even tucked away on the pantry shelves.
+
+"One--two--three plain, and four chain," Hilda mumbled.
+
+Anne went in and closed the door. "He did do it. He's lost the
+insurance, bet it away on a sure thing and it's gone."
+
+"Oh--Anne----"
+
+"Don't cry," Anne went on in the stern tone with which one handles an
+hysterical child. "It won't get it back. And if I were you I wouldn't
+say anything to him. It's done. He can't undo it now and he'll have
+time enough to wish it undone--lying--there--thinking about it."
+
+Hilda forced back the tears. After a moment she heaved a sigh and
+picked up the edging again. Soon she was lost once more in the
+intricacies of one--two--three plain, and four chain.
+
+
+
+
+                         CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
+
+
+The days went by neither slowly nor quickly, but with a terrible fixity
+of sameness. The routine of illness, once established, life adjusted
+itself to nourishment at certain hours, periods of sleep, efforts to
+entertain James. Even waiting to hear from Belle was reduced to a
+law, once in the morning post, once in the afternoon. As soon as they
+received her address they would cable. Till then they had to wait.
+
+With the assumption of all responsibility by Anne, Hilda Mitchell
+ceased to worry about the future. Her old gayety returned. Sometimes
+Anne felt that her mother was really enjoying herself more than she
+had for many years. In this release from the housekeeping cares she
+had borne so long, she was like a child. She insisted on doing all the
+errands, and although it sometimes annoyed Anne, on the whole it filled
+her with tender amusement to find how far Hilda insisted on going for
+some small, needed thing. Prescriptions she always had filled at night
+in a big down-town drug store, although there was a small, reliable but
+very dull little drug store on the corner. She followed food bargains
+about the city, adding carfare until the article cost more than it
+would have in her own block.
+
+At the end of the first week Anne brought Rogie to the flat. When James
+was awake he liked to have the baby crawling and laughing about him.
+Sometimes Anne wanted to cry as she watched the numbed form propped in
+the big bed and the laughing, crawling baby dragging his little limbs
+in their awkward newness over the limbs that would never walk again.
+
+At the end of the second week she felt that she had lived this way for
+years, that she would never live otherwise. The loft and the world with
+its bickering were far away, behind the present routine. On Tuesdays
+and Sunday evenings two old men took turns in coming to see James. A
+quick, wiry little man came on Tuesday. A slow, fat man on Sunday. They
+came early in the evening, just after their own suppers, and James
+watched all day for their coming. They never had much news and there
+were long pauses between their remarks. The flat was never so still,
+so cut off from the world functioning beyond this silence, as in these
+long intervals between the items of office gossip. Anne could never
+shut the kitchen door and forget the old men, but sat tense, waiting
+for the next buzz from the sick room.
+
+They had imposed upon themselves this task of calling, but she felt
+their relief when, always a few moments before half-past eight, each
+old man rose to go, said something reassuring about soon seeing James
+Mitchell back at work, and with awkward kindliness got himself out
+of the room. Then Anne would go in, straighten her father's pillows,
+make him comfortable for the night, and listen with assumed interest
+while he retailed in his thick, halting speech, their meager news.
+The paucity of it hurt beyond her strength to reply. To have lived
+fifty-five years and have no interests larger than the clickings of a
+machine, functioning far above him; to be bound in the tiny screws and
+cogs of an intricate mechanism, towering into official dimness. The
+old men depressed Anne terribly, almost more than James himself. His
+illness separated him, in his first distinction, from the rest of his
+world. But they were still part of it. Like chained animals they seized
+and gnawed at each tiny happening until they had gnawed it to powder.
+In these clouds of dust they were walking blindly toward the grave.
+
+On the nights when the old men did not come James dropped asleep almost
+immediately after his light supper. Anne put little Roger to bed. Hilda
+found some reason to leave the house, even if it were only "to run
+down to Mrs. Welles' for a minute," and Anne was alone. Sometimes she
+sat in her old room, beside Rogie's basket, and stared out into the
+darkening street. Strange noises emerged into the stillness, tickings
+and creakings in the walls, rustlings and faint tappings.
+
+Anne's thoughts, too vivid to be held within her brain, slipped into
+the darkness and she saw them, pictures in the thick silence; the
+terrible black vacuum of life in which moved the old gray men, her
+father, Hilda, herself, Roger, Tom, the dancing marionettes about
+him; Hilary Wainwright, his keen-eyed partners in great enterprises;
+Merle snatching at beauty, the grimed workers; all groups of whirling
+dervishes, spinning round in useless effort, until they dropped into
+decay and death.
+
+It was in such a mood, one night about three weeks after she had
+come to care for James, that Anne went on the back porch, where the
+sure shining of the stars, the black outline of the unchanging hills,
+sometimes gave her rest. But to=night no peace came. The stars were
+hard and cold, the hills indifferent. Locked in a vault of decay and
+death, she heard the voice of Life, like the undertone of the sea
+wailing forever: This is all there is. I am decay and death, decay and
+death.
+
+So deep was she within the darkness of this realization that when a
+man's quick step sounded on the stairs and she saw Roger smiling up,
+Anne stared back as if he were a stranger from another world. Roger's
+smile vanished and he bounded up the last steps and took her in his
+arms. At his touch the vividness of thought vanished, and she seemed
+to slip down from the high places of a dream into waking. It was good
+to feel his hold again and Anne smiled at him, but he looked at her
+anxiously.
+
+"Princess, you're awfully pale, and your eyes are as big as saucers."
+
+"Are they? That's good news; they always were too small."
+
+"I'm not joking, Anne. You look all in."
+
+"I feel all right, a little tired, but I'm perfectly well. Papa had a
+pretty hard day--sometimes I think he knows he'll never get about again
+and it frightens him. He--doesn't want to be left alone with mamma. She
+fusses him and he gets all nervous and worn out."
+
+"Can't they get some one?"
+
+"No. They couldn't pay any one. The pension isn't straightened yet.
+They're taking up a collection, but a couple of hundred will be a
+miracle, and how long does that last in illness? Besides, mamma is such
+a bad manager."
+
+"You're not responsible for that. And how about me?"
+
+"You're a wonderful manager."
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"Then you ought to learn," Anne tried to tease. "It's really my duty
+to stay away until you do. A great, big, social revolutionist able to
+reorganize the world, needing one small wife to look out for him!"
+
+"It's beastly eating at restaurants, and that hill's the stillest place
+in the world at night. It's like lighting up a tomb to go home and not
+hear you or Rogie."
+
+Anne thought of the old man in the other room, eating his soft,
+childish foods, alone with the empty past and death.
+
+"I can't leave them, Roger, not yet. The doctor says that in a few
+weeks he may be able to get into a wheel-chair, and then he can come
+out here. That will be some change."
+
+But Roger did not hear what Anne was saying; her eyes with their dark
+circles beneath were too big, her cheeks too pale.
+
+"But you'll be ill yourself, and what good will that do them? Anne, Tom
+isn't going to be able to make that Chicago convention; he wants me to
+go instead. Won't you come?"
+
+"To Chicago! Now! I couldn't, Roger. I couldn't go that far away now."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+If the Mitchells had been on the other side of the world they would
+have had to manage without her. "It seems to me you've done as much as
+they can expect."
+
+Anne stiffened. "They don't expect anything. I'm not doing it because
+they expect it. There's nothing else to do. Don't talk like that,
+Roger; I don't like it."
+
+"And I don't like it either, this arrangement, not one bit."
+
+Anne flushed. She felt that Roger was opposing her opposition more than
+entreating her to go.
+
+"Let's not talk about it. No matter what they expect or don't expect, I
+should be miserable. Besides, it is impossible."
+
+"What would they do if you weren't here?"
+
+"I am here."
+
+"But, sweetheart, you say he doesn't need special attention. It
+wouldn't even take the expense of a trained nurse--if your mother has
+to have some one. A woman like Mrs. Horton could do it."
+
+"Who would pay?"
+
+"We will--until you hear from Belle, anyhow."
+
+"How?"
+
+Roger looked away into the twinkling lights.
+
+"You see," Anne said after a moment, with the prim patience that made
+Roger feel like a greedy child clinging to his toys. "There's no sense
+in talking round and round like that. I couldn't go--even if I felt
+free in other ways."
+
+Deftly Anne had poured the responsibility over him. Roger felt himself
+choking in the patience of Anne.
+
+"You don't want to go. Why can't you be honest and say so?"
+
+"I can't leave them with no one to see after papa." Anne's reiteration
+was an iceberg before the sputtering match of his objections.
+
+"She saw to him for years."
+
+Into that "she" went all Roger's scorn of Hilda Mitchell.
+
+"Then mamma has had her share and I wish to help now."
+
+"Why didn't you say so in the first place? There's no need to beat
+about the bush. When it comes to a show-down between your people and
+me, I go."
+
+Anne's eyes narrowed. Her face flamed its ugly, brick-red, "I might
+just as well have, mightn't I?"
+
+"Certainly." Roger's voice accepted Anne's decision.
+
+There was nothing else to say. Having fought over James Mitchell's
+body, it seemed grotesque to ask after him. Roger turned again to the
+winking lights. Anne moved away to the kitchen and lit the gas.
+
+If he followed--there was nothing to talk about. But he could not
+call "good night" and go off down the back stairs--to Chicago. Roger
+hesitated. Voices sounded below. Two women were coming up the stairs.
+He went slowly into the kitchen. United in the need of pretense, he and
+Anne stood together.
+
+"I can only stay a moment," Charlotte Welles' voice trailed like a soft
+cloud after the crackling sunshine of Hilda's laugh.
+
+Then Roger was being introduced to a small, pale woman with dark
+eyes that seemed to see his annoyance at being bothered with this
+introduction.
+
+As soon as they were settled, he moved toward the door.
+
+"Going already?" Hilda asked brightly.
+
+"Yes. I have a lot to do to-night."
+
+Anne's heart thumped. Perhaps he was going to leave for Chicago
+to-night. He had not said when.
+
+"Roger's going to Chicago," she explained.
+
+"To Chicago! Well, that is a trip! Won't it be roasting? Going on
+business?"
+
+What did she suppose he was going for? "Yes," he answered as pleasantly
+as he could, and knew that Mrs. Welles thought him extremely rude.
+
+"It's not so hot now," she interposed in her sweet, low voice, so
+evidently smoothing a situation she had no right to assume existed,
+that Roger resented her almost more than he did Hilda.
+
+"No. It cools off in September." He moved nearer the door. Anne and
+Hilda followed.
+
+"How long will you be away?"
+
+"I don't know exactly. Perhaps only two weeks, perhaps longer."
+
+"Good gracious!" Hilda trilled, "it doesn't seem worth while going for
+such a little while, does it? Two weeks! Hardly time to get there and
+back."
+
+"I'm not going for the pleasure of the trip," Roger said stiffly, "and
+the convention won't last more than four days. But I won't have time to
+come up again. I'll say good-by now." It was almost a challenge, but it
+was the best that he could do. Followed by Hilda's stupid injunction
+to have a good time, he preceded Anne into the hall and she shut the
+door. Instantly the heavy breathing of James Mitchell filled the space
+between them. In silence they reached the stair-head and he began the
+long descent.
+
+Would Roger really go like that, without a kind word or apology? Three
+steps below, Roger stopped, and looked back.
+
+He was going away for weeks and Anne could not even come to the door
+with him.
+
+"I won't write often. You'll see all the news in the papers and I'll be
+pretty busy."
+
+"Oh, that's all right. And don't worry if you don't hear from me. There
+won't be any news."
+
+They looked at each other.
+
+Anne went slowly down the three stairs and kissed him, a kiss of
+condescending allowance for his bad temper and rudeness. Roger's lips
+brushed her cheek. "Good-bye. Take care of yourself."
+
+He was gone.
+
+"Annie! Annie!" It was repeated in a querulous quaver from the sick
+room and Anne went to her father.
+
+"That was Roger, wasn't it? Are you going back home, Annie?" He looked
+up from the burrow of the bed-clothes, so disturbed that Anne laid her
+hand upon his shoulder to reassure him.
+
+"No. I'm not going. Roger has to go to Chicago and he ran up to say
+good-by."
+
+"That's nice. That's nice, Annie." He patted her hand, his eyes were
+already filming with sleep. In a moment he was breathing evenly again.
+
+He had wakened from his sleep to clutch at her, to hold her to his
+need, no matter what her own. True to his own selfishness until the
+end; his claims always hidden under a false consideration, just as his
+pleased "that's nice, that's nice," covered, in its implication of
+affection for her, the hook with which he would draw her to him, hold
+her between the fussy efforts of Hilda and his own exhausted nerves.
+
+Anne went quietly from the room, closing the door except for the narrow
+crack left open always for his call. In her own room, Rogie was asleep.
+If she lit the light he might wake. She could not lie in the dark
+thinking. She would have liked to go and walk far in the night, but
+Hilda would ask questions. There was no spot in the universe hers, hers
+alone, free from some binding chain, some duty to some one.
+
+In the kitchen, Charlotte Welles was talking while Hilda listened, her
+blue eyes wide in a fascinated interest. As Anne came just inside the
+door, Charlotte's eyes included her in what she had been saying and
+Anne's bitterness changed slowly to anger.
+
+"She has lost everything," Charlotte Welles was saying, "husband,
+child, wealth. But she has found peace. Now she knows. She says she was
+never really happy before."
+
+"It's wonderful. It does seem as if there must be something in it."
+Hilda's head wabbled as if over-weighted by the marvel imposed upon her
+intelligence.
+
+"Why didn't she give away her money," Anne demanded fiercely, "and
+leave her husband and kill her children--whoever she may be--years ago,
+if that's all she needed for her happiness?"
+
+Charlotte Welles looked up with such gentle understanding of her
+bitterness and hurt that Anne wanted to strike her. What right had
+this woman to penetrate one's mood, to be always down there under the
+surface of one's thoughts? It was as if she had entered a room locked
+against her.
+
+"Why, Annie!"
+
+Anne ignored Hilda and went on in a rapid, cracking voice.
+
+"How on earth you can believe such rubbish, I don't know. And to call
+it science! If science is anything, it's the seeking of effect from
+cause. Something happens, and you burrow far enough down under the
+surface and find the cause. A woman loses everything in the world she
+cared about and--she sings for joy! She never loved her husband or
+children nor enjoyed her wealth."
+
+"She did--all three. She was a loyal wife, a devoted mother, and I
+never knew any one do as much good with their money, or use it to finer
+purpose."
+
+"Then she's lying," Anne went on, "she's hysterical and unbalanced by
+grief. It's not peace she's found, it's a delusion."
+
+"It is no delusion. It is peace, the peace that comes from
+understanding."
+
+"'The peace that passes understanding.'"
+
+"That passes understanding--until you find it."
+
+"And no sane person ever will find it in--'Science and Health'."
+
+"Annie! Why, what's got into you?" Hilda flushed with shame of Anne's
+rudeness, but Mrs. Welles did not seem to notice it.
+
+"I don't suppose you know much about Science, do you? Have you ever
+read 'Science and Health'?"
+
+"No. But would I have to read a book claiming the moon was made of
+green cheese, to know it wasn't?"
+
+"Certainly not. Long ago the moon was proved not to be made of green
+cheese."
+
+"And long ago, farther back than that, it was proved that human
+beings--except a few insane ascetics--are not happy when everything
+worth while in life is snatched from them and they have nothing left to
+make the fight worth while."
+
+"No power in heaven or earth can snatch everything from one. It is
+impossible to be left with nothing. There is no such thing as a
+spiritual vacuum, because Love is everywhere."
+
+"Like the poor!"
+
+"No, because there are no poor who cannot escape from their poverty if
+they will. They remain poor because they do not understand Love. They
+do not grasp it as a force, a greater force than any so-called natural
+force that material science has ever discovered. Love is the magnet
+that draws worlds together. No star, no earth, no planet can oppose
+it. The poor, the ill, the unhappy remain so because they do not, will
+not Love. They shut themselves off, insulate themselves against the
+power of Love by their small, physical desires. 'Seek ye first the
+Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.' Christ
+understood."
+
+"Without Mary Baker Eddy?"
+
+"Anne! If I were Mrs. Welles I wouldn't explain another thing to you."
+
+"She needn't," Anne said wearily, "I'm going to bed."
+
+And she went. They could talk her over if they liked, wonder, excuse
+her, give her absent treatment. Nothing mattered. They were not real,
+her mother and father and Roger were not real. Black Tom with his
+detached love of humanity and his indifference to Merle; Charlotte
+Welles with her disgusting monopoly of Universal Love, her intrusive
+intimacy with God; all snatching at some personal comfort and dressing
+up their little fetish, just as she dressed Rogie's teddy bear and made
+a sailor of him.
+
+Nothing mattered but sleep.
+
+
+
+
+                          CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
+
+
+At the end of three weeks, Roger wrote his first real letter. He was
+going on to the Pennsylvania coal fields, then to New York, the West
+Virginia mining country, the southern cotton mills and home. It would
+take him fully a month longer. Anne read it several times, as if
+committing the itinerary to memory, gathered no picture or quickening
+of interest from it, and slowly tore the pages up. Roger might have
+mapped a trip from star to star, so little did it seem to touch her
+life. The only realities were this growing antagonism between herself
+and Roger, and the helplessness of her father and Rogie. Between these
+two points of advancing Death and Life, Anne stood, making mechanical
+motions of getting up, going to bed, caring for Rogie, listening to
+Hilda's chatter, and filling some of the empty hours for her father.
+
+This was the most difficult of all. No book held him, although he
+complained if none were provided for him. His fettered mind exhausted
+itself in the effort to assimilate experience beyond his own. He would
+put away the travels and biographies and fiction, for which Anne spent
+hours searching the library, for the evening paper or the most trivial
+bit of gossip. Sometimes this need to fill the emptiness about him with
+little concrete facts oppressed Anne until her very jaws ached with the
+unuttered words she could not summon, and her brain went dizzily round,
+searching in the vacancy, conscious of its own motion.
+
+Bound in a life of routine, James Mitchell complained if his useless
+medicine was a moment late, his nourishment delayed. He was jealous of
+Hilda's health and upbraided her cheerfulness as indifference; but when
+she was over-zealous for his comfort he grew irritable and asked for
+Anne.
+
+Anne quieted him. The old friction between them was lost in the
+profundity of Anne's indifference to all that happened. It was
+cloaked under her gentle touch, her quiet movements, her quickness in
+understanding his thickened speech, her anticipation of his needs. He
+liked to hold her cool hand after she had straightened his pillows
+for the night, or feel its sure grip guiding his dragging feet to
+the window to investigate some trivial noise in the street below.
+She read to him for hours, never putting the book aside at his first
+lurching into sleep, and so drawing him back to realization of her own
+preference.
+
+She read on until his gray head dropped to his breast and his hands
+relaxed in his lap. Then Anne would lay aside the book and look at
+him impersonally; at the thin hair, the clothes spotted with dropped
+food, the heavy canes propped against the chair arm. This man was her
+father. From this now decaying body, she had drawn life. She had never
+loved him, never been near him, and could never be quite separated
+from him. From the beginning of Time to the end of Time, the chain
+ran, a living link, a dead link, on and on; health no more permanent
+than decay, life as accidental and meaningless as death. She would
+grow old and rot; Rogie would grow old and rot; and his son's sons
+until Time itself dropped in death. Or, somewhere along the line, Time
+would snap suddenly, as purposeless in its ceasing as in its beginning.
+Her longings for a permanent Beauty, Hilda's unconscious clutching
+at happiness, Roger's childish faith in his power to create justice,
+Black Tom's ferocious idealism, all meaningless words scratched on the
+monument to Death. This overwhelming negation was Reality. Only people
+like Charlotte Welles, blind and insensate before their own terror of
+extermination, could juggle away this truth.
+
+Charlotte Welles no longer annoyed Anne. Charlotte was no more deluded
+than any one else. In the confusion of living, she had darted down a
+blind alley, but no more of a blind alley than any other path opened to
+the shufflings of humanity. At least this path hurt no one, as Roger
+hurt her, as Black Tom hurt Merle, as her father and mother hurt each
+other.
+
+Anne had even grown to like Mrs. Welles and look for her coming.
+With quiet cheerfulness she often led James Mitchell away from the
+realization of his heavy canes and numbed feet back into the only
+world he had ever known. Deep within him, the hope lingered that he
+would again be able to go to the office, make endless rows of figures
+and be commended for his faithfulness: that he would draw his salary,
+place his small bets, make his luckless snatches at fortune, become
+again "the head of the house." Without deliberately deceiving him, Mrs.
+Welles deepened this faith, so that, after a visit from her he was
+actually stronger and once managed, unaided except for his canes, to
+stumble across the room.
+
+Anne felt her always standing beside the sick man, throwing the thread
+of her faith about him, trying to draw him back to health. When she did
+not come for a few days, James fretted.
+
+"I really believe you do him good," Anne said to her at the end of an
+afternoon in which Charlotte had kept him cheerful for hours.
+
+"Faith will move mountains. You can never tell." It was the first
+direct reference she had made to her belief since the night of Anne's
+rudeness. But now, the assurance did not anger Anne. She was too weary.
+
+"Faith in what?"
+
+"Faith--in the power of faith. Just believing."
+
+"Believing that you will get what you want just because you want it?"
+
+"Not exactly. Believing in the harmony of Life, knowing that what you
+must have, what your soul needs, must come."
+
+"How do you know what your soul needs?"
+
+The other paused, thoughtful. "By listening," she said at last. "By
+escaping from the noise of material life. Material life is not Real."
+
+"It's the only reality we have, our brains and bodies and senses to
+measure by."
+
+Mrs. Welles shook her head. "No. Our brains and bodies and senses
+are not the ultimate reality. It is something else, something almost
+impossible to put into words, something you must feel."
+
+"But how can you feel without your body?"
+
+"By leaving your body behind and going into Silence. Then you Know. You
+Feel it, you See it, you Touch it."
+
+On the last words, Hilda came in, fresh and gay from a walk with Rogie.
+
+"Touch what?"
+
+"Peace and reality," Anne said with a faint smile.
+
+Hilda looked puzzled.
+
+"We were talking of faith," Charlotte explained, "and the absolute
+certainty you get in Silence."
+
+"Oh, yes," Hilda nodded. "Just getting away from a racket does help.
+Why, I used to feel sometimes when the children were small, and it
+rained so they had to play in the house, that I'd go frantic with them
+tearing round getting in my way, when I had a lot to do. I broke down
+once and the doctor told me to take things easier, so after that I used
+to go into my own room with a novel every day for an hour and lock the
+door. It helped a lot."
+
+Anne caught the twinkle in Charlotte's eyes and returned it.
+
+"I'd forgotten all about it," Hilda went on. "But I shouldn't wonder if
+that wouldn't be a good thing to keep up. Do you do it?"
+
+"I don't take the novel, but I try to get quiet some part of every day."
+
+"I don't know that I could do it without a book. There doesn't seem to
+be anything to think about when you just sit down and try to think."
+
+"Don't try to think. Don't try to do anything. Just relax."
+
+"Good gracious, I'd have to crochet or something. I'd feel wicked
+sitting like that wasting the time."
+
+"It's the one thing that isn't wasting time. It's getting at the only
+thing in Life worth getting at."
+
+"Is it? Well, I must say if you can keep your house looking the way it
+does and find time to sit round doing nothing, nothing at all, I guess
+there's something in it. I don't know but what I'll try it sometime."
+
+"Perhaps you'd understand better if you didn't 'try it' alone."
+
+"But I'd feel so silly relaxing with other people looking at me."
+
+"Other people wouldn't be looking at you. They'd be quiet too. There's
+a terrific force in many people being quiet together."
+
+"'Many-people-being-quiet-together,'" Anne whispered.
+
+"Well--if I were sure they weren't paying any attention," Hilda spoke
+with mounting excitement, as if about to venture an intoxicating drink,
+not quite certain of its after-effects.
+
+"You know that any time you care to come with me," Charlotte suggested,
+"I shall be glad. Our meetings always close with a few moments of utter
+stillness."
+
+"Maybe I will. I'd like to see it."
+
+"Next Sunday we're going to have one of the Boston Board of Lecturers
+out. If you like, I'll call up for you. About half past three?"
+
+"That's just the time I never know what to do with myself. I'd like to."
+
+But the following Sunday when Charlotte came, Hilda had not returned
+from an outing with Rogie.
+
+"She must have forgotten all about it," Anne explained. "She did say
+something about taking Rogie to the Park, but I thought she would be
+back in time. She's been talking about Silence all the week."
+
+Mrs. Welles laughed and turned to go. She was a little late already.
+"Perhaps the outing will do her just as much good. Besides she can come
+some other time. It makes no difference."
+
+In a moment Charlotte would be gone and there would be nothing for Anne
+to do but sit as she had sat for the last hour, staring out into the
+deserted street, listening to the wind and the heavy breathing of her
+father asleep.
+
+"Perhaps you would take me, instead," Anne said in a sudden need to
+escape from this stillness that had no force or peace in it. "Papa will
+be all right and mamma won't be long now."
+
+"Certainly. Could you be ready in ten minutes? There's sure to be a
+crowd and I like to walk. It gets me in the mood more than riding in a
+crowded car."
+
+Anne went quickly from the room and was back again in five minutes.
+"I'll just leave a note for moms or she'll wonder what's happened."
+
+She scribbled, "Gone with Mrs. Welles," and pinned the paper on the
+wall.
+
+They walked quickly in a silence that rested, so that, by the time they
+reached the church, Anne no longer felt the need of this escape and
+wished she had not come. But as she had herself suggested it, she did
+not know how to retreat now and followed Charlotte through the iron
+gate and up the wide graveled path, with reluctant curiosity and a hope
+that the service would not be long.
+
+The church was a low, gray stone building, covered with ivy, standing
+back from the street on a lawn, undisturbed by shrubs or flowers. Its
+leaded casement windows and outer door of heavy oak studded with nails,
+gave a feeling of age and great strength. Silently swinging doors
+led from the wide vestibule into the body of the building, which was
+covered with thick soft carpet that deadened all sound. Across the foot
+of the platform, stretching the width of the room, great branches of
+oak and huckleberry broke the hardness of line and filled the room with
+a faint odor of living greenness. Half-way down the aisle, they stopped
+and then, with no rustle of disturbance, Anne found herself seated in
+the center of the row. Mrs. Welles took a leaflet from the rack before
+her and Anne looked about.
+
+She had had no clear idea of what such a gathering would be like, but
+now, as she studied the faces of those within her range, she marveled
+at their likeness. There were old and young, men and women, but they
+all looked to have gone through a process that had dissolved their
+personal differences. They all sat quietly, their bodies in repose,
+their faces calm. They were neither eager nor indifferent. No doubt
+or uncertainty disturbed them. Anne could conceive of no opposition
+that would sweep them to anger. No power could force from these
+well-dressed, cultured bodies the cry of rage that lashed the audiences
+of Black Tom O'Connell.
+
+Here there were no slovenly clothes, no stunted bodies, no stormy,
+foreign eyes. They had found their Peace and held it with well-bred
+restraint. They were sure, not waiting; positive, not patient. Before
+this sureness, Katya's was the certainty of an elemental force striving
+through obstacles to prove itself in creation. This surety was the
+after-calm, when God, having labored to create a world, stood back
+satisfied and said: "It is good." It was restful in a way but had
+something of the same supreme aloofness.
+
+The side doors of the platform opened. Two men and a woman, dressed in
+white, took the three vacant chairs behind the hedge of green. A hymn
+was announced and the audience rose. Verse after verse they sang of
+gloating peace and furious good-will. Protected by the music, their
+calm at last broke through restraint, and flung itself aloft in an
+abandon their composed bodies never would have allowed. Anne felt the
+peace about her crack like thin ice and disappear.
+
+When the Reader advanced to the rostrum and the reading of the day's
+selections from the Scriptures and from Science and Health began, Anne
+held her patience by an effort. Before the colossal discovery of Mary
+Baker Eddy, the old Hebrew Prophets were little children searching in
+the dark. Again and again, the name of Mary Baker Eddy, uttered in
+unctuous pride of possession, struck at Anne's resolve to give tolerant
+attention, until she felt her own lips forming the words in the
+respectful pause which invariably preceded them. The old woman herself
+might have been peeping from a door, counting these ordered references,
+tabbing them against a possible omission. But the trained Reader never
+forgot, at the appointed places he gave her due, in perfection of
+delivery that set him aside from others, made him the special messenger
+of the exaggerated optimism of Mary Baker Eddy. When he had finished he
+sat down, in quiet withdrawal, and the Boston Lecturer took his place.
+
+With bowed head, the Boston Lecturer stood for a moment, in silence
+receiving the silent applause, spirit greeting spirit. He was a
+middle-aged man, his slim alertness padded to suave courtesy by
+prosperity; not the obtrusive prosperity of Mr. Benjamin Wilson, but an
+unobtrusive prosperity, like a bank-book bound in morocco to stimulate
+a book of poems. He made sweeping statements of incredible facts, in
+a slow careful way that claimed a long process of logical analysis to
+which they had never been subjected. He spoke fluently, as if he had
+said the same things many times, but inserted unexpected pauses, direct
+demands that gave the impression of deep concern for this special
+audience; a willingness to give them personally of his great abundance.
+
+At the end of twenty minutes, he, too, sat down. A faint motion marked
+the loosened tension of his hearers. The meeting was thrown open
+to testimony. Men and women rose to relate, in nauseating detail,
+illnesses from which they had been cured by Divine Truth. Tumors,
+cancers and wasting weaknesses had been alleviated, instantly in some
+cases, by a reading of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures
+by Mary Baker Eddy. The listeners radiated affirmation. If they had
+ever possessed the power to doubt, it had long ago been buried under
+the weight of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures, by Our
+Revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy.
+
+At last those eager to testify grew fewer. The Reader looked over the
+hall to find no one standing. The Boston Lecturer rose again and named
+the solo to be sung by the woman in white. She came forward in her
+turn to the edge of green and Anne sat back, disappointed to the point
+of tears. The woman sang well, but Anne did not hear. After the solo
+would follow the five minutes of Utter Silence. Anne wished that she
+could get up and slip away. Why had she come?
+
+And then, so silently, so swiftly that she long afterwards recalled
+this moment as one in which she must have lost consciousness, Anne
+felt herself swept out upon a Silence, so deep, so profound that
+there was no room within it for doubt or antagonistic withholding.
+Without a break, as if a great curtain had suddenly and noiselessly
+been rolled back, the whole hall moved into stillness. It was not a
+thing that descended upon them. It was a state into which they passed.
+The terrific wave of silence carried Anne with it; caught her on the
+pinnacle of its huge curve and dropped her gently into a peace so
+profound and so real that Anne felt it laving the whole surface of
+her body. Something within slipped beyond the tight hold of her will,
+escaped from the encasing body in which she had gripped it, claimed its
+own and fled into Peace.
+
+The rustle of others brought Anne back. She got up and followed
+Charlotte Welles through the groups smiling and shaking hands and
+agreeing on the wonders of the Boston Lecturer. She was glad that Mrs.
+Welles did not stop but went directly out, and hoped Charlotte would
+not ask her about the meeting. She could not talk of it. And yet these
+unmagnetic, unvital, bewildered people had within themselves this
+tremendous power. Close to Charlotte Welles she walked in silence,
+angry at their possession of it.
+
+Gradually Anne's mood dulled. Exhausted by her own emotion, she felt
+spiritually weak and drained. In her reaction, she could have dropped
+to sleep. She stifled a yawn and knew that Charlotte had seen. But it
+didn't matter. Without mention of the meeting, Anne left Mrs. Welles at
+the door and went upstairs.
+
+At her step, Hilda looked up from the cake she was slicing and laughed.
+
+"I never did a thing like that before, but do you know, it never
+entered my head. I took Rogie to the Park and was giving him a ride in
+the goat carriage when it struck me, all of a sudden, that I'd promised
+her. It was four then, but I came, right straight back home, although
+I knew it was too late."
+
+"You might just as well have stayed."
+
+"I suppose I might. Oh, well, we had a lovely time. Rogie was as good
+as gold. How did you like it? Is there anything in it?"
+
+"Not for me," Anne said wearily.
+
+"I thought as much. Still, I wish I could believe it. I'd like to get
+rid of that sciatica and no liniment touches it."
+
+"But if you are a scientist, momsy, you don't have sciatica; and if you
+have sciatica you're not a scientist. So they get you coming and going."
+
+"I suppose they do," Hilda agreed placidly. "Besides, I haven't tried
+that salt and bacon grease the delicatessen woman told me of. I'll do
+that to-night."
+
+But the sciatica was miraculously cured without the bacon grease
+or Science. It disappeared that very evening with a cablegram from
+Belle. She sent a hundred dollars and said she was starting for home.
+At intervals all evening Hilda read the message. By nine o'clock the
+hundred dollars had been stretched to include a dozen things.
+
+"And a wheel-chair for papa," she concluded.
+
+"Not if you buy those other things," Anne warned, struggling to keep
+Hilda's imagination within some kind of bounds.
+
+"Are chairs very expensive?"
+
+"They're sure to be. Perhaps you could get a second-hand one."
+
+"Perhaps we could."
+
+There was a long pause and then Hilda asked: "Annie, do you suppose
+that papa--do you think he will be able--it would be silly to----"
+
+Anne looked quickly away. "I don't know, mamma, let's ask the doctor."
+
+"I don't know just how to do it," Hilda whispered. "But really, Annie,
+if he couldn't use it, it would be----"
+
+"A waste," Anne finished.
+
+But it was another week before the doctor found time to include this
+useless visit in his busy round. He came in mid-afternoon, as James
+Mitchell waked from his after-luncheon nap. He stayed chatting for a
+quarter of an hour and wrote a new prescription to make the sick man
+feel that everything possible was being done. As he left, Hilda drew
+him into the kitchen.
+
+"He seems brighter, doctor, don't you think so?"
+
+"Yes. You're good nurses. His general health is wonderfully good."
+
+Hilda looked at Anne, the unasked question in her eyes, but Anne
+refused to put it. Not until the doctor was drawing on his gloves, did
+Hilda face it.
+
+"How long, doctor--is there--always a second stroke--how----?"
+
+"My dear Mrs. Mitchell," he said with his professional smile, "please
+ask me something I can tell you. After all, you know, we doctors
+are not prophets. I have known the strokes to follow each other
+within a very short time and sometimes they are years apart. In
+fact, sometimes the patient never has another and dies of some quite
+other--complication. The only thing to do is rest, quiet and diversion."
+
+After he had gone, Hilda said thoughtfully:
+
+"I wonder, if I went straight down town now, whether they could get a
+chair here to-night."
+
+"You might try."
+
+"I believe I will."
+
+Just at dusk, they brought it, a comfortable chair on wheels, with a
+little rack for books, a tiny adjustable side tray, and a footrest.
+Hilda lit both gas jets in the bedroom and Anne wheeled herself gayly
+in. This unusual game covered over the presentation long enough to get
+James settled, and then the added comfort and independence hid, for the
+moment, his terrible need.
+
+No one knew that James Mitchell cried that night when the excitement
+was over.
+
+
+
+
+                          CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
+
+
+Hour after hour, day after day, the train raced on, away from the
+smoke-wrapped slums of great cities, from great stretches of the earth
+torn open for men's greed, from the mills where little children slaved
+to accumulate the wealth of those whom they would never see. On and
+on, over the sun-soaked earth, across black, fat land; clean and empty
+desert; past lonely farms; little towns, isolated from the inimical
+immensity about them by their fenced gardens, their paved streets and
+electric lights. Above the prairie flatness, the gilded domes of their
+courthouses boomed pompously of law and order, and the tapering spires
+of churches pricked the blue sky to attract the attention of God.
+
+Long after the rest of the car was asleep, Roger sat on the observation
+watching the distant lights break through the thick blackness, come
+near, recede, disappear. Something was so desperately wrong. There was
+so much land, so few owners. So much wealth, so many poor. Myriads
+lived and died, that a few might enjoy. That a few might own the earth,
+millions upon millions tore it apart, herded in unclean cities, built
+uncanny machines to speed the process of accumulation.
+
+When at last the train dropped over the snowy crest of the Sierras and
+plunged down, down past clear mountain lakes, forest fringed, down,
+down into the richest land of all, Roger felt as if something had
+hardened and shaped to new purpose within him. Nothing in all the world
+mattered but to help; to slave too, and die trying to even the chances
+a little. When the ferry docked and the hills of the city rose misty in
+the salt fog creeping across their tops, Roger felt older and full of a
+stronger faith than he had ever had.
+
+And he wanted Anne and Rogie. They were so small and helpless and the
+world was so cruel. He had been impatient lately with Anne, but he did
+not feel now that he would ever be impatient again. He wanted them and
+the quiet little house on the hill.
+
+Half an hour later he rang the Mitchell bell and Anne peered from the
+dim light above.
+
+"It's me," he called gayly and went up the stairs three at a time. But
+before he could take Anne in his arms or kiss her, a warning gesture
+motioned him to quiet.
+
+"Papa's only just gotten to sleep and if he wakes now he'll get all
+fussed up and nervous. It's been a bad day."
+
+She tiptoed past the partly open door of the sick room and Roger felt
+the darkness within reach through and chill his eagerness. He had not
+telegraphed purposely to take Anne unawares. He had pictured holding
+her in his arms and kissing away the memory of their last meeting
+in a new effort at nearness and understanding. Anne led the way to
+the kitchen and closed the door noiselessly. The gas was not lit and
+through the open back door the fog was stealing swiftly from the hills.
+A silent tidal wave, it was sweeping directly upon himself and Anne
+standing together in the dim dusk. In a moment it would break over the
+thick, black silence of the house and engulf them in its chill.
+
+"Why didn't you let me know, Roger? I hadn't the least idea."
+
+What would have been her greeting if he had? Perhaps a wire to tell him
+to be sure and come up the back stairs.
+
+"I wasn't positive I could make it. Such a lot of delays turned up. I
+expected once to be here last week. How's Rogie? I suppose he's asleep."
+
+"For hours. Shall I wake him?"
+
+"N-o--no, of course not."
+
+Roger moved to the back door and closed it. The fog was so stealthy, so
+uncannily conscious, an inimical spirit released to stifle himself and
+Anne in its silence. As he turned again Anne struck a match to light
+the gas-taper but he stopped her. He could conceal his disappointment
+better in the dark.
+
+"Don't light the light, unless you want it. I like it--dark--after the
+last weeks. It was so noisy and glaring and dirty most of the time."
+
+Anne put the taper back on its hook. "I like it this way, too," she
+said in a detached tone that drew Roger's attention sharply. It was the
+voice of some one, not at all concerned with present reality, scarcely
+conscious of its surroundings. It was as lonely and detached as a wisp
+of the fog. He went nearer to her.
+
+"How is your father? Better?"
+
+"Yes. He's better on the whole, in some ways at least. But----" Anne
+shivered. "It's terrible, watching some one die; that's what it
+really is. He may live for years like this, good days and then a bad
+day--but--all the time--he is really dying--dying every day--a little
+bit--dropping apart--until--he drops away altogether over the Edge."
+
+She was turned to him, but her eyes strained past to the chasm beyond
+the Edge, and her hands were clenched as if she would hold the old man
+from it.
+
+Roger put his arm about her, but Anne stood stiffly within his hold,
+seeing only the terrible, slow progress of her father to the grave.
+But to Roger, it was not terrible that one old man, criminal in his
+narrowness and stupidity, was slowly dying in the same dull way he
+had lived. There was a magnificent poetic justice in it--the little
+gray mole, creeping blindly through life, now creeping blindly,
+selfishly toward death. Men in their prime poured their strength into
+the fiery pits of the steel mills; the slums of great cities battened
+on the babyhood of thousands; here, in the comfort of his home, one
+uninteresting, unimportant human unit was dying. He had contributed
+nothing to life. He would leave no unfillable space behind him. Even
+his own wife would not sincerely mourn him, nor would the faintest ray
+of beauty be dimmed in any life by his going. Impatience touched Roger,
+although he still held Anne and quietly stroked her hair.
+
+"You mustn't think about it like that. Your father isn't old, but he
+isn't young, either. He has had the average length of life. We all have
+to die."
+
+"Why?" Anne whispered fiercely.
+
+Before the mills debouching their hundreds at set hours, the miles upon
+miles of sordid streets, Roger's eyes saddened.
+
+"I don't know--unless it is to make more room."
+
+"Then why not go now--every one, quickly and cleanly--instead of
+rotting into it?"
+
+"Suicide? No. Not until you're sure anyhow that you can't do anything
+to make it better. It can't be the purpose of life, this horrible
+chaos, like the panic at a fire, with the stronger treading down the
+weak."
+
+Anne shivered. "The strong--as you call them--have been treading on
+the weak since the beginning of time and will go on to the end. If it
+would all stop--just for a day, an hour--not a human being on the face
+of the earth--not a sound--just silence. Perhaps we could hear then--if
+there's anything to hear."
+
+"Anne! You're getting morbid. What do you do here all day? How many
+times a week do you get out?"
+
+"Whenever I want to. I'm not tied here."
+
+"You might as well be, if you take no more advantage of your freedom
+than you look to have done. You're thinner, Anne, a lot thinner. And I
+don't like it."
+
+The old man in the other room was thinner, too, so thin that Anne could
+feel his shoulder blades when she put her arm round to help him.
+
+"I don't think so. I feel all right anyhow."
+
+"You couldn't possibly--and look the way you do. Haven't you heard from
+Belle yet?"
+
+"Yes. She cabled a hundred dollars. We bought papa a wheel-chair."
+
+Across the wheel-chair, Anne felt the thought leap to Roger's brain.
+They should have hired some one to help with James. She should have
+rested and taken walks and kept herself in condition for his coming.
+Like a valuable animal for his master's pleasure. She moved from
+Roger's hold, understanding of his resentment in her eyes.
+
+"He can get out on the back porch now when it's sunny."
+
+"That's nice," Roger said indifferently. "When is Belle coming back?"
+
+"In a few weeks. She cabled from Genoa."
+
+"Are you going to stay until she comes?"
+
+"No--I don't think so--not unless you're going away again."
+
+"I'm not going away that I know of."
+
+"Then I'll be home to-morrow. I can't very well to-night because I made
+mamma go to Pinafore with Mrs. Welles. She won't be back till twelve
+and I can't leave papa and Rogie."
+
+"No, of course not." There was a short self-conscious pause and then
+Roger said:
+
+"Does His Highness get that 'daddy' any better than he did? I don't
+suppose so, just because I feel I've been away a year."
+
+"Oh, yes, he does. He says it quite distinctly. And he makes a weird
+noise that papa insists is 'grandpa'."
+
+They both smiled. For an instant they had met in Rogie. Once more Roger
+tried to reach to Anne.
+
+"I often wished that you could have come with me. It was a wonderful
+experience."
+
+"It must have been. Did you have a good trip?"
+
+"Yes. We swung the convention. But the rest of it--Anne, it's terrible.
+They're so thwarted and driven! Millions of human beings with never a
+real rest, never all they need to eat, and worse than all--no hope, not
+even understanding, so many of them. Down in the social mud they're
+crawling, thousands upon thousands, like lower forms of life, not
+undeveloped, but being pushed back, down the scale of humanity. Human
+beings--going backward!"
+
+But no thrill of anger gripped Anne. What did it matter whether one
+went forward or backward, since, in the end all dropped in death. Roger
+and Black Tom spoke as if this life were the purpose of creation; the
+personal comfort of the individual the apex of creation's effort;
+while all the time, behind this violence of adjustment, Death stood
+indifferent to their misunderstanding. Across the confusion of living,
+Death's shadow lay, penetrating to consciousness in moments of illness;
+in the stillness of dawn; in moments of physical exhaustion, when the
+weary body for an interval ceased its demands and something within
+yearned toward its own without; in rare moments like the massed silence
+that had swept Anne into peace. Death was the Great Silence, the
+everlasting Peace.
+
+"I know," she said absently.
+
+"You don't know," Roger broke out passionately. "We have no conception
+of it out here. The land itself is too rich, the mountains and the sun
+and sea are too emotional. We're all drugged with the beauty of the
+land. We have no slums, no poverty as they have it in New York and
+Chicago and Philadelphia. We have graft, oppression, rotten politics,
+indifference, all the symptoms of the disease, but the ghastly, running
+sore itself we do not see. Broiling heat in summer, freezing cold in
+winter, twice every year adjusting the mere physical machinery of
+life to climate--a scramble for coal in the winter; for ice and air
+in summer; thousands of people herded in a single block, hundreds of
+families, packed like sardines in a can; layer on layer of life in
+one rotting building! Two men for every job. Millions of bewildered
+insects crawling over each other to find a little morsel to pick from
+the carcass."
+
+His voice had risen and Anne motioned him hastily to lower it.
+
+"It's terrible, dear, but please don't wake papa. He has to have all
+the sleep he can and if he wakes now he'll have a hard time getting to
+sleep again."
+
+The old man in the next room must not be wakened! He was indeed the
+great, safe, sane, middle-class incarnate. James Mitchell and his
+daughter Anne! With her "It's terrible, dear."
+
+"Don't you think you'd better go straight home, you're tired out," Anne
+suggested after a short silence.
+
+Roger shrugged. "I'm not tired, not bodily tired. I couldn't sleep if I
+went home."
+
+Remembering the tomb-like stillness of which Roger had complained, Anne
+laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"I'll come the first thing in the morning, Roger. Now papa has the
+chair, it helps such a lot. I'll come up two or three afternoons a
+week, but I don't really need to be here steadily."
+
+"Don't come unless you feel you want to," Roger said dully and moved
+to the door. He opened it cautiously, no need to warn him now. They
+tiptoed to the stair-head, kissed perfunctorily, and Anne watched him
+to the door which he closed noiselessly. The next moment the chug of a
+starting motor drew Anne's attention and she hurried to a front window.
+A taxi was just leaving, the driver's head bent to catch Roger's
+instructions.
+
+He had come in a taxi, kept it waiting, and now was going back in it!
+
+"And he thinks he's consistent," Anne whispered with quiet bitterness.
+"Dollars wasted and--'thousands never have enough to eat.'"
+
+She watched the taxi out of sight and went slowly back to the kitchen.
+
+She was still sitting there in the dark when Hilda came. At her
+mother's step, Anne jumped up and lit the light, otherwise she would
+have to explain or invent an excuse for sitting in the dark. No one
+understood without words. The smallest act had to be dragged out, cut
+up into speech and put together like an intricate puzzle. And then it
+was not really understood.
+
+Radiantly gay, her curls damp and tight with the fog, Hilda bustled in.
+
+"You just lit the light, didn't you? I thought I saw it go up."
+
+"Did you? How was the show?"
+
+"Anne, it was too funny for words. I haven't enjoyed a thing so for
+years. You must see it. There's a matinée to-morrow. I'll feel selfish
+if you don't."
+
+"Maybe I will, sometime before it goes. It'll be here a week. But I
+can't to-morrow. Roger's home."
+
+Hilda's gayety vanished. "Oh," she said forlornly, "I suppose you'll be
+going, then."
+
+"Yes. To-morrow, I think."
+
+Hilda took off her things and they had some hot cocoa. In its warmth,
+her cheerfulness returned. To-morrow her freedom would be gone. But
+to-morrow was to-morrow.
+
+"Really, Anne, I never laughed so much in my life. That's the funniest
+thing that ever was written."
+
+
+
+
+                          CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
+
+
+The next day Anne went home and the following Monday was back in the
+loft. A long period of stagnant waiting had ended in a new burst of
+hope and the place vibrated with the rush of people going and coming.
+Like the three prongs of a huge fork, Black Tom, Roger and Katya caught
+up on their unflagging faith and indefatigable energy the smaller plans
+and physical limitations of those about them.
+
+Often Anne came from a revery to find that her hands had been idle on
+the keyboard for a long time. There was no safe, quiet spot anywhere
+in life. The surface at every point was heaving, just as the surface
+of the earth had heaved and cracked on the day of the Great Quake,
+torn open by forces within itself. Until then the earth had been the
+most stable thing in the universe. Sun and moon came and went; stars
+gleamed and died away; rain beat upon it and the wind swept over it,
+but, to human sense, the old, old earth was still. And then, in a
+moment, without warning, its patience exhausted, it had risen and like
+an angry giant, struggled to hurl aside the pigmies crawling upon it.
+Anne had never forgotten that feeling, as the earth began to rock, the
+feeling of being grasped and personally shaken by a malignant force
+beyond her power to propitiate, a force growing more and more furious,
+illimitable in its anger. In a moment it might release her or it might
+go on forever until it had annihilated every living thing.
+
+There was no permanence, no sureness, no stability, no stillness
+anywhere. Often Anne closed her machine and slipped away unable to
+endure the noise and confusion. But out upon the streets the noise
+and confusion continued. People hurried everywhere. Cars clanged by
+obeying many desires to go in many directions. Newsboys shrieked their
+announcements of murders, explosions, and terrible deeds of violence.
+Sometimes Anne sought quietness by the sea, but, gripped in the law of
+ebb and flood, the sea roared or moaned or whimpered to its degree of
+strength.
+
+As the weeks passed, the longing for a place of stillness, one little
+spot of silence, grew to a desperate need. She must have it. Somewhere
+it must exist, this small place of peace where she could stop for
+a moment. She thought of the meeting to which she had gone with
+Charlotte, but when she visioned the interval that preceded filled
+with the assertions of false optimism, the hymns of gloating joy, the
+sickening testimony, she could not face them. Then the silence had
+caught her but Anne knew that if she sought it deliberately in these
+surroundings it would escape. Perhaps, somewhere else, in other faiths,
+if she searched she would find it. Anne began to search.
+
+And now, that all her thought was turned to find Silence, she found
+others seeking, too. Some sought silence in costly edifices, beautiful
+with stained glass and priceless paintings. Others in public halls,
+cozily furnished rooms, rickety buildings. In offices that did double
+service, where Business and Silence alternated like opposing armies
+occupying the same fortress successively.
+
+There were Services of Silence conducted by men and services by women.
+Some built a vestibule of music and, in the beautiful vestments of
+ancient orthodoxy, walked slowly through to the treasure room of
+Stillness. Others, in the common garb of everyday, entered without
+prelude. Some plunged from the roar of traffic into Silence as if it
+were a bath; others went through little personal rituals of reading and
+bodily posturing, as if to steal upon it unawares.
+
+Old, old faiths claimed silence as their own, and conceded reluctantly
+to the modern scramble in simple statements of the hour and place they
+offered it. Like a conservative firm reluctant to meet the modern need
+of advertising, they offered this staple so long a specialty of their
+own. New faiths shrieked of Silence as if it were a food to be eaten
+instantly before it cooled.
+
+"A half-hour of Silence, from twelve to twelve-thirty,"--like the
+professional card of a reputable physician; and "Come and be Quiet
+With Us"; "Learn the Power of Silence"; "Be Still and Know"--the paid
+advertisement of a hustling quack.
+
+Anne sought but could not find. The stained glass and wide arches of
+the churches; the few cozily placed chairs of ordinary rooms were as
+glaring in their claims as the thick carpet, the heavy oaken door and
+casement windows of the little gray stone church. The solemn music, the
+sentimental texts upon the walls, as artificial as the modulated voice
+of the Trained Reader and the bowed head of the Boston Lecturer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Outwardly Anne grew quieter and quieter. Sometimes she saw Katya
+watching her with a mingling of triumph and curiosity that would have
+interested her deeply six months before. Now, nothing interested her.
+Not even the dependence of Rogie held her to the exclusion of this
+growing need to find a place of peace. Once, Rogie had seemed to fill
+every need, but now Anne knew within herself something over and above
+the power of any person or situation quite to fill. It had always been
+so. In her love for her mother and Belle, there had been the empty spot
+of longing for a wider life and deeper interests. Then Roger had come,
+with the wider life and deeper interests, but the tiny empty spot had
+remained, the very core of herself that had never melted into Roger's.
+Now, she and Roger could scarcely see each other across the space of
+separation.
+
+Concerned with the pain of the world, Roger strode on, confusing the
+force of his own effort with the accomplishment of results. When, early
+in spring, he won the case of a Hindoo revolutionist, he was as excited
+as Rogie at a new toy. He came shouting down the loft, and because
+Katya was out, and he had to share this enthusiasm with some one, came
+to Anne.
+
+"Singh's been released. They couldn't make their case. We've got them
+on the run." Perched on the railing about Anne's desk, he swung his
+feet like an excited boy. "Of course England will chase him out of
+India again, but he'll get in some deadly licks before she does. Gosh,
+but I'd like to be there to-day. Think of it, that slip of a fellow,
+stirring up that old race, prodding it out of its centuries of sleep."
+
+But Anne did not see that old race rising from its sleep. At most it
+would be only a little turning, as Rogie turned and then settled to
+deeper sleep. She shrugged: "He will prod and then die."
+
+"What of that? It doesn't nullify his accomplishment. Suppose millions
+more still have to do it. Can't you get the romance--if nothing else?"
+
+Anne smiled faintly. "That's just what I do get--millions of
+sleepers--in an ageless sleep." Across the room, Black Tom was the
+center of an excited group, elated at the success of Singh. A messenger
+boy dashed in with a telegram. Two telephones rang wildly. "It's like a
+little child with a horn," she said quietly, "blowing because he likes
+to hear the noise himself."
+
+Roger's hands clenched and he dropped quickly from the railing.
+
+"You've got--just about as much imagination--as a flea."
+
+Anne shrugged. "Since you don't know the extent of a flea's
+imagination, your figure hasn't much force, has it?"
+
+Roger turned away and Anne went on with her work.
+
+At two o'clock she left the office and went to the flat. But even
+here she was not needed as she once had been. On her return, Belle
+had installed a practical nurse three afternoons a week to relieve
+Hilda, and the woman had filled Anne's place completely. Anne went
+on the days she did not come, but she felt her in Hilda's accounts
+of how "she rests papa and manages him to perfection," and in James'
+constant references to things she said or did for him. Now that there
+was no need to fill hours with chatter, Anne missed the need. The empty
+relationship with her father was emptier than before.
+
+In the vacuum of her isolation, Anne began to watch her thoughts, until
+she came to see them as minute machines, installed within her brain by
+some outside power, clicking away independent of her will. A power was
+working out some experiment with her, using her brain as if it were a
+dark room for the development of a film. Without emotion Anne watched
+the negative develop. She grew absorbed in the process. She often
+asked Roger to repeat a statement, and then sat motionless, watching
+its reaction, as if it were a stone he had dropped into the well of
+her intelligence. With judicial exactness she weighed the most trite
+remark, until conversation with Anne became impossible.
+
+Roger escaped it when he could. Night after night, he stayed on at
+the office and Anne ate her dinner alone. Or he returned to work
+immediately after dinner, always courteous and insincere in his excuse.
+Anne saw the insincerity but never resented it. She was glad to have
+Roger go. When he stayed there was nothing real to talk about and the
+effort of making conversation with Roger was more exhausting than the
+lonely evening.
+
+It was on a Sunday afternoon, after several such evenings in
+succession, that Anne sat pretending to read in her favorite place,
+a cushioned settle under the window that gave on the bay and hills
+beyond. It was a still day of little wind, but a dry, high fog hid the
+sun. It was three o'clock, the dreariest, the least personal of any
+hour of the day. The feeling of youth that morning has was gone. The
+positiveness of evening and lighted lamps had not yet come.
+
+Roger had gone to the office in the morning, read for a little after
+lunch and was now asleep in the darkened room beyond, Rogie in the crib
+beside him. But he would not sleep much longer. Rogie would probably
+wake when he did and Roger would play a while with him. Then, unless
+Roger went to a meeting, they would sit, each absorbed or feigning
+absorption in his reading: Roger in some legal or economic work of vast
+pretension, Anne in her novel, a thing so far from life in the maudlin
+sentimentality, spread like soft icing over the relation between the
+man and the woman, that it would better have been frankly a fairytale.
+About them the silence of the dead hour would close and they would sit
+in peace as false as the stillness of the churches and small meeting
+rooms.
+
+Anne thrust her book aside. If she went out to walk, the Sunday streets
+would echo the tread of others trying to kill the day in the same way.
+At the flat James would be asleep in his chair, Hilda napping in the
+dining-room. Anne leaned forward, her elbows on the sill, her chin
+in her palms. The Bay, flat and gray as if it, too, were exhausted
+from the week's work, stretched to the fog-crowned hills. Under the
+pall, the Sleeping Beauty on Tamalpais had passed to eternal rest. The
+commanded peace of the Seventh Day shut like a cover of lead upon the
+world.
+
+Only Charlotte Welles could move beneath such grayness, unconscious
+of its deadening weight. She would be walking now, with her short,
+quick steps, straight to the peace she entered at her will. Anne moved
+uneasily, like a sick person resisting a desired opiate. Perhaps, if
+she went once again, and tried not to hear the hymns or the testimonies
+or the selected readings, if she slipped into the back seat, just
+before the meeting closed, she might yet grasp the secret and have it
+for her own.
+
+In the room beyond, Rogie cried and Roger woke. She heard him lift the
+baby from its crib and in a moment they were laughing together. Then
+the blind went up with a noisy spring, and Roger came out, rested and
+carrying the delighted Rogie in his arms.
+
+"There, you little fake." He deposited the baby on the rug before
+the fire, threw a piece of wood which caught instantly in gay little
+tongues of flame, and laughed at Rogie's clumsy efforts to reach them
+through the screen. But Anne did not see them. She was looking at
+Roger's back, at the rumpled hair and slightly creased shirt, with
+faint distaste.
+
+Roger removed his son to safer distance, stretched and crossed to the
+window on the other side of the room.
+
+"Beastly day. I wonder how that Kenneally meeting will be."
+
+Roger yawned and, leaning against the window sash, looked into the
+gray stillness for an inspiration. Rogie, finding the pretty flames
+inaccessible and himself deserted, puckered his face for a cry, which
+Anne diverted just in time by cuddling him to her and kissing his bare
+toes.
+
+Roger turned listlessly from the window, took a cigarette from the
+brass box on the mantel shelf, and began to walk up and down.
+
+"Are you going? It's at four, isn't it?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know--I haven't decided yet. Kenneally isn't much of a
+speaker."
+
+He might not go. The afternoon would shut heavy upon them. She could
+not face it. She carried Rogie into the bedroom and closed the door.
+She dressed first and then dressed Rogie. If Roger did decide to go,
+she did not wish to prevent him by leaving the baby on his hands. A
+few moments later, carrying Rogie, delighted at the prospect of going
+out, but objecting strongly to his bonnet, which he tried to remove by
+vicious tugs, Anne came into the living-room. Roger was in his chair
+now, an open book on his lap. He looked up surprised at Anne, dressed
+to go out.
+
+"I'll take him, so you needn't stay in if you want to go to the
+meeting."
+
+"Going up to the house?" He was sure she was because Anne never went
+anywhere else on a Sunday, but he always mentioned her coming and going
+with kindly formality.
+
+"No. I'm going to church."
+
+"To church!"
+
+Anne drew on her gloves and nodded.
+
+"What church?"
+
+"Christian Science."
+
+"What!" Roger barked the word in exasperated astonishment.
+
+"The Christian Science Church," Anne said with maddening composure, as
+if she were disciplining a child for its harsh voice.
+
+Roger closed his book and rose. "Are you a Scientist now?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then what do you want to go and listen to that drivel, for?"
+
+Anne did not answer and moved to the door. Roger stepped quickly in
+front of her.
+
+"How many times have you been?"
+
+Anne's face flamed with the ugly, brick-red flush. Her body tightened
+and she looked scornfully at Roger.
+
+"I shall be late as it is," she said stiffly. "Please let me pass."
+
+"I won't." Roger knew that his anger was carrying him to rudeness,
+but Anne's manner rasped him beyond control. Behind Anne, he saw the
+subtle, low-voiced influence of Charlotte Welles. A Christian Science
+wife, believing in the muddled effusions of a sick old woman; for all
+he knew practicing her ridiculous faith upon him. Lost in a stupid
+philosophy that denied disease and poverty, Anne dared to look in scorn
+at Black Tom, at Katya, at Singh, at himself. With a quick movement,
+Anne passed him and laid her hand on the door-knob.
+
+"You sha'n't go," he cried, white with anger.
+
+"I shall go where I please," Anne answered quietly, "I don't interfere
+with you. You can go to your meeting, listen to your own particular
+brand of 'drivel,' pump up the enthusiasm of a few dozen people who
+don't know what else to do with themselves on a Sunday afternoon. At
+least, the few million Scientists, more or less, in the world, haven't
+had their belief manufactured and forced down their throats."
+
+Roger's anger died. He reached for Rogie, and before Anne knew what had
+happened, holding the baby firmly, Roger stood aside.
+
+"You're right. You don't interfere with me. But Rogie doesn't go."
+
+It was Anne now who flamed to anger. Standing upon her tiptoes she
+snatched for the baby, who, thinking it was a new kind of game, wound
+his hands in his father's thick hair and kicked with joy.
+
+"Give him to me," she commanded in a cracked whisper.
+
+Roger stepped back, for between himself and Anne clutching for their
+child, the old Anne stood upon her tiptoes defying John Lowell.
+
+"No, Rogie does not go." He turned and went silently back to the fire
+and sat down, Rogie clinging to his neck. For a moment Anne stood
+motionless in an anger that seemed to have frozen her to the bone.
+Then, with a sob that was a cry of hate, she opened the door and went
+quickly.
+
+Until it was dark, Anne walked up one street and down another. She
+passed mean houses where families sat at dinner behind partly-drawn
+blinds, and stately homes, the intimacy of family life decorously
+concealed behind thick curtains. She did not know when the high fog
+parted and the stars came out, but when the sky was all a-glitter and
+a soft little wind ruffled the bay, she found herself sitting on a
+pile of lumber at the farthest jetty of Fisherman's Wharf. The lighted
+ferries lumbered cheerfully, the fishing boats grated softly on the
+piles. A few yards behind, in the new warehouse of Giuseppe Morelli, a
+group of fishermen laughed and chattered while they mended their nets
+against the turn of the tide.
+
+Beyond the wharf, on the rocky crest of a hill, she could just glimpse
+the cottage light. She looked at it for a long time without emotion.
+She was cold and calm. Nothing could ever again stir her to anger or
+feeling of any kind.
+
+The wind freshened. The men began climbing down into their boats. With
+much calling back and forth, the boats pushed off.
+
+Anne left the wharf and went slowly up the steep, silent streets. At
+the foot of her own stairs she stopped and looked at her watch. It was
+five minutes after eleven.
+
+The light in the cottage was out, the fire lay a handful of smoldering
+embers. The room was rather cold but she was not conscious of its
+chill although she stood for some time listening to the even breathing
+of Roger asleep in the next room. Then she crept into the bedroom,
+undressed and got noiselessly into bed. At its warmth, she shivered as
+if touched by something unclean. But in a few minutes she was asleep,
+worn by her long walk and the storm of anger and despair.
+
+In the dawn, Roger woke, and, turning slightly, looked at Anne. She was
+sleeping as always, on her side, her cheek pillowed on one arm; small,
+exquisitely fair and utterly unmoving. Roger looked at her, almost with
+surprise that she should be there. And then aversion to Anne's body
+gripped him. He did not want to touch her or be near her. Never again
+of his own impulse would he wish to hold her in his arms or kiss her.
+
+
+
+
+                         CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
+
+
+Winter came, a dry winter of cool mornings and nights, and days of
+clear sunshine. Against this sparkling background, Anne and Roger moved
+side by side in almost total silence. Anne still went to the loft but
+not regularly. Roger never asked why she stayed away or what she did
+with her time. He worked now far into the night, often even after Katya
+had gone with a comforting, indifferent "good night." Sometimes they
+left together and Roger walked as far as her car with her, talking of
+their plans, never of personal things. If she noticed that Anne no
+longer came regularly to the loft, she never mentioned it, nor did she
+make any comment when Anne ceased coming at all.
+
+It was in February that Rogie had an attack of croup and Anne stayed
+away for two weeks. When he was well she did not return. On the first
+night of his illness she had moved his crib into the wing of the
+living-room they called a library and this arrangement was maintained.
+She bought a screen of silk and lacquer and converted the wing into a
+comfortable bedroom. Roger made no comment. For a few days their eyes
+held consciousness of the change and then they spoke indifferently of
+"your room" and "my room."
+
+On the evenings when Roger was home, Anne usually retired first. Behind
+the impregnable wall of silk and lacquer, Roger heard the soft swish
+of her garments as she dropped them, then the even breathing of her
+sleep. For a little while, after their forced nearness in the illness
+of Rogie, Roger would sometimes close his book, and, with tightening
+muscles, glare at this thing of silk, or stare before him, trying to
+find a clew through the present to the past.
+
+When had it all begun?
+
+Farther back than the day that Anne had snatched at Rogie. Much farther
+back than that. Perhaps, back at the very beginning, when Anne had been
+afraid to tell her people. But when Roger visioned again the Indian
+graveyard, the weeks by the lake, the Basque herder playing his flute
+in the sunny meadow, the clinging of Anne's lips that last night, and
+moments in their first months, the clew vanished in hurt wonder.
+
+If moments like those were not real, what was? If a certainty as real
+as the certainty that had come to him in the sweeping wind on the Bluff
+was false, what was true?
+
+Had their nearness even then held within itself the germ of discord?
+Had this erosion of difference, that had at last eaten its way down to
+their physical relationship, always existed between himself and Anne?
+Did it exist between all men and women, and was that marvelous nearness
+only a cloak over the stark skeleton of sex? The hunger once appeased,
+was the purpose satisfied, and did the soul demand this separateness
+for its own development? Was marriage only the lowering of an ideal
+beyond the average man and woman to reach?
+
+At farther and farther intervals, the puzzle held him. Then, wonder
+settled to acceptance. Roger no longer heard the swish of Anne's
+garments or her breathing behind the screen. He came from the office
+pleasantly tired and was content with the wide coolness of the big bed
+and freedom.
+
+But his mouth grew firmer and his eyes lit less often. Like a copy done
+in fainter wash, his eyes at times had the loneliness of Black Tom's.
+Katya watched and found it harder and harder not to go to him on the
+nights they worked alone. Often after they had separated, and Katya sat
+in the ugly hall bedroom that had been her home for years, she would
+clench her fists and pound the washstand as if it were a rostrum and
+she were addressing a crowd:
+
+"It had to come, with that little fool. She couldn't hold him back. He
+will grow now."
+
+But when, stealing a glance toward Roger, she saw him staring out
+across the loft with lonely eyes, she would have had him happy at any
+price. To have his enthusiasm bubble over in gayety as it used to do,
+to feel him warmly happy, Katya would have freely given the years that
+remained. Standing at that terrible spot of middle ground, the future
+clear in the light of the past and perfect knowledge of self, looking
+back down the lonely years indifferently, through the future lonelier
+still, nothing mattered but to have Roger happy.
+
+At last, one night in early April, a warm night of many stars, Katya
+rose from her machine and went to Roger sitting motionless at Black
+Tom's desk. It was late and the others had all gone long ago. As Katya
+took a seat on the window sill, Roger looked up, not concerned at all
+with this action of Katya's but with the confusion of his own thought.
+He had gone home to dinner that night, stirred by the soft spring
+warmth, to make an effort at some kind of adjustment with Anne. They
+had slipped so far now, to almost quarreling over the most trivial
+things. To-night Anne had objected to the way he sat at the table and
+asked with plaintive primness if the world would be saved any more
+quickly if every one slouched over his plate like a plow-hand. And he,
+in blind rage to smash that primness to bits, had deliberately done
+things to annoy her, until he felt the disgust in Anne's eyes flick him
+like whips. The remainder of the meal had been eaten in hasty silence
+and he had left immediately after.
+
+What a thing to quarrel over!
+
+Katya smoked through her cigarette and then said slowly:
+
+"Why do you go on?"
+
+So perfectly did it fit with Roger's thought, that he answered with no
+wonder at her understanding.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+There was a short silence before Katya added: "You ought never to have
+married her."
+
+"I--suppose not. But it seemed----" Roger broke off, disturbed at
+discussing Anne with another. He shrugged and made a motion as if to
+go on with his work. But he felt Katya's look on him, and, after a
+moment, met it. Her concern was too deep for insincerity and he said
+thoughtfully:
+
+"Love is a queer thing. One thinks it is going to last forever and bear
+any weight. Perhaps the very weight of the years themselves must break
+it."
+
+Katya made a strange noise deep in her throat, as if the words were
+cracking their way through some obstruction.
+
+"Love does bear any weight--love, but nothing else. Only there is so
+little love and so few find it. What the world calls love is a flash
+of desire--a Catherine wheel of emotion, Life's urge to continue
+tricked out in finery, like an old woman dressed in silk. Fools. They
+understand nothing. They are afraid of truth, everywhere. To excuse
+the suffering in the world, the human cruelty of man to man, they have
+invented the patient, anemic Christ. The fact of sex they have hung
+over with the ornaments of matrimony. And of Love they know nothing,
+nothing at all."
+
+Katya had turned while she spoke and was looking out now through
+the open window to the light-strewn city. Seen so, in profile, the
+thickness of feature was thinned to hardness. It seemed to Roger, for a
+moment, that Katya had never been born, would never die. She was like
+her own steppes, stretching away beyond the weariness of human sight,
+unhurt by the rage of men. She was eternal truth and courage.
+
+"Perhaps. But if you're not one of the rare few? We have been as happy
+as most people."
+
+"And now you are content to be as miserable as most people. To go on
+year after year, dragging at each other, quarreling, making up, hating,
+despising, driven sometimes, by a force beyond you--to--to--mocking
+Love."
+
+"Don't," Roger whispered. "Don't. You're exaggerating. One adjusts to
+anything in time."
+
+"Yes. And then there is no strength left for anything else--and
+spiritually--you die. You will die. You are weaker than she is, because
+there is no force so unbreakable as the rigidity of self-righteous
+mediocrity. You will die--in this 'adjustment,' slowly perhaps,
+as thousands of others have died, sometimes men, sometimes women,
+whichever has the finer soul. 'It is easier for a camel to pass through
+the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of
+Heaven.' But a camel goes easier through the eye of a needle than a
+high purpose breathes with a smaller fastened upon it. Adjust and die."
+
+Katya threw the stub of her cigarette violently out the window and then
+leaned from it to watch the tiny red spark expiring on the black tarred
+roof below.
+
+"What--can--I do?"
+
+Katya's brain despised the question and her arms ached for Roger.
+
+"Do? Leave. Demand your own life."
+
+"Leave Anne!"
+
+Katya shrugged. Why did she love this boy looking at her like a
+frightened baby?
+
+"Do you want to go on like this forever?"
+
+The future opened before Roger, all the years to the end faced by the
+lacquer screen, the almost silent meals, the never-ceasing need for
+watchfulness, artificial and unfree.
+
+"No," he said slowly. "No."
+
+"Then don't."
+
+"There's--Rogie."
+
+With a broken laugh, Katya got down from the window sill.
+
+"And, in a few years, there will probably be others. Then your 'duty'
+will be still clearer."
+
+She clumped away and a moment later Roger heard her heavy step going
+down the stairs. He stayed for another hour, staring out into the
+night.
+
+
+
+
+                         CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
+
+
+Now that he had worded aloud the idea of leaving Anne, the thought was
+always with him.
+
+Spiritual freedom. He wished for no other. The man in the street might
+talk as if sex were a devouring hunger, a ravening wolf ready to spring
+upon one unexpectedly at any moment. But sex without companionship
+nauseated him to visualize. There might be moments--these he would deal
+with when they arose. Now, the wind of spiritual freedom carried no
+taint of lesser, fiercer need.
+
+How did Anne feel? Perhaps she, too, would welcome freedom. He had
+visioned restrictions binding him alone. Perhaps Anne, too, was bound.
+
+The need to know consumed Roger's thought and his impatience with
+smaller issues. As one forgives trivial failings in the face of a great
+crisis, Roger grew strangely gentle and forbearing. He rarely left home
+in the evenings now, and Anne often felt his eyes on her questioningly,
+as she sat sewing under the lamp. For she rarely read; she so often
+forgot to turn the pages.
+
+It was one evening, about three weeks after he had talked with Katya,
+that Roger looked up to see Anne almost immersed under a billow of
+white material. Usually Anne's work was something small and compact,
+and more than once he had traced fanciful analogies between the short,
+swift movements of Anne's needle, mending a jagged hole in a sock, and
+the mental methods of the world of Mitchells. It was with such little
+stabs that they attempted to draw together the holes of life, patch it
+for what?--a few more wearings at best. But to-night, as if in keeping
+with the wonder of Anne's attitude to freedom, she was engaged on
+larger work.
+
+He laid his book aside and asked with real interest:
+
+"What's that?"
+
+Anne started. They scarcely ever broke in on each other's occupations
+any more.
+
+"A sheet."
+
+"A sheet? Do you make sheets? I thought you bought them all ready."
+
+"You do, if you want to throw away every one that gets a hole in it.
+But you can cut them in two--they usually wear in the center--and sew
+them up again and they're as good as new except for the seam."
+
+Roger was disappointed. No doubt it was an excellent method, but it
+annoyed him. It was so vehemently sensible and frugal.
+
+"It seems to me that's mending--in extremis. If we need new sheets I
+wish you'd buy them."
+
+"We don't need new sheets. These are for mamma. Hers are almost all
+gone."
+
+Roger felt as if he were being quietly suffocated in an ocean of mended
+sheets. He sat looking at Anne until his eyes disturbed her beyond her
+power to pretend indifference. She glanced up, but before she could ask
+him why he was so interested in her sewing, Roger spoke.
+
+"Anne," he said slowly, "why aren't things the same as they used to be
+between us?"
+
+At last it had come, the thing that had been moving toward her for
+weeks. It had taken possession of her. The matter was no longer in her
+control.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Neither do I, when I try to put it into words."
+
+Anne threaded her needle in the silence that followed and bent again
+over the hem. Bent so, with the light gilding to the cool fairness of
+her, Roger's clear-cut decision of the last few weeks clouded. Surely
+nothing so physically exquisite as Anne could be empty of beauty within.
+
+"If--neither--of us knows," he went on, "it--can't be terribly
+serious--can it?"
+
+"Then why are we talking about it?" Anne asked stiffly.
+
+"But what is it? We--we both feel it and yet you say you don't know
+either. But you feel it, as well as I. Something we used to have is
+gone."
+
+"Yes. I feel it. We haven't really anything at all," she added, as if
+facing a fact Roger had avoided.
+
+"I tried to keep it," he said bitterly. "I tried desperately for a long
+time."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Yes, I did. But one can't do those things alone." This was not
+what he had meant to say, but Anne was looking at him with such cool
+composure, so safe from all touch of blame in her small assurance of
+having done all in her power.
+
+"No, of course not. One can't do all the understanding--alone."
+
+Roger felt his anger rising, and stood up, as if by so standing he
+could reach the calm escaping him.
+
+"I don't suppose you think I tried at all."
+
+"I didn't say you didn't try. You asked me if I felt it and I said I
+did."
+
+"Well, have you any suggestion to make?" He might have been asking an
+accused witness to submit proof of his innocence.
+
+"No. I haven't any. Have you?"
+
+"We can't go on like this. We claim to be reasonable human beings and
+we might as well recognize the truth. We--" but the words were so
+final; like bullets to say--"we can separate"--that Roger temporized.
+"We must find what it's all about and try to straighten it out or----"
+Roger shrugged and turned away. "I have tried to find out what it's all
+about."
+
+"So have I." Anne went calmly on to the end of the seam, although
+afterwards she had to rip out every stitch, for not one of them had
+caught through. At the end of the hem, she looked up, fastened her
+needle in the material, and said:
+
+"Then there is no real alternative."
+
+At the decision of Anne's tone, Roger started.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"What you didn't quite like to say--we can separate."
+
+"Do you mean that?"
+
+"If you do."
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Whatever you do," Anne said after a thoughtful pause. "In a situation
+like this, the wish of one must be the wish of both."
+
+The cold patience of her explanation was maddening.
+
+"That's unfair--to put it up to me like that."
+
+"I'm not. You put it up to me in the first place. You say we can't go
+on like this and the only thing to do is separate."
+
+"You said separate."
+
+"Don't quibble." The first impatience pricked Anne's calm. "This isn't
+a witness stand. You said we had to find the trouble or--you didn't
+quite have the courage to say separate, but you meant it."
+
+"If you know so well what I mean," Roger said a little sadly, "why
+haven't you applied that knowledge more frequently? It's only when--oh,
+what's the use?"
+
+Anne waited but he did not go on. "None, unless you'll speak plainly. I
+don't know what you're referring to."
+
+"No, I don't suppose you do. You can only interpret my unspoken
+thoughts against me. Never the other way round."
+
+"Are we quarreling?" she asked with frigid politeness, as she might
+have asked a detail of social behavior by which to regulate her action.
+
+"No," Roger shouted in a need to break through that icy calm, "we're
+not quarreling because there's nothing to quarrel about. There's
+nothing at all."
+
+"That's where we began," Anne rose and carefully folded the sheet which
+she felt now was the shroud of all dead hopes. "There's really nothing
+more to be said, is there?"
+
+She was actually waiting for him to confirm this fact, put a neat,
+rhetorical period to this immense finality. He did not answer.
+
+"I don't want to discuss this again. There's really no need." She put
+her thimble and cotton back in the work-basket and closed the lid.
+"We've reached the decision. Haven't we?"
+
+After all, why try to change Anne? She would force the decision upon
+him. She was right. It was quibbling to evade it.
+
+"Yes. I guess we have."
+
+They stood for a moment looking at each other quietly. Then, to stifle
+the scream Anne felt rising beyond her control, she yawned.
+
+"Good night. There's no need to keep on talking about it, is there?"
+
+"None at all. Good night."
+
+She turned out the light over the sewing table and went behind the
+screen. Her garments dropped with the soft swish. Roger heard her open
+the windows and get into bed.
+
+He stood leaning his elbows on the mantelshelf, his face in his hands,
+for what seemed to Anne an entire lifetime.
+
+In reality it was not half an hour. This was the situation he had been
+reluctant to face, had wasted weeks of thought upon. Anne seized the
+first suggestion, yawned in his face and went to bed. It was almost
+funny.
+
+
+
+
+                          CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
+
+
+The next morning Roger went before Anne awoke. In the afternoon a
+messenger brought a note asking to have his things sent to the office.
+At dusk the express came and Anne watched Roger's trunk down the stairs
+and the truck clang away over the grass-grown cobbles. When the last
+sound had died she went in, fed Rogie and let him kick for a while
+naked before the fire. When he crumpled in sleep upon the rug, Anne
+carried him to bed, to the crib back now beside the wide bed, hers
+alone. A little later she was asleep beside him.
+
+The hours heaped themselves to days, the days dropped under their
+weight to nights. Each day was the same as another. Anne neither cried,
+regretted, nor rebelled. She did not even think. She seemed to be
+moving in a clear, white light that illuminated every cranny of the
+past, so that the shadows which had been her thoughts and reactions to
+Roger and the world, were now obliterated in this dazzling lucidity, a
+light so vivid and intense that nothing but itself existed, a wordless
+understanding and acceptance. Anne could not have said what it was she
+so clearly understood, but she moved in a petrifaction of calm. Her
+exhausted nerves were dead.
+
+On the tenth day, Anne received a short note enclosing two-thirds of
+Roger's salary, with the receipt for the rent and the electric bill and
+asking her to make some arrangement for his seeing Rogie. On the third
+reading, the meaning penetrated and Anne faced the future.
+
+The clear white light was gone. It was unclear and confused, filled
+with sudden, new needs and readjustments. Roger could not go on sending
+her so much of his salary. Nor did she wish to be dependent on him. If
+she gave nothing, she would take nothing for herself.
+
+She would go back to work. She would have to sell her brain and
+obedience again to the highest bidder, give of her best, suit her
+hours to the order of another, give to the limit of her power, always
+conscious of others waiting to snatch this privilege from her.
+Outwardly her life would be the life before she met Roger. Inwardly it
+could never be that again. Rogie made it impossible. Neither girl nor
+wife, Anne faced the years. Only motherhood was left.
+
+Hour after hour, Anne sat, tense and still, staring out across the
+garden, moving only to the need of Rogie. Unsuspected threads crossed
+and tangled her clearest purposes. She would go back again into the
+prison cell of some law office. She would begin again the deadening
+round that had once so disturbed Roger. Now it would not disturb him.
+From depths within, anger rose at the world, at life, at Roger. Into
+the pit of his belief he could throw all his own energy and hope, even
+the first loneliness,--if he felt any,--for past material comfort and
+little Rogie. She had no such pit. She would walk through the days,
+physically weary, empty of purpose except for Rogie. And he was so
+little, his demands for food and sleep and cleanliness, any kind woman
+could meet.
+
+Anne sat until dawn, the darkness within as dense as the night without.
+Not until the first faint streaks of silver broke in the east did Anne
+see the thread of a path before her. She could not move on blindly into
+the future--a future like Hilda's Niche. To the limit of her power,
+she would straighten it, begin her new life with no thread running to
+the past. She would get a legal divorce, stipulate a small amount for
+Rogie's maintenance and fixed times and ways for Roger to see him.
+
+Late that morning Anne went to a lawyer. As she moved across the outer
+office to the door marked private it gave her an extraordinary feeling
+of being two people, in two different spots at the same time--Anne
+Mitchell, private secretary, going to take dictation, and Anne Barton,
+wife of Roger Barton, mother of Roger Mitchell Barton, going to seek a
+divorce.
+
+The lawyer Anne had selected because she had once written him a letter
+in a case John Lowell was handling, was an elderly man with sagging
+cheeks, passion-weary eyes, and a fastidious nicety of dress. Within
+the casque of his manner and clothes, the soul of man was rotted. His
+surprise at Anne's blond youth flashed for a second in his eyes, and
+then with lowered head, he listened with professional interest while
+she stated her wish briefly. When she had finished he looked up.
+
+"Ah--incompatible, you say, quite incompatible. A great pity. Are
+you sure you've given the matter every possible consideration, Mrs.
+Barton?"
+
+"Every possible consideration," Anne said sharply.
+
+"Incompatible," he repeated, and his eyes stripped from the word
+every meaning but the connotation of physical repulsion. Anne's hands
+clenched and she wanted to run. But where? The world would give this
+same interpretation; under all the large vague terms with which people
+might cover them, this would be their thought. She turned her eyes
+quickly from the eyes moving with pretense of deep consideration over
+her flaming face and neck and body.
+
+"Suppose you don't do anything definite for a time, Mrs. Barton. Nearly
+all young couples--ah--after the first two or three years--reach
+this point. It seems as if the first passion almost invariably
+runs its course in that time then--after a period of physical
+indifference--aversion often--if you have intellectual interests----"
+
+Anne rose. "If you do not wish to take the case, please say so. I am
+not doing this hastily. I have thought it over very carefully."
+
+"Ah--then there is perhaps nothing else to do," he said with a sudden
+change of tone. He was like a well-trained dog, refusing a bone until
+his master's permission allows him to snatch it. "You wish to institute
+proceedings directly, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes. I would like you to act right away."
+
+"Certainly. After all, Mrs. Barton, that is the brave thing to
+do--think, decide and act." His smile admitted Anne to the regions of
+masculine logic, uncluttered by the usual feminine sentimentality.
+
+Ten minutes later, Anne was down again on the street. Dazed as if she
+had emerged into a strange world, she walked unseeing in the hurrying
+stream. She had done the one clear thing to do and yet she could not
+shake off the feeling that this act, instead of ending a situation, had
+created it. It had not existed until she had risen and spoken sharply
+to that vile old man. Until then she had been alone. Now she had
+admitted strangers. Before, her inner life had been her own; now, every
+one who heard of the Barton divorce would share it. They would surmise,
+and discuss, and nibble at her privacy.
+
+Anne walked slowly along in the hot noon sunshine, up the hill to
+the cottage. This was changed, too. It was like a house, clean and
+straightened after a funeral, the flowers gone, the extra chairs
+removed. This was divorce of which one spoke so carelessly, this great
+emptiness to be filled with unglimpsed future. No one to consider now
+but herself. Every experience to be her own, unshared, unadjusted
+to another. It was like the clearness of a cold north wind that
+obliterates all softness, sharpens every outline. Clear, cold, stark,
+the future lay before her.
+
+The next Thursday afternoon, as usual, a little before three, Anne let
+herself into the flat. At this hour, James was usually awake and Hilda
+busy warming the broth or malted milk he always took in the afternoon.
+But to-day, as Anne went up the stairs, she felt a thick silence
+envelop her, and before she had reached the top, she knew that they
+knew. For a moment she thought of slipping away. Then she went quietly
+on. They would have had to know soon. It did not matter.
+
+In the kitchen, James Mitchell sat in his chair, the daily paper spread
+open on the reading rack. Hilda stood beside him. They might have been
+victims of Pompeii, stricken at their tasks. As Anne came quietly into
+the room and stood inside the door, Hilda turned frightened eyes upon
+her.
+
+"What is it," she whispered piteously, "what is it, Annie? It isn't
+true?"
+
+She pointed to the paper and Anne knew how they knew. The lawyer had
+indeed lost no time. Anne moved to the chair and took the paper.
+
+"Anne vs. Roger Barton, incompatibility."
+
+She laid the paper back on the rack. "Yes, it's true. Roger and I have
+separated."
+
+The old man took the paper and tried to tear it, but it only rustled in
+his futile striving. He pulled at it and shook his head and then, with
+a supreme effort, tore it and rising a few inches in his chair, waved
+the torn pieces uncertainly.
+
+"I--won't--have--it--do you--hear--you sha'n't--do--this." His thick
+muttering choked him and Hilda began to cry.
+
+"Don't, papa, don't. It isn't good for you. Annie will explain."
+
+The old man cried with her, at first helplessly like a child, then more
+violently. Anne took the torn paper from him and laid her hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+"Be quiet, papa."
+
+He shook her hold from him and again tried to speak. The contortion
+was terrible. Hilda put her arms about him, the effort strangled in a
+sob and Hilda held him close.
+
+"There, there," she murmured, "don't cry, papa."
+
+As she held him the sobs lessened. Anne stood looking at them, this
+extraordinary sight of her mother comforting her father, both of them
+locked together beyond her, opposing her; with every scrap of their
+strength clutching their own peace.
+
+"Please," she began wearily, "stop this fuss. If you want to talk, I'll
+talk, but there's nothing to say. Roger and I don't agree. That's all.
+We'll both be freer to be ourselves, apart. That's all, really."
+
+"Rub--bish," Hilda sputtered between her lessening sobs, but a little
+cheered at the familiar garb of a situation in words. Silence terrified
+Hilda. "Nonsense, Anne. Freer to be yourselves! Nobody expects to be
+free when they're married."
+
+"Nobody--listens--to--me----" James began muttering again.
+"I--told--you--socialist--anarchist--nobody--in my own--house--I----"
+
+"Don't, papa, don't get all stirred up again," Hilda patted his head
+soothingly. "You're getting along so nice and the doctor said----"
+
+"To--hell--doctor," he spluttered, stopped for a moment, took a
+deep breath, and said in a quick, almost unintelligible rush,
+"I--won't--have it--disgrace--everybody--in--office--know----" his
+breath exhausted, he leaned back panting, and glared at Anne.
+
+She returned his look quietly. In his rage and weakness he was not
+pitiful, only disgusting. Thin and gray and unshaven, he was like a
+mangy old dog, clinging to the dry bone of his respectability. Icy
+nausea swept Anne. The room began to move, to gyrate in mockery about
+her. She gripped the wall with her fingers, and the smooth coldness
+gave her strength.
+
+"Listen, please, and then I don't want to talk about it any more." She
+knew that her words were audible because they were both looking at her,
+but her whole effort was concentrated in uttering them and she felt
+herself forming each syllable separately and throwing it at the two
+bewildered people before her. "We don't agree, and neither of us wishes
+to live like that; to hold each other, for what? I am economically
+independent. I can work. I don't have to stay for support. Roger
+will help with Rogie and we will go our own ways. We have grown apart
+spiritually----"
+
+But the last word was too heavy a burden for Hilda's credulity. She
+went swiftly to Anne and would have put her arms about her, if Anne had
+not eluded.
+
+"Don't, mamma. Please don't talk or ask me any questions. I am telling
+you exactly what it is."
+
+"Anne Mitchell! Do you expect me to believe that? Grow apart
+spiritually! Anne--is there--don't be ashamed--to tell us--is there
+another woman?"
+
+James Mitchell leaned avidly forward: "Old--sick--but--no
+man--deserts--my--daughter----"
+
+Under cover of the hissing whisper, Hilda murmured rapidly, "Don't act
+hastily, Anne. All men----"
+
+The muttering ceased, and Hilda broke off. But a faint shrug and
+an almost imperceptible nod toward the chair, spread before Anne's
+sickened sense, some long concealed, almost forgotten infidelity of the
+decaying old man in the chair.
+
+"Stop. Both of you," she cried sharply. "There is no other woman. Roger
+has done nothing disgraceful. If you can't understand, I can't make
+you. We no longer love each other. Marriage is a free contract. It
+fitted one condition. It doesn't fit another. We've dissolved it."
+
+The old man blinked and then turned piteously to Hilda. She went
+quickly to him. With her arms again about him, she flared at Anne.
+
+"Anne Mitchell, you're doing a silly and wicked thing.
+You're--making--papa--miserable. You've no--right--in our old--age----"
+
+James' fingers closed about hers.
+"Don't--cry--Hildy--children--ungrateful----"
+
+And then, the walls began to dance about her, the two angry faces
+oscillated like grotesque masks, the floor was sinking under her. A
+great, peaceful darkness was coming towards her. At last she could let
+go, sink down into this soothing blackness. Anne swayed, clutched at
+the wall, and slid along its smoothness to the floor.
+
+Twice she came to partial consciousness of a great bustle; some one
+was calling, footsteps rushed about, some one stepped over her and ran
+somewhere. Then she was being lifted and carried, and some one, not
+Hilda--it sounded like a faint, far echo of Charlotte Welles--said:
+
+"There, she'll be all right now. Don't disturb her. Let her sleep as
+long as she can."
+
+So dim that it was not clearly a thought at all, Anne was grateful for
+this suggestion. She heard the door to whatever place she was in close
+softly and footsteps recede.
+
+When she woke she was in her own little room, the stars were shining
+and Belle was standing beside the bed. Anne tried to return the
+cheerful smile, but the effort did not get further than a slight motion
+of her lips.
+
+"You poor little kid. Here, drink this." Belle held a glass to Anne's
+lips and supported her while she obeyed. "And then we'll talk. I
+wouldn't disturb you, but I have to get back on my case and we'll just
+settle one or two things first. No, I'm not going to talk about it. I
+don't want to know anything. But you're going away."
+
+Anne gazed at her without interest.
+
+"If you try to stick round here listening to moms' buzzing you'll
+have brain fever. But they'll buzz themselves out in a week and--"
+she was going to add, "be glad of it," but caught herself in time and
+said--"see the thing straight. Now, the only thing I want to know is
+whether you have any place you'd like to go. Several old patients have
+places here and there, inaccessible ranches and things, and I could fix
+up something. They're always inviting me but I'm not keen on solitude
+as you know." She chattered along, watching Anne with soft, loving
+eyes. The authority of her tone comforted Anne and she felt a little
+cheered.
+
+"Of course, I'm not suggesting a high-class resort but somewhere you
+have never been, that's quiet."
+
+Anne drew a deep sigh. Some new place where it was still!
+
+"There are two places I can arrange for quickly and you can have your
+choice. One's down in Monterey County, on the coast, a ranch that hangs
+on a mountain side rising right out of the sea. It----"
+
+Anne sat up. "No. No. Belle, not the sea." She looked past Belle,
+through the fog of the Bluff to the bar where the sea moaned its
+everlasting complaint. "I can't stand the sea, always moving and
+crying--never, never still. Oh," Anne shivered and Belle laid a large,
+cool hand on the hot little one gripping the comforter.
+
+"All right, sisterkin. I get you. The sea is rather a fussy old party.
+Exit the sea."
+
+Anne tried to smile. "It's--like the Social Revolution. It's been
+moaning away for centuries and it's just where it started."
+
+A look of understanding crossed Belle's eyes and was gone before Anne
+looked up.
+
+"Then the other's the thing you want. It's away up in the high Sierras.
+There's only an old couple as caretakers. You won't have to see much of
+them, but the old man--I saw him once--is as still as a tree. I should
+go crazy in two days but you'll love it."
+
+High up in the mountains, higher and stiller even than the lake. And
+the old man like a tree. Anne's eyes filled with tears.
+
+"But there's the cottage--all the things--I can't----"
+
+"I'll fix that. I'll write to Roger; he'll have to know you're not
+there anyhow, and let him struggle with storage if he wants to."
+
+"But--I can't stay away very long. I'm not going to take money from
+Roger--I'm going to work, I----"
+
+Belle put both hands very gently on Anne's shoulder and forced her back
+on the pillows from which she had risen in nervous need to manage the
+details of her going.
+
+"Sisterkin, you've passed out of your own authority now; you're in
+mine. You're going, and you're going to-morrow and you'll stay until
+you're well."
+
+"I'm not sick."
+
+"No? All right. But you will be if you don't do as you're told. Listen,
+kiddie. Is there any real reason why you can't go and go to-morrow?"
+
+Anne shook her head. There was no reason beyond her own desire. There
+never would be any more. Anne tried to smile. She did not want to cry,
+not even before Belle.
+
+"How long are you going to make me stay, nurse?"
+
+"There, that's the way to behave. Stay? Until you want to come back.
+Until--you want noise, jangling cars and people rushing round and the
+whole silly mess."
+
+"Then--I'll--never--come."
+
+"Don't then." She smoothed the pillows, stroked back the hair from
+Anne's troubled eyes and smiled.
+
+"You're--awfully--good to me, Belle."
+
+"A perfect angel," Belle agreed, but her own eyes were not quite clear.
+
+"I must have Rogie with me, Belle. Don't--try to manage me out of that."
+
+"We'll settle everything in the morning. I'm not going to insist on
+anything against your will, kiddie. Don't worry. Only you must go to
+sleep now and do not think of a thing. You'll be all right after a good
+night's rest."
+
+The peace of yielding settled upon Anne. Not to think of anything--to
+go to sleep--and to-morrow--the high, still mountains--and the old
+man--like--a--tree. Anne's eyes closed.
+
+"I'll do--anything--you--say."
+
+She was asleep before Belle had quite finished opening the window and
+arranging the blind so that it would not rattle if the wind came up.
+
+Back beside the bed, Belle stood looking down at Anne.
+
+"Poor little kid," she whispered, "poor little kid, she's rather like
+the sea herself--crying forever for something out of reach." She
+smoothed a fold in the sheet and added:
+
+"Poor old Roger--he isn't half bad either."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER THIRTY
+
+
+Roger received Belle's note telling him that Anne had left town and
+asking him to make some arrangement about the cottage in the same mail
+that he received the legal notice of Anne's action. Both letters were
+on his desk when he came back to the loft after dinner to work as he
+had done every night since that sudden, quiet ending of everything
+between himself and Anne.
+
+He opened Belle's first and read it slowly, surprise changing rapidly
+to anger.
+
+Anne had gone away. Where, for how long, why, alone or with Rogie?
+Belle did not say. The few lines breathed possession of Anne, pushed
+him aside from all interest or concern in her movements.
+
+Anne had left the cottage and gone away. He was to do what he liked
+with the place. Evidently the past with its memory was too distasteful
+to Anne. She was going to begin somewhere else. For a moment Roger felt
+a touch of the old anxiety, the need to look after Anne, manage and
+arrange for her; the feeling that she was too frail and fair to look
+out for herself, the feeling that had amused Anne so in the days of
+their engagement when, if she were a little late in meeting him, he was
+always afraid that something terrible had happened.
+
+It passed and was gone, blotted in his clear understanding of how
+perfectly well Anne was able to look out for herself. That frail
+fairness, that delicate sensitiveness behind which she tripped with
+such deep assurance of herself, was almost a masque in the completeness
+with which it hid the real Anne. Life would present no problem that
+would trouble or perplex her. With the scalpel of her assurance she
+would delicately remove all emotion, all passion, all hot, human
+weakness, wrap it neatly in her own conceit, label it and forever after
+know exactly where she had put it.
+
+Roger drew a sheet of paper to him and began writing to Belle. At
+least she had no right to withhold information of his son. But when
+he had written two angry pages he read them and tore them up. Finally
+in words, as blunt and straightforward as Belle, he demanded to know
+Rogie's whereabouts. When this was sealed and addressed, he pushed it
+aside to mail when he went out, and picked up the other letter.
+
+He read it only this once and then it fluttered between his knees and
+lay upon the floor. His chin dropped to his breast, his lips closed in
+a hard line. Now that Anne had done this thing, his own surprise in not
+having thought of the possibility was lost in his understanding of how
+perfectly this action expressed Anne.
+
+When two people loved, they came together in legal sanction.
+
+When they no longer loved, they separated legally.
+
+Anne would no more live apart without the ceremony of divorce than she
+would have lived with him without the ceremony of marriage.
+
+Anne had tidied the situation.
+
+She had instituted her action for divorce and gone away. She had put
+the little period of her standard to the past, blotted the paper and
+ordered it sent to him. It was almost like sending him a receipt for
+the old love, the months of bickering strain, itemized and receipted in
+full.
+
+Roger made a strange little noise, a kind of choking grunt of
+amusement, anger and hurt. Across the loft Katya looked up. The
+clicking of her machine stopped suddenly. Over it she gazed at Roger
+with passionate longing, pain and anger and tenderness in her small
+brown eyes.
+
+Roger was in trouble. He never sat so, his head bowed, his hands
+clenched like that. For days Katya had felt something in him that
+eluded her; something strange had entered their relationship, the
+old frankness was gone. It had gone from the night she counseled his
+leaving Anne, but they had not mentioned the subject again, and since
+then Katya had moved in an uncertainty of his motive that had been like
+a stone wall about her. At every move she had touched it and it had
+sent strange hopes and fears through her.
+
+Now, she leaned across her machine, her lips parted. Something was
+forming from these days of uncertainty, coming toward her. Katya held
+her place before her machine by an effort that at last forced from
+her a low cry. At the sound, Roger turned slowly toward her, his own
+problem in his eyes. They looked so for a moment at each other, then
+Katya's hands trembled and she rose. His muscles had answered, but his
+real concern was far away. Her lips quivered.
+
+"What is it?" she demanded angrily. "Why are you staring at me like
+that?"
+
+Her voice drew Roger's consciousness. He shook his head as if
+physically throwing aside something that held him in its grip and said
+with pitiful assumption of his usual cheerfulness:
+
+"Was I staring at you unpleasantly, Katya? I beg your pardon. I didn't
+mean to."
+
+Katya came toward him. If she did not reach physical proximity, in a
+moment the old camaraderie would rise and shut off this thing Katya
+felt forming for the first time clearly between them. Coming to the
+window ledge, the same ledge on which she had counseled his leaving
+Anne, Katya lit a cigarette and said with forced calm:
+
+"What's the matter? Can I help?"
+
+"N-o--nothing's the matter. I----" Roger broke off.
+
+"You're lying," Katya replied calmly. "Something has happened.
+Something--very--big to you."
+
+For a second Roger stiffened in resentment of her assurance. It was
+like the first time he had ever seen her, when her certainty had
+annoyed him. Then the memory of all the past months of friendship and
+understanding, shamed the insincerity of denial. He picked the lawyer's
+letter from the floor and handed it to her. Katya read it and without
+the least change of expression returned it, but her whole squat body
+trembled violently and only by drawing deeply on the cigarette could
+she maintain an outward semblance of poise.
+
+Roger sat fingering the letter. Now that he was sharing this with
+Katya, emotion was rapidly chilling to intellectual speculation.
+What would have happened between him and Anne if they had not done
+this thing? Would they really have adjusted in time? Would they have
+bickered to weariness and dropped at last from spiritual exhaustion to
+any compromise that held outward peace? Would he have fallen to the
+revolting relationship suggested by Katya?
+
+Why had Katya said that? From her knowledge of him or from her own
+experience? She had spoken so earnestly, as if her certainty were a
+concrete thing she was thrusting into his keeping. It was no general
+warning gathered from vague reflection of life or observation. Katya
+knew--either herself or him to the deepest recesses.
+
+What was the source of Katya's knowledge?
+
+She was so wise and still and dark, like the night. Gazing at her
+now, Roger felt as if he were gazing into the well of human impulse,
+weakness and strength. In it lay understanding of the death of love
+between himself and Anne.
+
+"What is it?" she demanded turning suddenly from the night outside.
+
+"I was thinking of something you said to me and wondering why you said
+it."
+
+"Yes. What was it I said?"
+
+"You said that if I did not separate from Anne I would stay and----"
+It was difficult to say even to Katya and he stumbled, annoyed at the
+touch of scorn that came to Katya's eyes. It was like the first look
+she had ever given him,--the nice small boy who had called a silly
+meeting. "That there would be other children," he flung at her, "and
+that I would then see my duty clearer to stay. Did you mean that I was
+so bound in physical ties that I could not break them. Is that what you
+meant?"
+
+Katya nodded. "If you hadn't separated, what else? If you had gone
+on living with her, you would have gone on 'loving.' Nothing else is
+possible. And because you are an idealist and must have harmony, you
+would have tied together the soul and body, because only so would you
+not have been ashamed before yourself. You would have done what many
+millions have done and will do till Time ends. You would have come
+to deny the existence of Love. You would have talked of the death of
+physical passion and the survival of something else, in the large vague
+words that dead souls use, like you talked of 'adjusting.' You would
+have stifled the body because you could not make it one with the soul.
+Or--you would have stifled the soul. With you I do not know--which it
+would have been I am not sure. But now your soul has a chance. Perhaps,
+some day, you will find another woman and then----"
+
+"Never," Roger began vehemently, and stopped.
+
+After all, who could say? He had not meant to marry until years later
+than he did. He had meant to go to many countries and do many things
+alone. He had not even thought of Anne in that way, half an hour before
+they stood alone among the dunes, and his need had shaped itself from
+the wind and fog.
+
+"Perhaps," Katya said slowly, "it will be never. I am not sure. Perhaps
+you will never love. I do not know."
+
+She was looking at him with faint bitterness and his interest in her
+certainty hardened to impatience. "Perhaps I won't," he said shortly,
+"since, according to you, so few people even know what it is. Why
+should I expect to be one of the chosen few?"
+
+Katya looked away. "I don't know--perhaps because you need it?"
+
+"Need what?" This was almost as tenuous as some of Anne's involved
+reactions. First Katya wanted him to be free for his soul, then she
+wanted this same soul meshed and tangled in an absorbing passion. Roger
+looked at her impatiently now, turned from him, again gazing out across
+the roofs. Then his impatience vanished as suddenly as it had come.
+
+Katya looked tired to-night. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had not
+slept. Her thick lips held the cigarette uncertainly. Swarthy, squat
+and blunt, Katya's body conveyed a feeling of unsureness, as if she
+were trembling just beneath the surface. He had no right to intrude on
+her sympathy, but it was so easy to monopolize Katya's understanding.
+He laid his hand on her knee and started to feel the vibration of her
+body. She must be holding it in check by her supreme will.
+
+"Never mind, Katya, let's not probe too deeply to-night."
+
+But he knew that Katya did not hear. She was reading in places hidden
+from him, the answer to his own question.
+
+"You need to love," she said slowly, as if she were translating from
+a foreign tongue, "because there is a chance that you are worth it.
+If you love you may be truly great. If you never love--you will go no
+higher than now--and--it will be all wasted," she ended in a whisper.
+
+Roger felt that Katya was actually drawing a curtain back before him, a
+thick, black curtain that hid strange things he did not wish to see.
+
+"Well, let's hope that whatever ought not to be wasted, won't be," he
+said with forced lightness.
+
+"You--will--be afraid," Katya whispered and leaned so close that
+involuntarily Roger stepped back. At his motion, she laughed in scorn.
+
+"Yes, that is what you will do when you see it coming. You will step
+back. You will run away. You will be afraid of love."
+
+"Oh, no, I won't. Why should I be afraid?" With an uncertain smile
+Roger tried to turn the tide creeping from the pit that Katya had
+opened.
+
+"Because it hurts." Katya shuddered so violently that Roger saw the
+heavy muscles of her shoulders and neck quiver. "It hurts more than any
+pain in all the world. It burns out everything in the world, in you,
+but itself. It takes your brain and your body and makes white ashes of
+them. It takes you, the individual, and melts you into the world. It is
+the volcano through which the highest force of spirit finds expression.
+There are not many volcanoes in the world or the earth would melt in
+flames. There are not many who can love or the race too would melt
+away. Through all the ages a few mountains above the level, flat earth.
+A few who can love, only a few. That is love. Would you run away?"
+
+In spite of her body trembling as with cold, little beads of moisture
+stood on Katya's face. It was too fierce, too elemental, too naked.
+Roger looked away. A choking noise from Katya drew his eyes again.
+She was gazing at him now with anguish and hatred in her eyes. Roger
+stepped back. The blood flamed into his brain, then rushed away,
+leaving him cold and sick at the stark nakedness of Katya's revelation.
+
+"Don't," he whispered, "don't."
+
+Slowly the spark in Katya's eyes faded. She gazed at him blankly with
+the dead eyes of a statue. Then, with a quick shudder she came back to
+life.
+
+"Never mind," she said in her husky whisper. "It isn't your fault."
+
+"I--I never--dreamed--it isn't possible--you can't----"
+
+"Oh, keep quiet. What does it matter? I don't mind your knowing. I
+didn't choose to love you. I don't respect you a great deal or admire
+you in many ways. You're so young, so undeveloped, like a baby. Stop
+staring like a frightened child. It doesn't matter, I tell you. It
+doesn't matter."
+
+And, in spite of himself, Roger felt that it did not really matter so
+very much. Katya, the Russian Jewess, with her squat body, her strange
+foreign past, was a being of another world, as she stood there talking
+of volcanoes and white ashes and souls that melted in their own fire.
+
+If she had been of his own race, his own age--but no woman of his age
+and race would have said those things, would have thought them, would
+have felt them. Disgust rose against his will, disgust seated deep in
+the past of his people, disgust of flagrant confession like this.
+
+Katya smiled, a twisted smile of pity for the feeling in him. His lips
+moved to deny it, but against the penetration of Katya's knowledge, the
+falsehood died.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said quietly, and knew that it sounded like Anne
+regretting the pain and sorrow of the world.
+
+"You needn't be. I'm not. Can't you stop staring and trying to pretend?"
+
+"Yes," Roger snapped, angry now with her and with himself, "when you
+stop pretending too. You talk of melting fire and volcanoes and yet you
+say it doesn't matter. It must matter. It----"
+
+"It doesn't matter--as you mean. You understand nothing at all. Will
+you please go away?"
+
+Roger's head dropped and he turned from her.
+
+Her whisper followed. "Please forget. You can if you try because it
+really doesn't matter--to you." The last words were so low and Roger
+already so far across the loft that he did not hear them. He went
+without looking back.
+
+But as he walked slowly home, he knew that something within himself had
+gone forever. Never again would he be absolutely certain of any human
+being. Katya, the indefatigable worker, the passionless comrade, the
+clear thinker; Katya the unconfused, had tangled life and the threads
+that bound one to another beyond his power of ever straightening. Never
+again would he be able to say of any human being "I am sure of this. I
+am positive of that."
+
+It was a warm night but Roger was cold and lit a fire. Before it he sat
+till dawn, moving only to reach for wood in the basket on the hearth.
+
+Was Katya right? Would he run from love if it ever came to him,
+devastating burning passion in a body other than Katya's? Before such a
+love as this his love for Anne was the flickering of a tiny flame, as
+small, as pale as Anne's feeling for a world beyond the narrow limits
+of her own individual safety.
+
+And Anne?
+
+Again Roger lived that first hour on the Bluff, his own surprise and
+tenderness at Anne's kiss. The night on the lake when her lips had
+clung as hotly as his own.
+
+What was he himself?
+
+What was Anne?
+
+To-night, in this whirlwind that was Katya, he felt strangely near to
+Anne. When at last he groped in the wood basket and found it empty,
+he rose and went to bed. The east was lighting. The bed was wide and
+chill, as if the little ghost of Anne were there beside him.
+
+
+
+
+                          CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
+
+
+Day after day Anne sat at rest in the vast silence. Far back in space
+and time she had waved a last good-bye up the black funnel of the
+staircase to Hilda, holding Rogie, for, in the end, Belle had prevailed
+and Anne had come alone. Trains and stages and the creaking wagon of
+old Timothy Potter had brought her from the world below and laid her
+in the heart of this little grassy meadow. Ringed by mountain peaks it
+lay, small and still, at the top of the world.
+
+In the morning the sun rose with sudden gladness, not with the slow
+reluctance of the lowlands, but as if forced by its own energy and
+desire from the blackness of night. All day it poured its warmth into
+the meadow and when it went, yielding to night in a blaze of color; it
+called good-by in brilliant purple and crimson and went as gladly as it
+had come. In the afternoons a busy little wind came down from the snowy
+peaks, went its round of inspection over the lush green grass of the
+meadow, chatted with the little brook, whispered to the trees, saw all
+was well and slipped back again into the granite gorges. The stars came
+out, not with furious twinkling and effort to reach through to men so
+far below, but, with still gold, they moved forward into night.
+
+It seemed to Anne that she made no definite motion of her own volition.
+The day came, lifted her into the perfect rhythm of its rotation,
+carried her through the clear warm morning, the still gold-filled
+afternoon, deposited her gently in the deep black peace of night.
+
+This was the silence she had sought, the perfect peace. No artificial
+formula summoned it. No bodily posture propitiated it. It was there,
+deep, all pervading, everlasting, to one's need.
+
+Perhaps, in incalculable space, other worlds were being made and
+destroyed. But this world was finished. In the marvelous perfection of
+its completion, the beginning was impossible to visualize, an ending
+inconceivable. No force could ever move again those granite peaks,
+melt the glacial ice, upheave the profound permanence of that tiny
+grassy meadow. It was done; perfectly done and left in peace.
+
+Even old Timothy Potter and his wife were part of this profundity
+of accomplishment. They could never have been other than they were.
+Through the years of close companionship they had grown to look alike.
+It was impossible to imagine them ever having been younger, slimmer,
+more agile than they were. They must always have been together since
+the beginning of time, stout and quiet, with their understanding smile,
+their white hair, the little wrinkles of happiness about their kindly
+eyes.
+
+As a separate human unit, apart from the spirit of the universe, she
+no longer existed. She was alone with old Timothy and Mary, his wife,
+at the very center of the all-living; so deep within the heart of Life
+that words were not needed. They communicated in silence like the earth
+and grass and trees. They were not bodies, opposed in their humanity to
+an exterior spirit without. They were part of the whole, as grass, the
+gnarled cedars growing in the clefts of the granite mountains, and the
+brook bubbling through the little meadow, were parts. Sitting in utter
+stillness Anne felt this engulfing Unity, drawing her gently down into
+the single purpose that ran through the granite mountains, the dancing
+brook, the rustling leaves, through her own body, and linked them all,
+each to the other.
+
+Now, a poem of Wordsworth that she had thought silly and sentimental in
+the days of college extension, came back to her with new meaning, and
+often, sitting on the porch after the early supper, watching the day's
+gorgeous farewell to the granite peaks, Anne whispered slowly:
+
+    To her fair works did Nature link
+    The human soul that through me ran;
+    And much it grieved my heart to think
+    What Man has made of Man.
+
+The rest of the stanzas she had forgotten, except the three final lines
+of all:
+
+    If such be Nature's Holy plan,
+    Have I not reason to Lament
+    What Man has made of Man?
+
+Far off beyond distant Dana, rising in ice-capped majesty above the
+last range of mountains, hate and discord and confusion were positive
+qualities. Men struggled against each other, ideals clashed, faiths
+oppressed. Even love fought for its place and in the end surrendered.
+There was nothing sure, nothing positive, nothing motionless like this
+in its own perfection. It was all distorted, ugly and forever battling.
+
+Sitting on the porch, after an early supper, watching the day's
+farewell to the granite peaks, Anne's eyes filled with tears. If only
+she had Rogie with her she would never leave this peace. The world
+beyond could fight its futile battles. If only Rogie were with her,
+nothing would be lacking. Undisturbed by the world's confusion, they
+would live out their lives, and sink, at last into the stillness of the
+earth.
+
+What did it matter if they made no place for themselves among men;
+if no one ever heard of them; the ambitions of men were such pitiful
+things?
+
+In the arrogance of his conceit, man had appropriated to himself the
+pinnacle of creation. In his fury of effort he rushed about over the
+surface of the great, still earth, erecting his little cities and
+civilizations, setting up his little philosophies for the guidance
+of others. His ideals, his religions, his pretentious systems of
+thought, so futilely abstruse and complicated, were like the rules and
+regulations for the guiding of traffic in public places: "Keep to the
+right"; "turn here"; "cross there"; vast in their pretension of public
+usefulness; needed because of the confusion created by himself. In the
+peace of the mountains his efforts had less cohesion, less purpose
+than the movements of the ants, running here and there, making long
+circuits about some tiny obstacle. So man made circuits through his own
+philosophies in a stupendous effort to reach the truth which he had
+lost in the involved processes of his own journey to it. Anne could
+almost see these myriads of tiny individuals rushing about over the
+surface of life, jostling, shouting, getting in each other's way, going
+down, being trampled, struggling to rise, each shouting his own foolish
+solution of the problem of life.
+
+When Anne had been a month in the mountains she wrote to Belle asking
+her to find some way of sending Rogie. Belle wrote back promising to
+do so, even to bring him herself, if no other way opened, but the days
+slipped again to weeks and Rogie did not come.
+
+Anne grew restless. The peace was disturbed now by this need. At the
+end of the second month she wrote more insistingly, but this time Belle
+did not answer.
+
+The leaves began to fall. In the mornings the grass of the meadow was
+white with frost. The nights were clear, black and cold now with a kind
+of thrill in the coldness, as if the air were tingling with hidden
+excitement.
+
+Anne's restlessness increased. Something was creeping upon the world
+from the places hidden beyond all puny human knowledge.
+
+She no longer sat for hours on the porch, absorbed in the peaceful
+stillness, but moved about the house or went for long walks. In the
+evenings she sat with Mary and Timothy, and, although she rarely
+listened to the words, she liked to hear Timothy read from one of their
+few books. He read slowly with long pauses instead of comment. These
+pauses were like caves into which the old people went silently, hand
+in hand, to look for the deeper truths hidden in words. At the end of
+these pauses they smiled quietly at each other and the reading began
+again.
+
+It was one evening in mid-September that a nervous motion of Anne's
+disturbed the reading and Timothy looked over the steel rim of his
+spectacles with kindly interest:
+
+"You're worried."
+
+"I'm sorry," Anne apologized. "I didn't mean to interrupt. I was
+thinking about something else."
+
+Mary Potter leaned across the red-checked cloth and laid her hand on
+Anne's.
+
+"You were thinking about the baby. Isn't your sister going to send him?"
+
+"I don't know. I can't make it out and I feel so helpless. You won't be
+going down to Milton again for mail for weeks, will you?"
+
+"I hadn't thought of going again this year," Timothy took off his
+glasses now and laid them on the closed book. "I don't usually go after
+the middle of September. Soon the road'll be closed even to Milton."
+
+"Closed!"
+
+"In a few weeks now the snow'll begin."
+
+"Nobody can get in after the snow begins," the old woman explained.
+
+"Nothing can get through!"
+
+"Nothing gets through after the snow begins. Pretty soon it'll come and
+we'll be shut in tight till Spring."
+
+Anne rose quickly. "Shut--in--tight till Spring!"
+
+Timothy nodded and his eyes lit as if in welcome of the snow.
+
+"Oh, it's wonderful then," he said softly. "You think it's quiet and
+peaceful now, but it ain't nothing to what it is then--between the
+storms. You'll love it, white and so still you can almost hear God
+movin' round. And then the storms." He rose, the first restless motion
+Anne had ever seen him make. "They're wonderful. Trees that have stood
+for centuries go crashing down. Mountain sides slip away." His eyes
+blazed as if he were watching the Creator at work. "When Spring comes,
+it's a new world. Me and Mary go round like children, don't we, mother,
+looking up things to see if they're there yet. Last Spring that little
+creek down there came a~bubbling up to look at us, just like a new
+baby, laughing and smiling through the snow. It weren't there the year
+before. A storm cut the channel and there it was dancing and laughing
+as if it had just been waiting to surprise us. Wasn't it, mother?"
+
+The old woman nodded. "And do you remember that spruce we used to call
+'The Hunchback?'" She turned to Anne. "It was so old and twisted and
+it never seemed happy, like other spruces; they're always so glad and
+straight. We used to wish a storm would take him, for his own sake, and
+one winter that gorge yonder opened and when Spring came, he was gone."
+
+"Gone!" Under cover of the snow, cliffs slid away, gorges opened,
+century-old trees disappeared!
+
+"Yes. Winter makes great changes up here in the mountains. Down in
+the cities you think winter is a time when everything stops and rests
+and nothing moves. But up here we see it moving. It's like watching
+God fix things up, cut out a bit here and there, tinker round making
+improvements. Nothing ain't ever fixed to stay forever. It stands to
+reason it can't be. There wouldn't be any life to things that's fixed
+like that. Things keep moving and changing. Why, that doesn't frighten
+you, does it?" he asked curiously at the look in Anne's eyes. "There
+ain't nothing to be afraid of, Mrs. Barton."
+
+"I'm--not afraid," Anne whispered. "Only I--don't want it to change. I
+want it to stay like this--perfect always, quiet and still."
+
+Timothy shook his head and smiled gently. "Oh, no, it wouldn't be good
+that way. You wait and see. You'll love it. Why, me and mother's often
+spoke about it--when we go, we'd like to be out in a big storm and just
+be swept down. Not be sick and helpless for a long time, just have
+God throw us in along of some change He's making and use us again in
+another way, wouldn't we, ma?"
+
+The old woman nodded. "It would be a grand way to go. I suppose we'd
+get there in the end just the same, even if we was buried in one of
+them tight little city cemeteries under a marble slab like people put
+over the dead as if they wanted to keep them shut up in their little
+boxes forever; or even if we was burned like some people hold with,
+we'd get back into the earth somehow. But folks have their preference,
+and me and pa'd like to go, as he says, in some storm that'd sweep us
+out clean and sudden into the midst of things."
+
+Into the midst of things!
+
+For a few moments Anne stood motionless, her hands gripping the back
+of the chair, staring at the old people, who, lost in the coming of
+the snow, seemed already to have slipped away together--into the midst
+of things. Then, without a word, she went quickly out of the room and
+upstairs to her own.
+
+It was very cold but she threw the window wide and leaned far out into
+the night.
+
+In the full moonlight, the peak of Dana rose, the burnished helmet of
+a giant warrior leading the mountains into the coming battle. In the
+black secrecy of the granite gorges the courier wind ran swiftly with
+its orders. The trees took counsel together. Everything was whispering,
+moving, preparing. Nothing was motionless any longer in the security
+of its own permanence. Everything was awaiting now the fulfillment of
+the law beyond its power to anticipate, change, or deviate from its own
+purpose.
+
+In a few weeks now the snow would come. Mountain sides would slip away.
+Giant trees go crashing down. New rivers open. God would tinker with
+the world! Make his changes, form it to his further plan.
+
+Nothing was completed beyond change. Nothing was still. From rocks
+to man, the force moved, making, changing, destroying, recreating,
+fashioning to--what? Chaos or perfection.
+
+There was no permanent silence and peace apart from motion, from the
+ever-changing march of the universe on--to what? A purpose hidden from
+finite sense. A scale so vast that its first note was lost in the birth
+of time, its last in infinity.
+
+And she, deaf to this tremendous harmony, had stood scornful of all but
+the small, thin note of her own personal security! The chord of the
+world's pain, so clear to Roger and Black Tom, she had not heard. Of
+the perfect scale so clear to Charlotte Welles, she had not grasped a
+note. The joy of life that thrust through her mother's muddled thinking
+was a far sweeter note than her own blind assurance of superiority.
+Even the sensuous longing of Merle for physical beauty was a finer
+understanding of the purpose of life than her own.
+
+The moon had moved on across the world, the little meadow lay in
+darkness, when Anne closed the window at last and went to bed.
+
+A week later, the first snow fell. It came in the night and Anne waked
+to a white world so white and still that the very stillness throbbed
+with its own intensity. Anne stood for hours staring out at the
+snow-filled hollows. Under that thick white, perhaps change was already
+beginning, a little opening here, a little closing here, the small
+first notes of the great orchestra tuning for the vast symphony.
+
+In the night the snow fell again, thicker, whiter, heavier.
+
+Early in the morning Anne sought Mary Potter.
+
+"I can get through, can't I? If I go at once?"
+
+"Yes. But there won't be many days longer. The snow's going to be heavy
+this year. It's going to be a wild winter. Did you hear that crash last
+night? It was that cedar you say looks like an old woman with a basket.
+It snapped clear off like----"
+
+"If I pack to-day, can Mr. Potter get me down to Miller's? The stage
+will take me to Raymond."
+
+The old woman was making bread, her arms deep in the clinging dough.
+But as Anne spoke, she scraped the dough from them and came quietly
+round the table.
+
+"You're going back and, do you know, I'm glad. We'll miss you. When we
+heard you was coming we were kind of upset only there didn't seem to be
+any good reason why you shouldn't. But now, we'll miss you. You fit in.
+I guess me and pa got to think we were the only people that like it
+quiet and I suppose there's lots--even down there." She always spoke
+so of the world beyond the mountains, "down there," with a nod and a
+little gesture out and downward.
+
+"Yes. I think that they want quiet down there more than they want
+anything in the whole world. They look and look for it and--some find
+it. The world is getting noisier and faster, and yet there are more
+and more people looking for--Stillness." She smiled. "Churches even
+advertise it in the papers--half hours and quarter hours of Silence."
+
+"Well! Down there they'd make a business out of most anything, wouldn't
+they? Advertising silence! Why, it's about the only thing everybody can
+have."
+
+"Yes--but we don't find that out. We're all making such a noise looking
+for it."
+
+Mary Potter wiped one hand on her apron and laid it on Anne's shoulder.
+"I guess you won't make much noise looking for it now, will you?"
+
+"No--I don't--think I will. I'll try not to, anyhow."
+
+"I'd like to have seen the baby. His picture's awful cute."
+
+"He is cute. And as good as gold."
+
+"Maybe you'll want to come back in the Spring and can bring him with
+you?"
+
+Anne's lip trembled. "I'm never coming back again, Mrs. Potter,
+unless--I don't have to come."
+
+The old woman did not answer for a moment and then she nodded. "I
+know. Well, I don't think, my dear, you'll ever have to come again.
+You--don't--lose it--once you really get it up here."
+
+She patted Anne's shoulder, but Anne suddenly threw her arms round the
+other and kissed her. The old woman's eyes lit with pleasure. She said
+nothing. She rarely did when she understood.
+
+
+
+
+                          CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
+
+
+As she stepped from the train into the roar of the city, Anne
+straightened her shoulders and smiled:
+
+"Perhaps I'll get to love the racket as much as Belle does."
+
+She let herself into the flat and went noiselessly up the stairs to the
+hall. In the front room her father was talking to Rogie. She could not
+catch the words but she heard the baby's crow of delight and gripped
+the balustrade to keep from surprising the old man too suddenly.
+
+The kitchen was empty but Hilda was on the porch picking dead leaves
+from a geranium. The kettle was boiling and a bottle of malted milk
+stood beside the inevitable wad of crochet on the table. Very softly
+Anne closed the door and waited. In another moment the kettle boiled
+over and Hilda turned. At the sight of Anne, she stepped back, stared,
+and then came with a little rush and took Anne in her arms. When she
+stood away at last, her eyes were full of happy tears, but she said
+gayly:
+
+"I believe you just love to startle people nearly out of their skins.
+Well, you certainly did give me a turn. I suppose it was the dog that
+howled all night, but when I saw you there--for a minute--I almost
+thought----"
+
+"It was my ghost. Moms Mitchell! You are superstitious."
+
+"No, I'm not. Not a bit. I never held with those old sayings but it did
+give me a start." She still held Anne's hand and stroked it, reluctant
+to relinquish the comfort of reality.
+
+"Do I look like a ghost?"
+
+"You certainly do not. My, but you're a different girl altogether. Papa
+will be surprised."
+
+Anne laughed. "If my appearance has the same effect on him as it had on
+you, you'd better prepare him. Did he hear the dog too?"
+
+"Go on with you. I don't believe those things. No, I don't think he
+did. Papa sleeps fine now. He's better a lot too. He got down onto the
+landing yesterday and sat in the sun for an hour."
+
+"Papa! Got down those stairs to the landing! He must be improved."
+
+"He is," Hilda said with subdued pride. "Papa's changed in the last two
+months, Annie. He's different--in a great many ways. He's more like he
+was--at first--before you children were born. You won't know papa in
+some ways."
+
+"Hardly, if he's like he was before I was born. Perhaps we'll have to
+be introduced."
+
+Hilda smiled, but Anne saw under the amusement a kind of glad
+possession and knew that a new link had been forged between her father
+and mother. For an instant, loneliness touched her and she wondered
+what these months had done to Roger. She had changed. Her mother and
+father had changed. Had Roger changed too?
+
+"I'm dying to see Rogie. Shall I go in or do you want to tell papa
+first?"
+
+"I'll just give him a hint. You wait here. He always has his milk in
+the kitchen and I usually have tea with him. Good gracious, I forgot
+all about the tea."
+
+"I'll make it. You run along and hint. If I don't see Rogie in a minute
+I'll be howling like that dog myself."
+
+As she made the tea Anne's hands shook with excitement. It was all so
+strange, filled with a vibrant livingness it had never had before. In
+a few moments, she heard them coming along the hall, the tap of her
+father's canes, his shuffling step, Hilda's gleeful laugh, as they
+stopped just outside the kitchen door.
+
+"No, I'm not joking, papa, we've got company to tea. I can't help it if
+you didn't hear them come. No, it's not Charlotte and I'm not going to
+tell you who it is."
+
+"You can't fool me. When your eyes shine like that it's something good.
+Do you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see Annie come in most any day."
+
+"Now--how--on earth--did you----"
+
+James laughed. "We've been married more than thirty years and you never
+put one over on me yet."
+
+He turned the knob and came shuffling into the kitchen. Hilda followed
+with Rogie. Anne had a passing flash of her father, thin and gray, but
+with a happy twinkle in his eyes; Hilda smiling behind him and Rogie
+clinging tightly to her neck, before her eyes filled with tears and
+they all blurred together.
+
+Leaning unsteadily on one cane, James Mitchell put his arm round her.
+
+"She tried to fool me, Annie, but I smelled the rat. I knew you'd get
+lonely and come running back when we didn't expect you."
+
+Anne tried to smile. "But you did expect me. You're not surprised a
+bit." Over his shoulder she was watching Rogie in hungry fear that he
+was not going to recognize her. If Rogie cried and shrank away----But
+he didn't. He was only making quite sure before he gave a gurgle of
+delight and began wriggling in Hilda's grasp. James Mitchell's arm
+dropped and Anne was beside Hilda with Rogie tight in her hold.
+
+"Grown some, hasn't he?" James demanded as he stumbled to the chair
+beside the stove. "Not bad nurses, the old folks, eh?"
+
+"He's grown an inch," Anne declared, hugging him to her. "And my
+gracious, he's heavy!"
+
+"Weighs a ton when he's been on the same spot in your lap ten minutes.
+Only he don't often stay ten minutes in the same spot. He's a lively
+youngster, Anne. Got a lot more pep than you ever had at his age. He
+must take after----" James broke off and looked at Hilda.
+
+"Yes, he's more like Roger," Anne finished. There was no reason to
+avoid Roger's name.
+
+There was a short silence, filled by her father sipping the malted milk
+and her mother pouring out the tea. Then Anne said:
+
+"Has Roger seen him often?"
+
+Hilda and James looked at each other in a new habit of consultation.
+
+"No, dear. Belle thought it would be just as well to wait until you
+could arrange things as you wanted."
+
+"I'm sorry. There's no reason he shouldn't see him. I never intended
+keeping him all to myself. He's Roger's, too."
+
+Again Hilda and James consulted on a problem they had evidently
+discussed often. Their glances reached a decision and James said:
+
+"Annie, do you suppose that things between you and Roger could
+be patched up? Me and mother have talked about it quite a lot. I
+don't hold with Roger--I never did," there was a touch of the old
+intolerance which a look from Hilda softened and James went on. "But
+he's young and there's this to be said for him--the rubbish he believes
+in is in the air. It's like an epidemic. But there's no reason he
+shouldn't outgrow it. You can do a lot."
+
+Anne sat holding Rogie and fingering her teaspoon absently.
+
+"I don't want him to outgrow it, papa. I don't want him to be anything
+but himself."
+
+"No, of course you don't," Hilda broke in with the familiar manner
+of smoothing a family difference that had once annoyed Anne. But now
+it did not annoy her. She would have to face, once at least, this
+discussion of herself and Roger and she might as well do it now.
+Besides, it clarified her own thought to talk patiently in this way.
+
+"Roger was one kind of person," she went on, "and I was another. Roger
+saw things--in--in sweeps while I saw them in spots."
+
+The definition was exact to Anne but her father and mother looked
+bewildered.
+
+"I mean that we really both want the same thing, only we wanted to get
+it differently. I think--it's harder for two people to agree in their
+methods--than in their aims. If Roger had been a Jew and I had been a
+Catholic----"
+
+"Why, Anne!" Hilda was so horrified, that amusement touched Anne's very
+earnest wish to get this thing perfectly straight to them.
+
+"I'm only supposing, moms, making the wildest example I can think of."
+
+"Well, it's certainly wild enough."
+
+"But, if we had been, it might have been easier than it was. I mean
+that--in some ways we would have been so very far apart that it would
+have been useless to try and meet in those ways at all. But Roger and
+I weren't far apart. We both wanted the same thing--a beautiful world,
+but we tried to find this beauty in different places and there are no
+different places. There's only one Beauty everywhere."
+
+"What in the name of Heavens ARE you talking about, Annie?"
+
+Anne began to feel a little helpless but persisted.
+
+"I mean that nearly all the fuss and noise in the world comes from
+people quarreling about the way to get things, because, nearly
+everybody wants the same thing really when you get right down to
+it. They only quarrel about their own pet way of getting it. Roger
+thinks that if he can make the whole world happy in a lump, then every
+individual will be happy. And I thought that if every individual was
+happy then the whole world would be happy. We----"
+
+"I don't know what you're trying to get at, Annie, and I don't believe
+you do yourself," her father interrupted, but so kindly that Anne
+forgave his not understanding. After all, she had not understood
+herself, before the mountains, and it was not clear in detail yet. "I
+suppose it's something very modern and educated. But common sense is a
+lot older than education and these up-to-date folderols. When a man and
+a woman's married they can't expect to agree about everything. Me and
+mamma never had scarce an idea in common, did we, ma?"
+
+"No. We never agreed about things. I never knew any married folks that
+did. But it doesn't make much difference if you don't talk about them.
+As long as you keep still, things go pretty smooth. I guess our home
+was as comfortable as most homes."
+
+"But I don't want it to be as comfortable as most homes. Most homes are
+terrible places and I want a real home or none at all."
+
+"Well, I must say, I think there's something to be said for Roger,"
+Hilda conceded. "Do you think a home all by yourself is going to be a
+'real home'?"
+
+Anne's throat tightened and she could not answer.
+
+"That's all rubbish, Anne. Nothing we could say would have kept you
+from marrying him and I guess he was just the same as he is now.
+Besides, you'll find it's a different thing working now you've got
+Rogie than it was before when you were a girl."
+
+"Let's not talk about it, mamma. I wouldn't live with Roger just to be
+supported, not if I had a dozen children."
+
+"I wish to heaven you had, Anne; nothing else will ever get a mite of
+real common sense into your head. Oh, well, it's no good talking, I
+suppose. You can't put old heads on young shoulders."
+
+Anne nibbled at her lip and said nothing. She and Hilda finished their
+tea and James his malted milk. When he had put aside the cup he turned
+to her again.
+
+"You'll stay with us for a while, Annie?"
+
+"No--I don't think I will, not more than a few days anyhow. I'm going
+to begin looking for a job to-morrow and I'm sure to find one within a
+day or two. Then I'll take rooms where Rogie can be looked after and
+moms will get a rest. It made an awful lot of extra work having him
+here all that time. He----"
+
+"Now see here, Anne, you needn't use Rogie as an excuse. I don't
+need a rest and he hasn't been a bit of extra work. You always were
+an independent thing." Hilda's impatience ended in a laugh and James
+smiled with her.
+
+"All right, we'll let it go at that. Anyhow, to-morrow morning at eight
+o'clock, off I go job-hunting."
+
+Anne joined the laugh a little uncertainly. The new life was so very
+near.
+
+
+
+
+                         CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
+
+
+On the following Monday Anne found a position with a fruit commission
+house on Front Street. The salary was not quite what she had hoped, but
+the surroundings were so different from the office of Lowell & Morrison
+that she was glad to take it.
+
+Here there were no soft rugs, no quietly closing doors, or smoothly
+running elevators; no suave and courtly men. Great drays rumbled
+through the street outside; loud-voiced men called orders in strange,
+foreign tongues. For the first hours of the morning the warehouse shook
+with the thud of huge crates being thrown from trucks, trundled through
+the cool darkness of the shed and piled high to the shadow of the roof.
+In the afternoon the rumble of the drays loading and unloading ceased;
+many of the men went home; the place was quiet. Anne could hear the
+whistle of the boats at the wharves, and on foggy days the wail of the
+fog sirens very near.
+
+On Saturday afternoon the office closed at one o'clock and Anne spent
+until six looking for an apartment. At dusk she found what she thought
+would do. It was the upper floor of an old house on the edge of Russian
+Hill. The house was run down and rather dismal, but the rear windows
+looked out on a small garden, and from Anne's floor, a little triangle
+of the Bay was visible.
+
+The landlady was a childless widow, a thin, saddened woman with soft
+brown eyes that had almost lost the trick of brightening. But when
+she heard about Rogie they lit gently and she suggested a sand-pile
+in one corner of the garden and a crib for his morning and afternoon
+nap in her own bedroom. Anne's first feeling, that there it would be
+almost impossible to forget the past, lessened, and she closed the
+arrangement, grateful for the garden, the glimpse of the Bay, and Mrs.
+Jeffries' pleasure in Rogie.
+
+On Sunday there was a family dinner at the flat and afterwards Anne
+and Rogie and Belle came to the new home. Mrs. Jeffries had put some
+flowers on the ugly center table and covered the gas globe with orange
+crêpe paper.
+
+"Oh," Anne gasped when she saw it, "I wish she hadn't done that."
+
+"Never mind. Let it stay up for a day or two and then it can catch fire
+or destroy itself somehow," Belle advised.
+
+Anne shook her head. "It doesn't matter really--and she might be hurt."
+
+"Now, Anne, don't start in that way. You know it won't work. If this
+furnishing is her taste and she begins to 'take an interest' in you and
+tries 'to make you comfortable' you'll only blow up in the end. Take
+those orange shades down and tell her in the morning that you don't
+want anything added to your rooms. You needn't be sharp about it, but
+you can be firm."
+
+Anne smiled with a wistfulness that escaped Belle, touring the room in
+inspection of the ugly steel engravings hung exactly in the center of
+each wall. The first hour in her new home, and already she knew that
+there would be many nights when she would be grateful for even the
+terrible green glass vase that held the flowers, if it meant any one's
+caring for her comfort.
+
+"Don't worry, Belle. When this wall paper gets too much for my nerves
+I'll go down and sit awhile in 'the parlor.' You should see that."
+
+"Worse?"
+
+"Three horsehair chairs with red velvet trimmings; one rocker to match.
+An onyx and brass stand with a pink silk drape. A floor lamp with a
+red shade and a white marble mantel, over a grate that has never had a
+fire. Oh, yes--a 'good body-Brussels' rug, and the floor-border painted
+cherry!"
+
+"Heavens! Well, you'll never have to sit in it. And that back room
+you're going to use for a sitting-room can be made cheerful in time
+with just a few softening things round. Besides, there's the fireplace.
+I've a good mind to light a fire, Anne, just to see how it looks. I
+believe I'd feel better about leaving you alone with this wall paper
+and that what-not if I got the effect of a fire."
+
+"I'm not afraid of the what-not--wouldn't those ghastly statuettes in
+the Niche fit perfectly?--but I would rather like a fire. I wonder if
+Mrs. Jeffries could let us have a little wood."
+
+"I'll ask her." In a moment Belle was back and while Anne undressed
+Rogie, lit a fire in the back room. When Anne heard the cheerful
+crackle, her eyes filled with tears but she brushed them angrily away.
+
+"Now see here," she whispered brusquely to herself, "you're not going
+to get weepy, every time you look at the Bay or hear a fog-whistle or
+light an open fire."
+
+"Are you coming, Anne? This kindling won't last forever." Belle had not
+lit the gas and the kindly darkness hid the brown and red wall paper
+and stiff chairs.
+
+"It's not going to be bad, Belle. It's really wonderfully still, almost
+as still as the mountains. When the fog-whistles don't go, there'll be
+hardly a sound outside."
+
+"Nor inside either. Does that women ever laugh, do you suppose?"
+
+"I don't know. Mary Potter never really laughed outright. I think,
+perhaps, Mrs. Jeffries has only forgotten how."
+
+Belle shrugged. "Well, I hope she'll remember again soon. If she
+doesn't, Rogie will forget too."
+
+"Now, Belle, can you honestly imagine Rogie a solemn baby?"
+
+"It does take some stretching of the imagination. But--when I look at
+this wall paper and those chairs I can imagine almost anything. I can
+even imagine Roger losing faith in----"
+
+"Yes? Go on, Belle, don't be silly; as if Roger's name mustn't be
+mentioned. I--I don't feel that way at all. Besides, even if I did, I
+couldn't avoid Roger--because of Rogie. He has just as much right to
+him as I, and as soon as I feel a little more settled, I'm going to
+make some regular arrangement for his seeing him, having--him--part--of
+the time if he wants to."
+
+Belle looked down at the small figure gazing earnestly into the fire
+and her hand moved toward her sister's shoulder, then drew back without
+touching.
+
+"Yes, of course, he ought to see him if he wants to," she said in her
+brusque, impersonal way as if she were agreeing in some physician's
+instruction concerning a patient.
+
+"I wish," Anne went on, "that Roger had been seeing him right along.
+I really don't understand, Belle, why you didn't let him. He must
+think it was my wish that he shouldn't and believe that I was being
+deliberately mean about it. He must think I am awfully narrow and
+ungenerous and--and vindictive and----'
+
+"I don't know why he should think that. Naturally he would suppose that
+Rogie was with you. Besides, how did a poor blunderbuss like myself
+know what mood you would come back in? If I had let Roger make his
+own arrangements for seeing him I might have set up a precedent you
+wouldn't have wanted to keep. Then there was moms and papa. You've
+grown so calm and sure in the mountains, Anne, you don't realize that
+the rest of us are pretty jumpy yet. Moms ranted along for days after
+you'd gone. I don't know but what she might have refused to let Roger
+look at him even if he had come. Under the circumstances I did what
+seemed best. You know the family channels aren't the easiest to steer
+in safely."
+
+Anne smiled. "No, I know they're not. And I didn't mean to be unfair,
+Belle. You've all been terribly dear to me. I don't believe I ever
+understood any of you--or--any one--else--before I went away."
+
+Again Belle looked at her sharply, changed her mind about speaking,
+and put the last piece of kindling on the fire. Together they stood
+silently watching it flare, then crumble, char and drop to gray ash.
+
+When the last faint glow had died from the embers, Anne brought Belle's
+things from the room where Rogie was now fast asleep. But even after
+they were on, Belle lingered as if reluctant to go.
+
+"If there's anything you want, you'll let me know, won't you, kiddie?"
+
+"Yes, I'll let you know, but there won't be anything, I'm sure. The
+hours at the office aren't bad at all and I believe Mrs. Jeffries will
+take wonderful care of Rogie. It's--a little strange now--but I'll get
+it homied up in time. I've got a few ideas about this room already."
+
+"You can have anything of mine out of storage that you want. Do you
+remember that heavy tapestry stuff I had a mania for once? It didn't
+go in a small modern apartment, but it would be great with these high
+ceilings. You'll ask me, won't you?"
+
+"Yes, I promise. But for the present I'll just go on like this till I
+get the feel of the place."
+
+"Don't go on too long or you'll get to feel like the place. I know you,
+Anne, better than you know yourself."
+
+Anne laughed. "You make me feel like a fly at the end of a microscope."
+
+"Not a fly," Belle said with a pretense of serious consideration,
+"no, not a fly. A little moth with gold dust all over it, one of the
+shimmery kind that looks as if it were going to fall apart if you
+touched it."
+
+"And never does, but crawls right alone even after it's burnt off its
+wings."
+
+Anne realized the possible interpretation and flushed, but if Belle had
+caught this meaning, she said nothing, and a few minutes later went.
+
+As Anne closed the door behind Belle, and came back again up the stairs
+alone, a little of the courage that she had sincerely felt her own
+while she and Belle stood before the fire died away. Again before the
+tiny heap of gray ashes, Anne forced down the tears with an effort.
+Was her new-found peace to be so easily disturbed? She had been back
+in the city only a little over a week, and already this going of Belle
+made her feel so terribly alone. Anne went to the window and opened it
+wide. Perhaps the touch of night would bring that throbbing, silent
+assurance of companionship. With her elbows on the sill Anne gazed to
+the triangle of twinkling lights at the base of the dark hills across
+the bay. Faintly the murmur of the city came to her, but her hands
+clenched and it took all her strength to keep back the tears.
+
+She was a part of it. But such a little part.
+
+"I won't be lonely," she whispered fiercely. "I won't. I WON'T."
+
+But the resolution flitted away into the blackness and left Anne tense
+with her own vehemence. She closed the window quickly and went into the
+other room. Between the cool sheets she tried to relax, to immerse her
+body in the vast, eternal unity of all-living, but she was conscious
+only of the effort and after a while she gave up trying to relax and
+let her thought go where it would.
+
+It went straight to Roger. What had these months done to Roger? They
+had done so much to her, it seemed impossible that Roger could be
+just the same. And yet, she hoped he was. The old Roger she felt now
+she understood. A new Roger might be very strange. At first the new
+relationship that had to be between them would be difficult, and, with
+another Roger, perhaps impossible.
+
+No, Roger must be just the same, have the same sweeping enthusiasm, the
+same impatience, the same intolerance of prejudice not his own. Until
+she had gripped more firmly her own peace, she could risk no change in
+Roger. At last the tightness in her muscles eased and Anne fell asleep
+a little comforted in her decision to write to Roger before the end of
+the week.
+
+But the end of the week came and went and Anne had not written.
+Every evening she had tried and in the morning destroyed the letter.
+Some were tinged with memory, the others almost belligerent in their
+indifferent brevity. The second week she did not even try but convinced
+herself that the mood would descend upon her suddenly and she would
+tell Roger of her return and suggest his coming to see Rogie with
+exactly the right degree of friendly interest.
+
+But the mood did not come, although Anne waited for it, in the same
+bodily relaxation in which Charlotte Welles entered The Silence. By the
+beginning of the fourth week after her return, this need to communicate
+with Roger and the impossibility of doing it, was destroying her
+peace and absorbing every waking thought. That she managed to do her
+work well, was only because the old power of mechanical attention had
+returned. Often Anne read through the transcriptions of her employer's
+dictation and wondered at this subconscious power that permitted her to
+quote correctly prices and invoices, write intelligently of fruits and
+vegetables, while her whole consciousness was concerned in forming a
+letter to Roger.
+
+Once she thought she saw Roger on the street, and, although she would
+have grasped eagerly this solution if it had occurred to her before,
+now she turned and went rapidly in the other direction. But no sooner
+had she lost the possibility--if it had been really Roger--than she
+wished with her whole heart that she had faced certainty. She began
+looking for him everywhere, hoping and then dreading to meet him. From
+walking in places where the possibility of meeting might occur, she
+swung to going and coming by circuitous ways, angry with herself for
+her own indecision, touched sometimes even to anger at Roger.
+
+Finally, at the beginning of the fifth week, in exhaustion of her
+own irresolution, Anne wrote and without rereading or waiting for
+morning counsel, went out and dropped the note in the letter box.
+And then began a period of waiting that made the weeks preceding
+seem full of calm certainty. Now Anne was so sharply conscious of two
+selves within her, that, at times, she could almost visibly see them
+both. One went to and from work, wrote letters, cared for her rooms,
+attended to Rogie, talked quietly with Mrs. Jeffries. The other did
+nothing, nothing at all, except wait. This self emerged to control at
+the postman's coming in the morning; when she opened the door in the
+evening and looked first to the hat-stand to see if there was a letter;
+and at night when she lay in bed trying to find a reason for Roger's
+silence. For Roger did not answer.
+
+The days filled to a week, two, three.
+
+When, a few days before Christmas, Anne came home one night to find
+Mrs. Jeffries crying in the kitchen, her first reaction was almost
+relief that something had happened that would call upon her for some
+quality besides the petrifying patience of waiting in which she felt
+her brain rapidly numbing to a living death.
+
+"What is it? What has happened?"
+
+In the comfort of companionship, Mrs. Jeffries looked up from the table
+where she had been sitting in the dark, her head buried in her arms.
+
+"My sister's dead. Little Lucy----"
+
+Anne knelt and put her arm about the heaving shoulders. The older woman
+clung in a renewed passion of sobs and Anne held her quietly until they
+eased. At last Mrs. Jeffries looked up.
+
+"There are three children, the youngest only five and John doesn't know
+what to do."
+
+"You'll have to go to them?"
+
+"Yes--I must go. John and Lucy adored each other--they were like lovers
+always. Poor--John--he's so lost--he doesn't seem able to grasp it. He
+says----" She reached to the letter lying as she had dropped it two
+hours before.
+
+"Don't--don't, please, really, I'd rather not." Anne took the letter
+from her quickly and laid it back on the table.
+
+Mrs. Jeffries shuddered. "They loved each other so. Why did she have
+to be taken? He and the children need her so. And she was so strong,
+stronger than I have ever been. Nobody needs me. But Lucy--one moment
+well and laughing--the next----"
+
+In the cold darkness of the unlit kitchen Anne saw old Mary and
+Timothy smiling at each other as they pictured "going out sudden into
+the midst of things." She held the quivering form again until it
+quieted. Mrs. Jeffries wiped her eyes at last and tried to consider
+Anne.
+
+"How will you manage? Can you get some one to look after Rogie? I may
+be away some time. I may bring the children back with me. I don't know.
+I feel as if everything has changed so; I'm bewildered."
+
+"Don't think of me, I'll manage. Perhaps I can get Mrs. Horton, the
+woman I used to have, to come up until we see what we're going to do.
+But you mustn't think about me, or consider me at all. Promise that you
+won't. I wish I could do something."
+
+"You are doing something. You always have ever since you came. You
+don't know what it's meant to have you and Rogie round though I haven't
+seen much of you. I believe I was freezing up clear through--until he
+came."
+
+"I'm glad you've liked having us. It's meant a great deal to me to know
+some one was looking after Rogie as you have done."
+
+Mrs. Jeffries put the letter away and rose wearily. Without having
+taken off her things, Anne went out again. In an hour she had arranged
+with Mrs. Horton.
+
+
+
+
+                          CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
+
+
+Roger was in Los Angeles on a speaking trip when Anne's letter was
+forwarded to him from the office. He found it when he came back from
+one of the most successful meetings he had ever held. He had held his
+audience in his hands, moved them at his will. Enthusiasm had run high.
+He had thrilled with his own power, and then, depression had followed.
+It was so easy to move men with words. It was almost a trick, emphasis
+here, appeal to emotion there, a climax of enthusiasm malleable to his
+will.
+
+After such a gathering men and women insisted on meeting him
+personally. He often left the halls with groups violently discussing
+his words. And so little resulted from this enthusiasm. An inclination
+strengthened here and there, a few teetering on the edge of belief
+converted. Sometimes a successful meeting such as this had been
+exhausted Roger more than any antagonistic opposition could have done.
+
+To-night he was very tired. The ideal for which a few strove seemed so
+far away, so beyond those for whom he searched for it. He had left the
+hall instantly, escaping, as he rarely permitted himself to do, the
+urgent wish of strangers to meet him. Safe in his hotel room at last
+he had given the order not to be disturbed by any visitor or telephone
+call, and had begun indifferently looking over the forwarded mail, when
+he came unexpectedly on Anne's letter.
+
+He looked at it for a moment curiously, as if it were something not
+intended for him. He turned it over and over, until a sudden eagerness
+to know of Anne and Rogie seized him and he tore the envelope open with
+quivering fingers. The note was brief, and, although Anne had intended
+it to be friendly, it seemed to Roger stiff and formal. He read it only
+once and then tore it across and dropped the pieces in the waste-basket
+with a touch of disappointment he refused to recognize. There was no
+reason Anne should write to him in another tone, and, after all, the
+important thing was that he could see Rogie. He had longed for this and
+resented Anne's monopoly of the boy, but now he knew that seeing Rogie
+rested alone with him he forgave Anne the bitterness he had felt. He
+sat down to answer instantly, but he, as Anne, found it difficult to
+write. Three drafts of a simple note he destroyed, and then suddenly
+pushed the pad from him. He would go. There was a train in an hour. He
+would be in the city in the morning, Sunday morning. He had another
+meeting on the following Monday to complete the itinerary, but when
+Roger visioned the empty Sunday between, he could not face it.
+
+Half an hour later he had paid his bill and left the hotel. As the
+train pulled out of the station it began to rain sharp, slanting rain
+that lashed at the windows of his berth. But Roger, exhausted from the
+meeting and his own reaction to Anne's letter, slept almost instantly.
+Nor did he wake until the train clanged into the station. It was still
+raining, but less violently now. The sharp lashing had quieted to a
+steady fall. Roger had breakfast, went to the loft to see if there was
+an urgent matter for him, telephoned to Tom to send another speaker to
+Los Angeles in time for the Monday night meeting, and then went to the
+cottage.
+
+It was still and clean and empty as he had left it. He made a fire,
+and, to persuade himself that he was in no haste, sat before it.
+
+By night he would have seen Anne and Rogie. Whatever was to be the
+future relation between them would have been fixed. What did he want
+this relation to be? He felt no anger with Anne. She had been true to
+herself as he had been to himself. He felt no emotional eagerness to
+meet Anne, nor reluctance. His sharpest feeling was toward Rogie.
+
+In the past Rogie had been a baby, the child of himself and Anne, not
+in any way distinct from them. But now that the convention of a home
+had been taken from Rogie--now that the accepted standard of father,
+mother, child under one roof had been taken from him, somehow Rogie
+had become a distinct personality. It was as if, in some strange way,
+the responsibility of being an individual, a separate social unit, had
+somehow descended upon the baby; so that now he was almost an adult
+in the separateness of his personality. Roger could not shake off a
+ridiculous feeling that he would almost meet Rogie as man to man.
+
+It was after six before Roger climbed the hill, and, closing the
+old-fashioned garden gate quietly behind him, rang the bell.
+
+At the sound of the bell pealing through the still house, Anne
+started, and then certainty gripped her beyond motion. Again the bell
+rang, this time less fiercely, as if eagerness in the ringer were
+passing. Anne hurried from the room, but at the foot of the stairs
+she paused, staring at the door, her heart thumping until she could
+scarcely breathe. It sounded again, this time a sad little clang of
+disappointment. Anne went slowly to the door and opened it. The cold
+wind and rain rushed in and then Roger was close to her in the hall;
+the door shut, and the smell of his damp clothes sharp in the air.
+
+"I thought you must have left town," she said calmly.
+
+"I have been away. I only just got back."
+
+In the closing of the umbrella and the hanging up of his hat and
+overcoat they escaped a more intimate greeting. But now that the hat
+and coat were hung and the dripping umbrella safe in the stand, Anne
+faced the need to take Roger upstairs or into the gloomy parlor to the
+right. She hesitated.
+
+Roger had come. In a moment, she would bring Rogie to him. The future
+would hold whatever was possible of friendship for them, or else she
+would be outside the union of Rogie and his father. Until she knew, she
+must keep her lonely rooms upstairs as a retreat untouched by Roger's
+presence. If the future was to hold nothing she did not want memory
+there. She led the way to the parlor and lit the light.
+
+"I was just getting Rogie ready for bed, but he didn't want to go a
+bit. He's wide awake."
+
+Roger felt the dismal chill of the room shutting down upon him and
+struggled against it in the first remark that came to him.
+
+"I don't suppose he will remember me."
+
+"Oh, yes, I think he will. I was afraid he wouldn't know me when I came
+back from the mountains, he took so long to size me up. But he did."
+
+She pulled down the shades and moved to the door.
+
+"I'll just dress him again; it won't take but a few minutes."
+
+She had not taken Rogie with her then. He had been in the city all the
+time, guarded by the Mitchells. Roger frowned and began walking up and
+down the rather long room. At the farther end a narrow glass door,
+draped with an ugly curtain of monk's cloth, hid the garden beyond.
+When he reached it, Roger pulled the curtain aside and looked out
+into the dripping bushes. It was a neglected garden, not riotous with
+overgrown plants as the cottage garden, but a lank, weed-grown strip,
+long and narrow. Roger dropped the curtain quickly and, lighting a
+cigarette, began walking again.
+
+As the ugliness of the room penetrated in detail, the red shaded lamp,
+the horsehair furniture, the onyx stand, gradually his anger at the
+Mitchells faded in wonder of Anne. Why had Anne come to live here;
+Anne, who hated ugly surroundings with physical passion? Was Anne so
+poor that she could find no better place, or had she changed? Did
+things like this no longer trouble Anne?
+
+A door upstairs closed. Then the silence continued unbroken. Roger's
+nerves tightened. Why didn't Anne take him up to what was evidently
+her part of the house? He lit a cigarette and pulled deeply on it.
+The smell of the smoke drifted up to Anne. Her throat swelled and she
+braced her shoulders as she buttoned Rogie's rompers with trembling
+fingers.
+
+Roger heard her coming and ground out the cigarette on the white
+mantelshelf. Anne was in the doorway, Rogie in her arms. Just as he
+had done with Anne, so now Rogie leaned away, frowning, before, with a
+plunge of delight, he almost threw himself from Anne's arms. Roger took
+him.
+
+"Well, old chap, who is it? So you knew me, did you?"
+
+Over the baby's head Roger smiled proudly at Anne, and Anne smiled
+back; for Rogie's hands were already clutching his father's hair as if,
+in this favorite game, he was making assurance doubly sure.
+
+"You see, he did remember," Anne came nearer. "He really has a
+wonderful memory."
+
+"I don't believe many his age would have remembered, do you?"
+
+"No, I don't believe they would."
+
+They laughed together. Then the memory of their intimacy, incarnate
+forever in Rogie, swept Anne, and she turned hastily away and sat down
+on the sofa. Still holding the child, Roger took the rocker.
+
+Silence came between them. Each searched nervously for some spot in the
+present on which to meet. But the strangeness of seeing Anne and Rogie
+in these surroundings, his ignorance of all that had happened to them
+in the last months, wrapped Roger like a fog, through which he felt
+Anne receding from him.
+
+But, for the first time, the room was not hideous to Anne. The damp
+smell of Roger's clothes, the lingering cigarette smoke, filled it with
+a throbbing vitality it had never had. She felt Roger's masculinity in
+the very air and it made the few small remarks she managed to catch
+from the whirling mass of feeling seem thin and artificial.
+
+Roger tried to fill the silence with remarks to Rogie; by tickling him
+and riding him on his foot. For a while it succeeded. Then Rogie grew
+tired. His eyes filmed; he leaned more heavily on his father's shoulder.
+
+Roger tried to keep him awake, but Rogie objected with impatient jerks,
+and Roger looked to Anne. In a few moments he would be asleep. Then he
+and Anne would be faced by the need to fill the silence or he would
+have to go.
+
+"He's just about asleep. Perhaps I'd better carry him to bed. He must
+be awfully heavy for you."
+
+"No, I'll take him. That's something no one seems to do just right.
+He wakes even if Mrs. Jeffries tries to carry him at this stage, and
+usually he's as good with her as with me."
+
+She took Rogie from him and Roger watched her go, so small and fair
+herself. He heard her go slowly up the stairs, for Rogie was indeed a
+heavy weight for her slight arms.
+
+Again it was still.
+
+Anne put Rogie down, stayed a moment to make sure he would not wake,
+turned out the light and opened the window. Again the smell of smoke
+drifted to her and now she heard Roger's step walking up and down as he
+had used to walk in anger at Hilary Wainwright.
+
+Up and down the long, narrow room Roger walked, trying to force the
+chaos of thought to ordered sequence by the rhythm of his step. He
+could not go back to the cottage which Anne had made beautiful and
+leave her and Rogie in this dismal place. No matter whether Anne had
+grown indifferent to her surroundings or not, he hated to think of his
+boy, even as a baby, absorbing impressions of that horsehair furniture
+and onyx stand. And in imagination he saw sharply Mrs. Jeffries, whom
+they represented, a dull, thin woman like the aunt who had brought
+him up. Anne hated to face new situations, and, if she had indeed
+persuaded herself that this was not so bad, she would go on living here
+year after year. Roger shuddered. What Anne chose to do was no longer
+his concern, although the old need to protect rose in him, untinged by
+any personal emotion, almost against his will. He wanted Anne to be
+happy and have the things she liked. But Rogie was very definitely his
+concern; not only his duty, but with the feel of the fat little body as
+vivid in his arms as when he had held him, Rogie was the deepest motive
+of his life.
+
+He was just turning again at the far end of the room when Anne
+returned. He looked up quickly, still frowning over the problem, but
+said, with a strange, new hesitancy and unsureness:
+
+"Anne, I don't like to think of you and Rogie living in this place. You
+ought to have the cottage. I only moved back because there seemed no
+reason not to."
+
+Anne leaned against the onyx stand; she could get no farther, but her
+voice was steady and she even smiled slightly and looked in forced
+amusement about the room.
+
+"It is pretty bad, isn't it? But I don't come in here often."
+
+"Are your own any better?"
+
+"Not exactly--in the furnishing, but the sitting-room looks over a
+garden and there's a little triangle of bay."
+
+Roger locked about, trying to get clearer the location of the house.
+
+"Darn little bay from any part of this house. Anne, won't you take the
+cottage? I have to be away a great deal now. It doesn't matter much
+where I live in between times."
+
+"I--don't--see how I can quite--not yet, anyhow." By speaking so,
+very slowly in assumed consideration of this as a proposition, Anne
+succeeded in keeping her voice even. "I may get a raise after New
+Year's, although it's rather soon to expect one, but at present I
+couldn't pay the cottage rent and have Mrs. Horton too. This is
+ridiculously cheap and when Mrs. Jeffries is here she takes such care
+of Rogie."
+
+"Isn't she here all the time?"
+
+"Not at present. She had to go to a brother-in-law. Her sister died and
+left several children. She may bring them back with her."
+
+"Will you go on just the same then?"
+
+"I don't know. We didn't have time to discuss that. I suppose I can."
+
+Again Roger walked the length of the room, past Anne, and back. When he
+came to the other end, as if only from this spot could he explain, he
+said sharply:
+
+"Anne, I don't want it. I don't want any woman, no matter how kind she
+is, bringing Rogie up. Mrs. Horton didn't matter so much when he was
+quite little, but he's getting a regular boy now and--I don't want it."
+
+This consideration was all for Rogie, but Anne felt as if some one very
+strong had picked her up and was carrying her easily.
+
+"I would rather be with him all the time, too, but that's impossible."
+
+"No, it isn't. Anne, I don't want you to work. It isn't necessary.
+No, don't interrupt, please. Listen. I can do it very well. I've
+been writing some on the side lately and I've got to be quite a
+speech-maker. You'd be surprised. Speech-making doesn't pay a great
+deal, but it's something. Please believe me, I can do it very well."
+
+The floor swayed beneath Anne, but she held tight to the cold onyx and
+answered quietly:
+
+"I'll have to have time to think about it, Roger. I--can't--decide
+right away now."
+
+Roger shrugged impatiently. "You can if you try. What is there to
+prevent? I--" he hesitated--"I won't trouble you in any way. You
+will be exactly as free as you are now. Anne, if you won't do it for
+yourself, won't you do it for Rogie?"
+
+"I--don't--know," Anne whispered, her strength almost gone.
+
+Roger turned away. Again he felt himself tilting against the soft,
+unbendable obstinacy of one of Anne's principles.
+
+"Well," he said at length, "will you agree to this? Will you move back
+to the cottage and let me pay the rent? Will you?" he repeated more
+gently when Anne did not answer.
+
+To be back in the cottage in her three white-painted rooms with all the
+Bay and the hills and the sweet garden. Anne felt herself sinking down
+into a peace so thick and deep that she could scarcely bear to break it
+even by an answer. She nodded.
+
+"When will you come? To-night?"
+
+"To-night!"
+
+"Why not? It's early. Have you much to pack?"
+
+"No--only my clothes and Rogie's."
+
+"You could do it, couldn't you?"
+
+"Yes--I--could--do it. There's Mrs. Jeffries though----"
+
+Roger felt as if Anne were opposing tiny twigs to this sweeping need of
+his to get them both out of that horrible house.
+
+"Do you owe her any rent?"
+
+"No. I just sent her a check for the coming month."
+
+"Then there's no reason you can't. Besides, from what you say, she's
+not sure of her own plans. Perhaps she won't come back herself."
+
+"I think she will. But she may not."
+
+"Then it's settled, is it? I can get a taxi while you pack?"
+
+"All right." The words quivered and dropped from Anne in a low whisper
+as if her last resistance had died. She hurried from the room and Roger
+went out to find a telephone and get the taxi.
+
+Anne could never remember how she packed her trunk or dressed Rogie
+or when she turned to find Roger beside her telling her the taxi was
+waiting. She seemed to be escaping from some terrible catastrophe,
+her whole consciousness taken in the effort to get away. It was only
+when they were all together in the close intimacy of the cab that Anne
+realized what she had done.
+
+In a few moments she and Roger and Rogie would be again in the cottage.
+Beyond that Anne could not think. Nor did her mind clear to any detail,
+even as she followed Roger, carrying Rogie up the long, familiar flight
+and into the living-room. He put Rogie on the couch, paid the driver
+and closed the door. Anne was shaking so she could scarcely stand.
+
+"I'll make a fire. Everything is just the same, except the crib.
+I--I'll get that. It's in the attic."
+
+Roger went into the kitchen and Anne heard him light the candle-lantern
+they had always kept for searching things stowed in the tiny loft they
+called the attic. Then he brought the step ladder and, taking out the
+small square of ceiling that made the attic entrance, clambered up.
+Anne's hands were stiff with cold. It seemed impossible that Roger
+should be doing these things exactly as he had done them ages upon
+ages ago in the past. Life was so different now that no motion in it
+could be quite the same. But it was exactly the same, even to Roger's
+throwing the unwanted things out of his way as he always did, because
+he was a bad packer and never knew exactly where he had put anything.
+At last he found it, and threw the mattress out through the opening,
+scrambling down with the framework. When he had put away the ladder and
+lantern and dusted his clothes, he brought the crib in.
+
+"Shall I put it up in the bedroom?"
+
+Anne was bent now above the opened trunk searching Rogie's night things
+which she had thrust hastily in among her own clothes in the rush of
+packing.
+
+"Yes," she whispered, without looking up, feigning this need not to
+wake Rogie, already restless from the unusual confusion about him.
+
+When she had found the things she carried Rogie to the fire, undressed
+him, slipped on the tiny pajamas, and, holding him close, listened with
+every nerve to Roger moving about in the next room. In a few moments
+now Rogie would be in his own crib, in the old room. What would Roger
+do?
+
+At last Roger came from the bedroom.
+
+"I've put it up but I didn't make it--I don't know just how you do it.
+The blankets and things are all on the bed--I'm sure they're all there."
+
+Anne rose and moved to lay Rogie on the couch while she made up the
+crib, but Roger held out his arms and Anne laid the baby in them. Very
+gently Roger sat down in Anne's place and she went in to make the
+crib. But the blood beat so behind her eyes and her hands trembled so
+violently that she scarcely knew what she did.
+
+Roger stared across his son's head into the flames, conscious of the
+new disorder of the room, the opened trunk, Rogie's tiny garments lying
+on the hearthrug, Anne in the next room.
+
+The past, the present, the future tangled before him, a mass of paths
+leading in all directions; quagmires of misunderstanding, blind alleys
+of separate interests, smooth, pleasant spots of memories long past.
+Here a path to the night by the lake when Anne's lips had clung as
+eagerly as his own; there the blank wall of the lacquer screen and the
+desert spots of Anne's carping criticism. Here the path of his deepest
+faith and belief broke short above the chasm of Anne's indifference.
+The world was indifferent too. But the world's indifference he could
+escape in the comradeship of others who believed with him; in solitary
+hours when, physically rested, his own faith always rose again clear
+and strong. With the narrowness and indifference of strangers he did
+not have to rise up and lie down, eat, sleep and be patient.
+
+Then suddenly the past and present divided, and in the space between
+Roger saw a future, the future Katya had pictured--a devastating
+passion that would destroy him--or remake life. Roger felt as if a
+fiery wind were suddenly blowing upon him, and his hold on Rogie
+tightened. He did not want life broken or remade. He wanted to work on
+as he was working, accomplish more and more, mold Rogie to the ideal he
+had once shaped for himself, but which he sometimes felt now was very
+high and far away. He would get only a little way to it and die. But
+Rogie might reach and pass it.
+
+The door opened and Anne came in. Quietly Roger handed the baby to
+her, and she went back again into the bedroom. Roger got up and stood
+leaning against the mantelshelf.
+
+Had Anne really changed?
+
+Had he?
+
+From the maze of separate interests and ideals could they find one
+tiny path back to the old dreams? Could they cut a new one to a shared
+future? Would his arms ever again seek Anne hungrily of their own will?
+Would hers close about him and hold him fiercely as they had held him
+by the lake? Was need like this ever reborn?
+
+What was Anne doing in the other room? Why didn't she come back?
+
+She came at last, softly closing the door behind her. At the other end
+of the hearth she too stood leaning against the mantelshelf, staring
+down into the fire, as conscious of the familiar room and Roger leaning
+so close beside her as Roger of her.
+
+What was Roger going to do? What did he expect of her? In a moment
+would he take his things and go, as many guests had gone after a
+pleasant evening in those far gone days? Would she lock the door and
+put out the lights after Roger, as Roger had done after those other
+guests whose going had meant nothing at all?
+
+Why did Roger stand there staring into the fire? Was he waiting for her
+to speak?
+
+Without changing her position Anne looked to him. He seemed suddenly,
+in her absence with Rogie, to have grown strangely weary. His face,
+turned in profile, looked thinner, sharper, and a little drawn about
+the corners of the eyes and lips. His shoulders sagged as they only
+did when he was very tired. When he had grown suddenly tired like
+this it had always rested him to lie on the couch and have her stroke
+his head quietly in one long, sweeping gesture from forehead to neck.
+Anne felt the outline of his head now beneath her hand, and the dry
+crispness of his hair as if it were actually beneath her touch. She
+looked quickly back into the fire.
+
+The rain began again and Roger threw another log on the fire. The
+acacia lashed its long, thin arms and the rising wind cried over the
+hill. Anne felt Roger's look on her and very slowly her own rose to
+meet it.
+
+"Shall we try again, Anne?"
+
+"Y-e-s," Anne whispered, and her eyes filled with tears.
+
+Roger drew her gently to him. There was no passion of possession in his
+hold, but deep tenderness and protection,
+
+"I think it will be all right this time, Princess."
+
+Anne stood close.
+
+"Are you quite sure, Roger, that you want it so?"
+
+"Yes. For myself I am quite sure. And you?"
+
+"I'm--sure--too."
+
+They stood so for a moment, then Roger drew her gently nearer.
+
+Would they ever find it now, that everlasting, undestroyable love that
+they had missed? Over Anne's fair head, Roger gazed wistfully into the
+fire.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75113 ***
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+      The Noise of the World | Project Gutenberg
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75113 ***</div>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>THE NOISE OF THE WORLD</h1>
+
+<p>By ADRIANA SPADONI</p>
+
+<p>AUTHOR OF "THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM"</p>
+
+<p>BONI AND LIVERIGHT<br>
+PUBLISHERS<br>
+NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p>COPYRIGHT, 1921,<br>
+BY BONI &amp; LIVERIGHT, INC.</p>
+
+<p><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Printed in the United States of America</i></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent4">... but hearing oftentimes</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The still, sad music of humanity,</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+
+    <div class="verse indent0">A motion and a spirit that impels</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">All thinking things, all objects of all thought,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And rolls through all things.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>—WORDSWORTH</p>
+
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_ONE">CHAPTER ONE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWO">CHAPTER TWO</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_THREE">CHAPTER THREE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_FOUR">CHAPTER FOUR</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_FIVE">CHAPTER FIVE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_SIX">CHAPTER SIX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_SEVEN">CHAPTER SEVEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_EIGHT">CHAPTER EIGHT</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_NINE">CHAPTER NINE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TEN">CHAPTER TEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_ELEVEN">CHAPTER ELEVEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWELVE">CHAPTER TWELVE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_THIRTEEN">CHAPTER THIRTEEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_FOURTEEN">CHAPTER FOURTEEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_FIFTEEN">CHAPTER FIFTEEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_SIXTEEN">CHAPTER SIXTEEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN">CHAPTER SEVENTEEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN">CHAPTER EIGHTEEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_NINETEEN">CHAPTER NINETEEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY">CHAPTER TWENTY</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-ONE">CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-TWO">CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-THREE">CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-FOUR">CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-FIVE">CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-SIX">CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-SEVEN">CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-EIGHT">CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-NINE">CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_THIRTY">CHAPTER THIRTY</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_THIRTY-ONE">CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_THIRTY-TWO">CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_THIRTY-THREE">CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_THIRTY-FOUR">CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<h2>THE NOISE OF THE WORLD</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_ONE">CHAPTER ONE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"Well, what do you propose? Come down to facts. It's all very
+interesting and ethical, this harangue of yours; I wouldn't ask any
+better if I were the defendants' counsel, but, as the opposition, it
+is not in line. Are you seriously suggesting that this firm refuse the
+case?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. I thought I made that plain at the beginning of my
+'harangue.'"</p>
+
+<p>John Lowell drew in his upper lip, frowned and swayed slowly back and
+forth, as was his habit when thinking out some intricate point of law.
+But, by the nervous tapping of the fingers upon the desk, Roger Barton
+knew that the other was not analyzing a point of law. He was angry and
+would continue to sway thoughtfully and tap with long, slim fingers
+until he had fashioned a verbal sword with which to slash Roger's
+repression to bits; then, smiling, would watch Roger flounder from
+abstraction to personality, and drown in the sea of his own anger.
+Roger Barton's wide mouth closed in a firm line.</p>
+
+<p>At her stenographer's desk by the window, Anne Mitchell leaned
+across her machine, her eyes on the younger man. In the year of her
+secretaryship she had seen few men defy John Lowell and none emerge
+with dignity from the interval of his silent tapping.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>Still Roger did not speak. Neither did he knit his brows nor make any
+outward sign of searching for a more cogent argument than the one he
+had already advanced. His blue eyes summed up the man in the chair and
+held his deduction quietly for the other to read. Against that look
+John Lowell's pretense of calmness finally splintered.</p>
+
+<p>"If we don't, some one else will; and it's eight thousand a year for
+whoever gets the Morgan work."</p>
+
+<p>Anne Mitchell rose and came round her desk. There she stopped, as
+Lowell reached the end of his sentence, and stood leaning against the
+edge. Standing so, she was slighter even than one would expect, almost
+frail but for a kind of compactness, a perfection of bodily finish that
+allowed no such waste of material as physical weakness. If Anne had
+been a few inches taller, or twenty pounds heavier; if she had been
+more sharply defined instead of being a small portion of space cased in
+a body for the convenience of physical motion; if she had obstructed
+attention instead of being almost fluid in the unobtrusiveness of
+her movements, she would long ago have doubled her twenty dollars a
+week. As it was, on the few occasions when John Lowell lent her to
+other members of the firm, they always looked puzzled for a moment:
+"Mitchell? Oh, sure, send her along. Good." And gave Anne twice the
+amount of work they had intended.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" John Lowell drew out his watch, murmured "four twenty-seven!"
+as if he were noting the amount to be charged later, and slipped his
+watch back. "You don't seem to have anything very constructive to
+offer, do you, Barton? Our not taking the case won't save your friends
+on the hill."</p>
+
+<p>"No. Neither did your refusing that railroad franchise case save the
+public."</p>
+
+<p>The older man smiled at the reference. "Too sticky. That would have
+smelled to high Heaven."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit stickier or smellier than this." Roger now took a step
+forward, as if to insure the aim of his words through the unexpected
+aperture of the other's momentary honesty. "The only difference is,
+that you can put this over without publicity. The smell would never get
+beyond the office. No one would whiff the rotten legal juggling that's
+going to take away those poor beggars' homes. The Morgan Gravel Company
+has literally blasted away dozens of laborers' homes, of foreigners
+mostly, in the last ten years, and now that they've come up against a
+few fighting Irish, the last stand on the Hill, they're going to daub
+over their proceedings with a coat of white-wash."</p>
+
+<p>"Goldwash," Lowell corrected with a grin. "You seem to forget that
+these people are going to be paid for their property—whatever the
+judge decides is fair."</p>
+
+<p>"His imagination may reach to one hundred. McLaughlin may prod him to
+one hundred and fifty."</p>
+
+<p>"They'll take it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they will, because Morgan will take the land out from under
+them whether they accept the money or not."</p>
+
+<p>"They can appeal. There's always more law."</p>
+
+<p>Roger Barton's shoulders hunched. His thick, dry, blond hair seemed
+to rise like an angry dog's. Without his moving, Anne felt that he
+had crossed the space between himself and the other. Her small hands
+clenched, and she nibbled her lower lip as she always did in moments of
+forced repression.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Roger said quietly, "there is always the law, more law, for the
+rich, the crooked, the morally rotten. There is always the perversion
+of justice, the farce of an appeal, the hypocrisy of a judge, the
+pitiful sight of the 'twelve good men and true.' There is always more
+law to quibble and distort the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt." The smile deepened at Roger's vehemence. "Only we lawyers
+don't usually express it so frankly."</p>
+
+<p>"No, we don't. As long as we stay in the shameful business."</p>
+
+<p>John Lowell's smile vanished. He looked at Roger with a sudden, new
+penetration, as if he had only just come to the realization of the
+seriousness of Roger's objection. After all, it might be well to
+temporize a little with this hectic young idealist. The firm needed
+Roger in many ways, and, in time, might need him more. With all this
+popular truckling to labor and democracy, this preposterous inversion
+of common sense and accepted order that seemed settling on the world,
+Lowell &amp; Morrison might come to need a signpost in the murk.</p>
+
+<p>John Lowell frowned thoughtfully. In the six months of Roger's
+connection with Lowell &amp; Morrison, John Lowell had, more than once,
+admitted to old Morrison that Roger Barton had "principle-itis in an
+acute form." But as he had never seen, in the long course of his legal
+life, this disease withstand the treatment of personal success, he
+had kept his faith in Roger's final malleability—and many cases from
+Roger's knowledge. This Morgan matter had escaped his vigilance, and he
+was almost as angry with old Morrison as with Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he finally conceded and rose to indicate the interview at an
+end. "I don't want you to do anything you don't believe in, Barton.
+I'll give the briefs to Daniels. You need have nothing to do with it."</p>
+
+<p>"I never intended to have anything to do with it, nor with any other
+case from now on. I'm through."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment John Lowell looked at the younger man with a look of
+hatred, scorn, and a shade of envy so faint that it was gone before
+Roger could be sure it had been. Then he shrugged his acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>"That, of course, is for you to decide. I would not want to try to
+influence you in either direction. If you feel there is a purer field
+for your talents, why, go to it. The law has existed for several
+thousands of years and will probably go on." With a cold smile that
+never touched his eyes, he turned to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Mitchell, could you take some letters right away? I must get them
+off before five."</p>
+
+<p>But Anne was coming slowly across the room toward him, as if drawn
+against her consciousness. Now, at the direct address her face flushed
+to realization; she hesitated, and then completed the distance with
+so genuine an effort that Roger Barton felt her courage, and without
+knowing that he moved, took a step toward her, as if answering the call
+of her slight frailness for physical support.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really mean that those people are going to be maneuvered out
+of their homes? That the legal action is only a sham? That it's all
+settled before we begin?"</p>
+
+<p>Always physical torture for Anne to assert her beliefs against
+opposition, the flush flamed to a brick-red burning, her eyes grew
+smaller, she looked hot and swollen. When Anne blushed like this she
+was ugly.</p>
+
+<p>John Lowell moved impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Miss Mitchell, a law office is not a church. It is a business.
+Here is a big firm needing rock and gravel, easy to get and close to
+shipping facilities. Years ago, when the city was not much more than a
+village, a few people built some dilapidated shacks on Telegraph Hill.
+The Lord knows what they paid for the land, or whom they paid. Soon
+the growth of the city will force down these shacks. Morgan offers to
+buy them now, and unless you value them by the 'home and fireside,
+and baby's cradle' standard of every sentimental tenant, the price is
+a fairly just one. The people themselves, if not interfered with,
+will be glad to take what they can get. On the whole, they're a canny
+lot. They know that it's only a question of a short time before they'd
+have to go. A city growing like this has no room to waste so near its
+water-front in rotting cottages and little gardens. The place for small
+houses like those is in Ocean View, or the Portrero, or the Mission
+outskirts."</p>
+
+<p>"But it would take the men hours to get to their work from those places
+and"—Anne shivered—"they're so dismal and bleak. Gray hills, and wind
+and dust. The Hill has the Bay and the islands and the ferryboats at
+night."</p>
+
+<p>John Lowell stared in astonishment and then laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Miss Mitchell, you alarm me. I'm afraid you'll be turning my
+dictation into poetry, and sending out letters in blank verse."</p>
+
+<p>The laugh cut Anne's last grip from the hope that John Lowell had not
+really meant what he said. He was, then, deliberately doing this thing
+that he knew was wrong, for the money in it. He was going to tear away
+from these people perhaps the only external beauty their lives held.
+Safe in his own well-appointed home, with all the glory of Bay and
+hills spread out before him, he was going to condemn these to the gray,
+thick dust of the Portrero, the bleak and windswept hills, the dull,
+depressing streets of the Mission outskirts. All her life Anne had
+lived on such a street and hated it with the whole force of her nature.</p>
+
+<p>He had the power to do this thing and he was going to do it. Under the
+suave kindliness of his slim, perfectly groomed figure, he was like an
+animal snapping at every morsel that came his way. The law suddenly
+appeared to Anne as a trick surface upon which one walked, ignorant of
+the complicated mechanism below.</p>
+
+<p>Standing before John Lowell, not reaching above his elbow, she looked
+straight into the eyes smiling down at her with a new, appraising gleam.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he said, "do you feel that you will be able to get them out in
+plain prose?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne rose on her toes, because the look in the full, brown eyes above
+her forced her to throw her scorn straight into them.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I shall not be able to get them out in prose—nor—in any other
+way—after to-night. I—I—sha'n't be taking any more at all."</p>
+
+<p>"No?" he said softly, the look changing to a touch that passed hotly
+all over the surface of her body. "I'm extremely sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"I—I—couldn't work here another day," Anne squeaked, furious at the
+ridiculous picture she must make, poised upon her toes, like a silly
+little bantam pecking in a rage.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't explain, Miss Mitchell, I understand—perfectly." And,
+without moving his eyes, Anne felt them now include Roger Barton. "I
+beg your pardon for suggesting it. Of course you couldn't—under the
+circumstances. I assure you—I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," Anne gasped in a cracking whisper that reached only to John
+Lowell and deepened his touch-like look, "you are—rotten."</p>
+
+<p>Then, feeling the tears rushing to her eyes, she dropped to her heels
+and walked back to her desk.</p>
+
+<p>The telephone summoned John Lowell. Roger Barton hesitated as if he
+were coming to her, but she put a sheet of paper quickly into the
+machine and he left the room. The office routine closed over the
+incident.</p>
+
+<p>From long practice Anne's fingers worked with accurate independence,
+but, beyond their flying movement, her brain tried to put in order
+the chaos of her thoughts. She had given up her job, the best job she
+had had in the five years of her working life. In another half hour
+she would go out of the office, never to return. She would go home
+and tell her people. Into the heat of her mood, this need to tell her
+people fell like a small, cold lump of lead. Something within herself
+would drive her to try to make them understand, and only one fact would
+emerge clearly to them—she had lost her job.</p>
+
+<p>At five-thirty, Anne laid the last letter on John Lowell's desk. As she
+put on her things, she knew that he was aware of every motion without
+directly looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Mr. Lowell."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Miss Mitchell." He looked up. Anne was the best
+stenographer he had ever had. In her close-fitting blue tailor suit,
+with a small blue velvet toque framing the wonderful fairness of her
+skin, and the smooth, cool gold of her hair, she was exceedingly
+pretty—prettier than John Lowell had ever noticed. With Roger Barton
+out of the way——</p>
+
+<p>"If you reconsider your decision by morning, I won't remember it," he
+said with a smile that she alone among his stenographers had escaped so
+long.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not reconsider, Mr. Lowell." Anne spoke with a stiff primness
+that instantly dispelled his new interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. Your check will be sent you at the end of the week, as
+usual."</p>
+
+<p>"This is only Wednesday."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right. You've often given overtime."</p>
+
+<p>"Until Wednesday, if you please," Anne said quietly and wanted to cry.
+Four days would mean nothing to John Lowell; much to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well." He picked up his pen and Anne went out.</p>
+
+<p>She heard Roger Barton's voice as she passed his door and hurried on
+to the elevator. Down in the street, the home-going crowds flowed by.
+Anne's eyes filled with tears and she nibbled her lip to keep them
+back. Then she joined the northward current and walked quickly away.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWO">CHAPTER TWO</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The Mitchells lived in an old-fashioned upper flat on a street that,
+before the great fire of 1906, had been a street of two-story wooden
+houses and small cottages set back in pleasant gardens. But the fire,
+sweeping the City's poorer quarters, had driven the inhabitants to the
+safety of the Mission hills; the little cottages had been converted
+into flats, the houses raised and small, congested shops inserted
+below. For the first two years, until the new city settled to permanent
+lines, there had been a bustle and cheap glitter through these streets,
+a cosmopolitan mingling of many different types and nationalities,
+that had touched the district faintly with romance. But now the better
+shops had gone, and only a few frowsy Italian immigrants continued in
+their untidy vegetable stands; disheartened widows managed small notion
+stores and bewailed to the wives of the petty clerks, also nailed to
+the district by low rents, the mythical comforts they had enjoyed
+"before the Fire."</p>
+
+<p>The wooden houses were all dulled to the same sad gray by wind and sun
+and rain. The once pleasant gardens had shrunk to occasional slabs
+of hard brown earth railed off with rusty iron pickets. The front
+doors of the flats, raised three steps from the sidewalk, were all
+exactly alike, warped and dust-grimed, with oblong insets of glass
+two-thirds of the way up. Behind these insets, in brilliant curtains
+of silkoline, or conscientious Battenburg or negligent Nottingham, the
+tenants expressed their individuality against the engulfing monotony.
+The Mitchells had plain white scrim, of thick quality and tightly drawn
+on a brass rod. The doors of the upper flats worked by an uncertain
+mechanism managed from within. When this mechanism broke, if one lived
+in the top flat, one descended the endless stairs and worked the latch
+by hand. As a child, Anne had dreaded calling on friends and ascending,
+watched suspiciously from the heights above, until her identity was
+disclosed. There were ghastly stories of unsuspecting women who had so
+opened to burglars and been at their mercy.</p>
+
+<p>As Anne unlocked the door the smell of pot-roast instantly enveloped
+her, shutting away the problem of her own immediate future and the
+broad shoulders of Roger Barton, hunched forward in defiance of John
+Lowell. Anne's lip quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"To-night—of all nights!"</p>
+
+<p>Slowly she began the long ascent, enclosed by the thickening odor as by
+the walls of a narrow corridor.</p>
+
+<p>Anne hated pot-roast, not because of itself, but for its associations.
+Pot-roast was a pretense. It had not the open honesty of stew.
+Pot-roast was Mrs. Mitchell's final compromise in a line of preference
+that had started with prime ribs of beef. It meant that James Mitchell
+had bet away more than the usual portion of his monthly pay check; the
+meager remnant had stung Hilda's patience to rebellion; her imagination
+had leaped from the invariable shoulder chops of Wednesday evening to
+prime roast; but, before it could safely land upon that pinnacle of
+rebellion, had tripped and clutched at pot-roast. Anne sighed and went
+slowly on. At the stair-head, the gas jet, stuffed with cotton wool to
+keep it from ever being extravagantly turned to its full capacity, shed
+a sickly light through an amber globe. She turned the cock ferociously
+as far as it would go and then went on down the hall to the curtained
+niche just outside her own hall bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>Long ago this niche had been formed to hold the overflow from the hall
+closet. Into it Mrs. Mitchell had since crowded broken and worn-out
+pieces of household furniture, hideous bisque ornaments of the '90's
+which Anne and Belle had refused to have about, oil lamps, in case
+"something happens to the gas"; a sewing-machine that would cost more
+to fix than to replace; dresses and bits of carpet, some day to be
+made into new rugs; and the week's accumulation of laundry from which
+she snatched and ironed pieces as she needed them. Years ago Anne had
+tried to eliminate this niche, but when her mother had demanded where
+she should put the things and Anne had suggested burning them, Hilda
+had looked so grieved at the implication of her bad management in
+ever letting them accumulate, and had asked Anne in so hurt a tone to
+pick out "one single thing that might not be needed some day," that
+Anne relented. Now the niche was like a malignant growth, too late to
+operate upon, to which one submits. But even yet Anne never let the
+portière quite fall to behind her and enclose her in this cemetery of
+odds and ends.</p>
+
+<p>When she had hung up her things she went down the hall, past the
+dining-room where her father sat in the rocker under the hard, white,
+incandescent light, staring at the unlit gas log in the grate, the
+evening paper spread on his knees. In the kitchen her mother was making
+gravy from the fat in the baking-pan.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, dear. You're late. I was just going to begin without you."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mitchell wiped the perspiration from her face with the corner of a
+very soiled apron and kissed her daughter. She was taller and broader
+than Anne, but she had the same long-lashed, deeply-blue eyes, and her
+skin had once been even fairer. It was remarkably white and soft yet at
+the base of her throat, although there were tiny lines about her ears
+and at the corners of her mouth. Her hair had been dark, however, like
+Belle's, and now was a fluffy mass of gray curls.</p>
+
+<p>Anne always felt older than her mother and loved her, on the whole,
+with a passionate, protective tenderness. There were times, however,
+when Hilda's persistent cheerfulness and muddled thinking annoyed her,
+and at long intervals Hilda disgusted her. These were the moments
+of confidence in which her mother, under the pretense of "warning
+the girls," confided to them, in general terms, "some of the things
+married women have to put up with." Belle and Anne both knew that these
+confidences were the result of her relations with the small, gray man,
+their father. Years ago it had deepened Belle's indifference and Anne's
+dislike to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it now?" Anne took the spoon and tried to beat the lumpy gravy
+to smoothness. "He's just staring into the grate."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda shrugged. "That oil well, I suppose. I wish to goodness they'd
+stop discovering gushers and copper and all those things. I thought
+when the Chinese lottery was put out of business we might get a little
+ahead."</p>
+
+<p>Anne smashed at the lumps and frowned. "You ought to have put your foot
+down years ago, that's all there is to it. If you'd made a real row
+every time instead of just—just spluttering sometimes—he would have
+had to sit up and behave."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda bridled. "It's one thing to talk and another to do. When you're
+married yourself, you'll understand. By the time you get 'round to see
+how you could do it better, it's too late. They've got you saddled with
+a baby and——"</p>
+
+<p>Feeling a confidence about to descend upon her, Anne snatched the first
+weapon to hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I've quit the office, mamma."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda's mouth remained open, her eyes held the "if-you-only-understood"
+look that always accompanied such a confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't look like that, moms; the world is really rotating just as
+usual."</p>
+
+<p>"Quit!" Hilda echoed in a whisper. "Quit!"</p>
+
+<p>Anne nodded. "But I'll get another place in a day or two, don't worry,
+dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Quit!" Hilda echoed more faintly, and emerged into the reality of
+the situation. "What for? I thought you liked the place. Did Mr.
+Lowell—did he—anything——?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne stamped her foot. "No. Of course he didn't. I did like it as far
+the general atmosphere of the office went, although I've had doubts
+of him lately. But to-day he came out into the open. He's a—crook."</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious! What did he want you to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing special. But I can't work in a place where I know things are
+being done that he's doing. I just can't."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda went back to the gravy. She did not want Anne to work in a
+dishonest office, but she did wish Anne had not discovered the
+delinquency of John Lowell for a few days.</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear, of course you can't. But—suppose you don't tell papa
+to-night. It's gloomy enough as it is."</p>
+
+<p>"Why on earth he should create all the gloom is beyond me. Why
+shouldn't he be annoyed? It might do him good."</p>
+
+<p>"Please, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll see, moms. I won't promise."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda sighed and dished up the potatoes. For all her slim, frail
+fairness, Anne was very difficult to manage. As Belle said, "You never
+know when you're going to strike one of Anne's principles. They're like
+deep sea mines, unsuspected till they go off under you." Hilda carried
+the roast into the dining-room, Anne followed with the potatoes, and
+they sat down to dinner. In silence they began to eat.</p>
+
+<p>Through the glass of the mantel above the gas log, wreathed in asbestos
+moss, Anne watched her father. He was a small man with thin, gray hair
+and brown eyes, faded from long years of figuring in bad lights. He
+bent low over his plate, but ate slowly, through habit acquired in
+an attack of nervous indigestion when Anne and Belle were children.
+There was little general conversation at the Mitchell meals, although,
+when James Mitchell was in a good humor, he was inclined to deliver
+monologues, chiefly against Radicalism and the Catholic Church. Any
+newspaper mention of the possibility of a strike precipitated the
+first, which before its finish, by some complicated process of logic,
+always included the second.</p>
+
+<p>In the office of the Coast Electric Company, where he had been an
+assistant bookkeeper for thirty years, James Mitchell was known as
+one of the most faithful men they had. He never took a vacation nor
+objected to overtime. He had a tremendous respect for every one in
+authority above him, and the only temper the office had ever seen him
+display was when one of the younger clerks had tried to organize a
+clerks' union. James Mitchell had thrown down his pencil, whirled upon
+the astonished organizer, and demanded to know "where the city would
+have been if it hadn't been for the men who started this company?"
+Apparently he considered that the city would still have been using
+candles. For this act of faith he had been raised five dollars shortly
+after.</p>
+
+<p>He disliked open conflict and in the early days of his marriage had
+once left the house to escape the first real discussion between himself
+and Hilda on the subject of money. This astonishing act had for years
+hung over the home, and the fear that "papa would take his hat and go
+out" had been held as an extinguisher over the children's quarrels and
+suffocated any tendency Anne or Belle might have had to appeal to him.</p>
+
+<p>Anne could never remember an age when either she or Belle had talked
+to him of their own accord, although there had been periods when her
+mother, driven by some hidden impulse, had insisted that they "go and
+talk to papa. Tell him about school; he likes to hear it." At thirteen
+Belle had refused, and Anne, three years younger, had managed to slip
+from the obligation at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>They finished the meat and vegetables in safe silence and Hilda
+gathered up the dishes, hopeful of peace to the end. But the heavy
+stillness had weighted Anne's already taut nerves, and when her mother
+returned with brown betty and hard sauce, and her father came suddenly
+to consciousness of the elaborate nature of this week-day dinner with
+a remark on the price of butter and sugar, Anne's hands went cold and
+her face flamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we don't have it often," Hilda propitiated, "but sometimes it
+gives one a headache trying to think of changes, everything's so high."</p>
+
+<p>"And going higher." He helped himself sparingly to the hard sauce and
+pushed it across to Anne, who smothered her pudding in it. "And it'll
+keep on going up, too, unless people stop buying. Women could bring
+down the prices in a minute if they had the sense. Nobody needs hard
+sauce."</p>
+
+<p>"They do," Anne spoke quietly without looking up. Her mother tried to
+touch her foot under the table, but Anne moved just beyond reach. Hilda
+began to eat her betty.</p>
+
+<p>"They do, do they?" James Mitchell pounced upon Anne's remark like a
+small and hungry terrier on a bone. "They do? Well, it would take more
+than any argument you, or anybody else your age, could put up, to show
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't doubt that," Anne shot at him, still busy with her dessert;
+"nothing would convince you because you don't want to see, or else you
+really can't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't understand, can't I? Oh, no, I suppose nobody can understand
+anything these days when they're past twenty-five. I've been out
+bucking the world for more years than you've lived in it, but of course
+I've had my eyes shut all the time. Now see here, let me tell you this,
+young lady," he leaned toward Anne and thumped the table, "you've got
+what this whole country's got—a dose of blind staggers. You can't see
+what's coming and you won't till it's hit you. You go ranting along
+about people needing hard sauce and luxuries and you kick like steers
+when the prices go up. Of course they'll go up. Why shouldn't they?
+It's the law of supply and demand. When dairymen find out people 'have
+to have hard sauce' they're going to run up butter and eggs. A fool can
+see that."</p>
+
+<p>"Only a fool can see that," Anne's voice shook in spite of herself.
+"Why shouldn't people have hard sauce?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you get off any of that Socialistic jargon in this house. I
+won't have it. If I'd had any say in the bringing up of you girls——"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, papa, please. The girls——"</p>
+
+<p>"If you'd had anything to say, Belle would never have been a trained
+nurse, nor I a special stenographer. We'd both have been wrapping
+packages in some department store basement." Anne rolled her napkin and
+rose in an icy quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"A lot of good either Belle's nursing or your stenography does," he
+darted now down the personal opening Anne had made him. "We never see
+Belle except when she has a few moments she doesn't know what to do
+with, and she wouldn't help out with a dollar if she was asked. And as
+for you—where could you get the board your mother puts up for what you
+pay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, papa! Anne——"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've quit my job, so you'll have to board me for nothing until I
+get another one."</p>
+
+<p>"Quit!" James Mitchell stared as his wife had stared. "Quit! What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because John Lowell is dishonest and I won't work for a dishonest
+firm."</p>
+
+<p>"How many firms do you suppose are honest? You haven't risen to the
+management of a firm yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor have I sunk to conniving with a thief, either."</p>
+
+<p>James Mitchell opened his lips and then, suddenly and unexpectedly,
+leaned back. He looked shrunken and grayer, and he stared as if he saw
+something unseen by the others.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had—the same job—for—thirty—years," he said slowly.
+"Thirty—years—at the same desk."</p>
+
+<p>Anne softened.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to have quit long ago. They've used you because you let
+them. You could have done better. You could do better now. Do you want
+to quit? I'll get another place to-morrow and stake the house till you
+get a job."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I don't want to quit. No." He seemed fleeing before the
+suggestion. The strangeness of the new road terrified him and he
+scuttled back to the familiar. "Used me? Of course they've used me. A
+man with a family has to get used to being used. A married man has to
+put up with things. Where would you kids have been if I'd have been
+getting on my ear all the time you were little?"</p>
+
+<p>"Papa has been faithful," Hilda began, but the sudden tears that filled
+Anne's eyes astonished her to silence.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word, Anne picked up the plates and went into the kitchen.
+Hilda followed.</p>
+
+<p>"If he only wouldn't get down behind that pretense of having done it
+all for us, I might respect him, moms. But he just burrows into that
+hole like a gopher and you can't get him out."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, after all, dear, I don't suppose he would have stuck if it
+hadn't been for us. He'd have gotten into some kind of a gambling
+scheme long ago. After all, he brings home most of his salary most of
+the time."</p>
+
+<p>And Anne saw herself a small girl watching her mother dividing the
+contents of the pay envelope, counting and recounting and finally
+tying up each little package in tissue paper, as if to keep the tiny
+allotments from spending themselves in another department. They had
+hurt to tears, those thin little allotments, and her mother's sigh as
+she gathered them up and went humming about the housework. Anne did not
+answer and they did the dishes in silence until the phone rang. Hilda
+came from answering it with such a look of relief that Anne smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Belle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. She's got an hour off and is coming up."</p>
+
+<p>Anne wiped the last glass and put it away.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm all in and I'm going to bed. The autopsy will have to take
+place without the corpse." The smile deepened as she kissed her mother.
+"All nice and safe again, moms?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care what you say, Belle has a practical mind. She always
+seems to know what to do."</p>
+
+<p>"As if we had a fever or a dose of colic."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd a lot rather we had things like that. What with you and papa,
+sometimes I feel as if I were living in a cloud of feathers."</p>
+
+<p>"You dear thing," Anne patted her shoulder. "Well, Belle will be along
+with her spray in a minute and wet us all down nice and flat. I don't
+suppose I'll go right to sleep——"</p>
+
+<p>"She'll look in for a minute, I guess."</p>
+
+<p>Anne laughed. "She sure will."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_THREE">CHAPTER THREE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Belle Mitchell was much taller than Anne or Hilda, with straight, very
+heavy brown hair and brown eyes. She had a jolly, even disposition,
+was rarely hurt herself, never knew when she hurt others, and felt
+competent to manage any situation in which she found herself. Her
+favorite expression was "look facts in the face." She loved Anne with
+the same protecting tenderness that Anne felt for Hilda, and never
+understood the chain of "highfalutin" reasoning by which Anne finally
+exploded into one of her rare rages. James Mitchell had always been
+a little afraid of Belle, but he agreed with Hilda that she "had a
+practical streak." This was supposed to have descended to her intact,
+like an heirloom, from James' Scotch grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>At seventeen, Belle had looked over the possibilities of the future,
+left high-school and gone into hospital training. Four years later she
+was earning twenty-five dollars a week. She had then left the family
+and taken an apartment with two other nurses. As she explained to Anne:</p>
+
+<p>"The only way to go on caring for your family is to get away from them."</p>
+
+<p>She had paid for Anne's course in a good business college and
+supplemented the family income with five dollars a week, until Anne was
+making enough to pay her own board. Then she stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"In some silly streak she'll call 'being honest with papa,' mamma will
+tell him, and some race-track tout will get that extra five. Or she'll
+have a fit of rebellion and go off at a tangent in another washing
+machine or bread mixer or aluminum contraption for getting a whole
+dinner under one lid, and nobody will have the benefit. But kidlets,"
+and here Belle had put her arms about Anne in a way that always melted
+any hardness Anne felt for Belle's practicality, "this rule is not for
+you. If you want any extras—please, sisterkin, ask, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne had promised, her amazement at Belle's ability to do these firm,
+decided things, mingling with a sense of disloyalty to her mother in
+recognizing their truth. She herself could never have left the house,
+nor stopped a contribution, unless she had done it as the final step
+against pricks that Belle would never have felt at all.</p>
+
+<p>But now, as Anne sat in the cool darkness of her own little room,
+looking out into the fog-wrapped silence of the empty street, she was
+not thinking of Belle, nor of Belle's management of "her case." She was
+thinking again, in spite of her effort not to, of Roger Barton. He had
+passed out of her life, and yet, in some inexplicable way, he seemed to
+have suddenly entered it very intimately.</p>
+
+<p>In the six months of his connection with Lowell &amp; Morrison, Anne
+had seen more of him than of any man in any of the three offices in
+which she had worked. They had never talked of personal things, but
+of business details and the generalities into which these seemed
+inevitably to lead them; discussions, scarcely ever more than a few
+moments long, of plays and books and Life.</p>
+
+<p>Anne envied Roger his university education and Roger envied Anne the
+courage which carried her, after a hard day's work, to extension
+lectures at night. From these she extracted a kind of sensory
+conviction of the complex and interesting world beyond her experience.
+A world of clear thinking, in contrast to the muddled and confused
+mental processes of her own family and of all the people whom she had
+ever known; of aims higher than the daily grubbing for food and shelter
+that they called living. In Roger Barton, Anne had encountered the
+first person who, born into an environment like her own, had forced his
+way through to this interesting and complex world. Anne often wondered
+how he had done it, but as he seemed to take his own progress for
+granted, and had never commented on the achievement, Anne had been too
+shy to ask him. And now she would probably never see him again. Through
+the monotony of the working day there would be no moment to look
+forward to; no memory with which to contrast the dullness of evenings
+at home.</p>
+
+<p>Out in the great world open to men, Roger Barton would make another
+place for himself. Before his ability, his courage and his masculinity,
+everything was possible. He could leave to-morrow for distant countries
+and the far strange places he expected some day so confidently to see.
+He could seek beauty and romance, limited only by his own powers of
+physical endurance. He could work his way in ships about the world, or
+tramp alone across deserts. He was strong and free.</p>
+
+<p>And she? In a few days she would begin again to look for another place.
+Perhaps she would better her salary a little, but she would come and go
+at fixed hours. For the greater part of the waking day she would sell
+her intelligence and strength to strangers. They would know nothing of
+the reality beneath, nor would she touch their lives at any vital spot.
+Her father would get over this spell of depression at his losses and
+his annoyance with her contradiction, and the house would run smoothly,
+like a narrow gauge train along a dusty, uninteresting depression
+between high hills; beyond these she would never see. It was all so
+flat, so gray, so dead. Anne shivered:</p>
+
+<p>"Anything as ugly as this house and the way we live is WICKED."</p>
+
+<p>Through the silence of the lonely street, Belle's firm step echoed
+clearly. The signal ring, three quick peals, brought Hilda running to
+the stair-head. The lever on the landing clicked, far below the door
+opened and closed with a slam, and Belle came gayly up the stairs,
+filling every cranny of the house with the force of her cheerful
+efficiency, just as if a strong breeze had been suddenly admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, moms. Her Royal Highness decided she was well enough to let me
+off for an hour, and so I——"</p>
+
+<p>All sound suddenly ceased. Then Belle, with a brisk "Hello, papa,"
+followed her mother down the hall, past the dining-room, and the
+kitchen door closed behind them.</p>
+
+<p>Anne shrugged impatiently. No smallest change was ever accomplished in
+the Mitchell household without this background of tragedy. The news of
+her action in leaving Lowell &amp; Morrison was now being "broken" to Belle
+and advice asked, exactly as if Anne had absconded with the funds or
+tried to commit suicide. There were no degrees of tragedy among the
+Mitchells.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care, let them talk it over until there isn't a shred of it
+left. I'm not going to explain. They wouldn't understand if I talked
+all night."</p>
+
+<p>Anne closed the window, turned on the softly shaded lamp and chose a
+book from the small bookcase at the foot of the white enameled bed.
+Settled in the chintz-covered Morris chair, she opened the book and
+forced herself to follow the lines to the end of the first page. But
+Roger Barton's angry gray eyes moved between the words and Anne did not
+even turn the leaf. The book slowly slid to her lap. Across it Anne
+stared into the future.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of Belle's step coming firmly along the hall drew her back to
+the present with a physical reaction of having been literally lifted
+from one spot and deposited in another. And before she had quite
+achieved equilibrium in the moment, Belle was tapping at the door. This
+tap of Belle's was not a motion of the fingers, but a denunciation of
+any pretense of absence you might be intending. It not only declared
+Belle's certainty that you were there but her knowledge of exactly what
+you were doing.</p>
+
+<p>"It's me, kidlets; may I come in?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne opened the door and Belle instantly filled the entire room.
+Closing the door, she smiled down upon Anne, flushed and a little
+stiff with the force of her decision not to be led into any apologetic
+explanation of her act.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you certainly have done it this time. I never saw such gloom,
+and that's going some. You'd think the sheriff was in the parlor and
+the morgue wagon at the door. Tell me the whole sad tale."</p>
+
+<p>From an ivory cigarette case, "a remembrance from an officer patient,"
+Belle drew a cigarette and lighted it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, 'fess up."</p>
+
+<p>"You've been out there half an hour and have heard the whole thing,
+more no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"From A to Z, and inside out and I haven't got it straight yet. Why did
+you do it? That's what has upset them, but they don't seem to know what
+it was. Why did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what they both asked."</p>
+
+<p>"Their intelligence must be looking up. I gather that you were asked to
+do something your conscience didn't approve and that you up and quit."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't asked to do anything. But John Lowell isn't straight and I
+won't work for him."</p>
+
+<p>Through her cigarette smoke, Belle stared as Hilda and James had done.</p>
+
+<p>"But, kiddie, you'll never find a business man that is straight, or an
+office or any place where you approve of everything. How long do you
+think I'd be a nurse if I had to approve of everything I see in an
+operating room; people cut up when there's no need; often carelessness
+that would make your hair stand on end. My relation to the surgeon is
+like yours to Lowell. I hand the instruments, and keep mum."</p>
+
+<p>"And I quit."</p>
+
+<p>"So I hear," Belle laughed. "But what are you going to do? Ask for a
+certificate of conscience from your next employer? I say, sisterkin,
+what do you think business life is?"</p>
+
+<p>"That depends on what you want to make it."</p>
+
+<p>"Rot. It's compromise from dawn till dark; from the cradle to the
+grave. When you start out you think you're going to do wonderful
+things, reorganize everything and everybody, because your own pet
+ideals are the very finest ideals in captivity. And—in the end you're
+lucky if you remember what they were. Why, even I, and nobody would
+accuse me of being sentimental, had all kinds of ideas about what a
+nurse's vocation might be, a kind of etherealized Florence Nightingale
+in a perpetual ecstasy; but when I came up against real patients,
+whining nervous women and men—well, Belle Nightingale gives her pills
+and powders now strictly according to the doctor's orders and forgets
+most of her patients with the last pay check. The whole thing's like
+Mom's pot-roast—a good solid makeshift for something better."</p>
+
+<p>Anne shrugged. "If Moms had never fallen for that first pot-roast——"</p>
+
+<p>"If Eve had never picked the apple."</p>
+
+<p>"Well? You don't know what the world might have been like if she
+hadn't, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can make a guess. It would have been just about as it is—if not a
+little worse. She would have found a pear or a cranberry or a walnut,
+any old thing." Belle leaned slightly forward and peered with genuine
+concern through the thickening film of tobacco smoke at the small
+blonde figure, sitting stiffly now on the bed-edge. "Anne, do you
+know that I worry a lot about you sometimes? I know you're a good
+stenographer and as economically independent as any woman, but it
+always seems to me as if you were out of step with the world in some
+way. You don't plunk, plunk along with the rest of us. You—you——"</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down on the curb-stone."</p>
+
+<p>"No. You mince along reluctantly. I wish to Heaven you'd get married."</p>
+
+<p>Anne flushed, but Belle was grinding her cigarette stub into Anne's
+lacquered pin tray and did not notice. She ground it into the polished
+surface as if the tray were the problem of Anne's future and the stub
+her own power of settling the difficulty. When she had burned the
+delicate surface to a black spot, she went on. "But I can't for the
+life of me picture the kind of man you would marry, not with your
+opportunities for meeting them. An ordinary business man would drive
+you as crazy as you would drive him. A professional man—well, there's
+not much difference. An up-to-date doctor, even an up-to-date minister,
+has just as keen an eye for the main chance as John Lowell—and
+that's what seems to upset you. And even if you found one straight in
+business—men are rotten morally, most of them, and you're so—I don't
+know just what it is, Anne, but you're like a cool drink in a very
+clean glass, and men want beer in an earthen mug when it comes right
+down to everyday diet. They want it in women just as much as they do in
+business."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it." Anne spoke with such vehement assurance that
+Belle looked at her sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't? Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne wished now that she had not spoken, but the quickest way to escape
+from that gimlet-like boring of Belle's eyes was to go on. "It isn't
+true of all men in business and I don't see why it should be true of
+all men morally."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever know an absolutely honest business man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." Anne felt her face beginning to burn, and to escape the look
+creeping into her sister's eyes she rose quickly and began doing
+something unnecessary to the window curtain. She felt Belle's eyes
+between her shoulder blades and knew that even the back of her neck was
+flaming. At Belle's low chuckle she bit her lip, dragged about herself
+the fast vanishing wrap of impersonal interest, and turned to her
+sister with an assumption of surprise that Belle's look shattered in a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, sisterkin, this is getting interesting. Who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't thinking of any special individual. I—there must be——"</p>
+
+<p>"Cut it out, Anne, anyhow with sister Belle. When a working girl keeps
+her faith in men for five years, there is always an individual."</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, Belle. I loathe that cheap talk."</p>
+
+<p>"And I loathe dodging round and pretending. Who is this torch-bearer in
+the darkness of the legal world?"</p>
+
+<p>"He isn't a torch-bearer, but he's honest. Roger Barton." It was the
+easiest way, because Belle would prod until she got it.</p>
+
+<p>"That good-looking young blond? Well, how does he compromise with his
+honesty and John Lowell?"</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't. He quit, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Well—I'll—be darned. You both rode out of the office on the same
+white palfrey! When's the wedding?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you please get out of this room?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not on your life. Not till I hear the whole thrilling tale. Are you
+engaged, Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Will you stop?"</p>
+
+<p>"What'll you bet that you won't be inside a month?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. It would be a shame to take the money. Why, if dad had tips
+like that we'd have been rich long ago. What'll you bet, then, that he
+doesn't ask you?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne's lips trembled. "Belle, please stop joking like that."</p>
+
+<p>"But, kiddie, the most wily flirt in the world couldn't have done
+better. Any man would be flattered to death. You don't suppose he's
+going to let a kindred soul—and a pretty one—slip out of his life, do
+you? He'll look you up, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"No, he won't. I won't be here. I'm—I'm going to take a vacation,"
+Anne added in a sudden decision that startled herself.</p>
+
+<p>Belle grinned, and then, at the tears that filled Anne's eyes, relented.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine idea. You never did have a real one. Where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quincy."</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens! That's not a vacation. That's a penance."</p>
+
+<p>"I never hated it the way you do. I don't mind Aunt Het, and I'm fond
+of Janet and Bab."</p>
+
+<p>"If it's money, Anne, I'll be tickled to death—Tahoe or Yosemite—or
+any other real place."</p>
+
+<p>"I loathe them."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know anything about them. Please. Don't be so highfalutin'.
+I can do it easily. Make it a birthday present if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"No, thanks just the same. I don't mean to be highfalutin', but I love
+the bluff, really I do. And I am rather tired. I just want to lie out
+there on the dunes and think."</p>
+
+<p>Belle's eyes twinkled. "Of course——"</p>
+
+<p>"Belle Mitchell, if you go back to that I'll walk straight out of this
+room."</p>
+
+<p>"Go back to what?" Belle rose and took the rigid little body in her
+arms. "Oh, come on, Anne, relax inside and out. Run along and have a
+grand time feeding the chickens and listening to Aunt Het reminisce and
+thank the Lord for your simple tastes. When are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Moms know it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>The sisters smiled at each other. Then Belle drew Anne into her arms
+and held her close, her own cheek on the cool blonde hair, her eyes
+very soft and tender.</p>
+
+<p>"You dear little thing," she whispered, "you dear—breakable—little
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>Released, Anne tried to laugh, but she was too queerly excited about
+something that, as soon as she was alone, was going to slip out from
+behind the wall to which Belle's presence relegated it. The laugh
+stopped at her lips in a wistful little smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember, Anne, if you change your mind you only have to phone me. I
+always have some cash on hand. You will, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will."</p>
+
+<p>"Honest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cross my heart to die. And—thanks—awfully——"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>Belle opened the door and went briskly down the hall. Anne closed it
+softly, turned out the light, undressed and threw the window as wide as
+she could. Between the smooth, fresh sheets she lay waiting tensely for
+silence to settle on the house and leave her quite alone with her own
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>At last Belle and her mother went downstairs, her father wound the
+cuckoo clock, the door below slammed and Hilda came slowly up. The hall
+light went out. Silence had come.</p>
+
+<p>In the soft, black stillness, Roger Barton stood out clearly, his
+crisp blond hair electric with vitality, his wide mouth now tight with
+repressed anger, now whimsical with mirth.</p>
+
+<p>Would he really look her up?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_FOUR">CHAPTER FOUR</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>For two days Roger Barton luxuriated in his escape from the law.
+At twenty-eight all experience had to him the nature of a material
+thing. It was to be grasped, used to his need, and when it failed him,
+dropped. He absorbed what his mind needed at the time and went on, as
+an animal leaves a food supply, its wants satisfied. University and
+law school had been the road to an education offered by a distant,
+childless relative with an ambition to have a profession in the family.
+Roger now wrote and told this relative he had given up the law, but the
+old man's irate answer did not disturb him in the least. He did not
+feel that he had been ungrateful or that he owed anything beyond the
+power of his own conscience to pay.</p>
+
+<p>He had no definite plans for the future, except a general feeling that
+he was about to enter a real and interesting world. In this world there
+were fine, high things to do, and he would probably be poor, for John
+Lowell's office had convinced Roger that ideals do not pay and that
+nothing else is worth while. He took long tramps through the Marin
+hills, or lay on the sand at Land's End listening to the waves, and
+dreamed. In these dreams he thought often of Anne, standing on tiptoes
+before John Lowell. Now that he would probably never see her again he
+wished that he knew her better.</p>
+
+<p>There could not be many women like Anne. She gave so fully of her time
+and interest, and yet there were unstirred depths beneath. Roger had
+always felt them in sudden, sad looks that passed across Anne's eyes,
+in the catching of the breath that marked an almost painfully keen
+interest, in small, quick motions and physical responses that he had
+accepted as mannerisms, but now saw as revelations of that courage and
+ideality that was Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't easy for her to confront that rotter, but she did it, the
+slip of a beauty-loving thing! How she must hate an office!"</p>
+
+<p>And she would probably go into just such another in a few days, perhaps
+a worse one. She might already have found a place. While he lay on
+the sand, facing the full future, she might be bent above a machine,
+her fine enthusiasm leashed to the narrow demands of price lists, her
+physical rarity the object of some cad's coarse admiration. The thought
+sickened Roger when it first came to him clearly, an employer trying
+to touch Anne's hand, pressing her knee as he forced her to needless
+proximity for dictation; Anne, the hurt and quivering object of those
+advances he had seen other girls welcome with feigned annoyance and
+sidelong glances. He rose quickly to escape it, although he had come
+to his favorite cove with a book for the whole afternoon, and began
+walking again across the dunes. But the picture moved beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, it isn't right. A man has a hard enough time hanging to his
+principles, but a girl, a worth-while girl like that who has something
+beyond the idea of attracting men—it's a shame."</p>
+
+<p>And he could do nothing to prevent it. He could not even call Anne a
+friend. He did not know where she lived.</p>
+
+<p>"What a simp!" He stopped and kicked the sand viciously and marveled at
+his own stupidity. For six months he had worked with Anne and had never
+asked her to go anywhere with him, or tried to know her better. He knew
+now that he had looked forward in the mornings to seeing her, soft and
+small and silvery fair at her desk. He had snatched every opportunity
+to talk with her. And had made none! Seen so, now, from the outside,
+it was incredible but true. He knew nothing of Anne whatever. Nothing.
+She might even be engaged to some man, no better, under the veneer
+with which men, physically desirous, deceive girls, than John Lowell.
+Perhaps worse.</p>
+
+<p>Roger strode on, his shoulders hunched now as they always hunched
+against obstruction and defeat. He would do something to prevent the
+waste of Anne. He would find Anne a place where that rare fineness
+would not be quite wasted in the mechanical routine of mercenary
+ambition. At least he could do that.</p>
+
+<p>Anne quivering with hurt of ugliness, seeing the bay at night, the
+jewel-like islands, the stately white ferry boats, clinging to them for
+people she had never known! He would find a place for Anne and see her
+in it before he went out into the fullness of the future waiting for
+him. The possibility of Anne's engagement to a worthless man, Roger had
+finally to push aside, with reluctant concession to his own ideal of
+her. If Anne were engaged, the man would have to be worth while.</p>
+
+<p>For a day and a half Roger sought a place for Anne. His own mail
+remained unopened, telephone messages unanswered. About twelve o'clock
+on the morning of the second day he found what he wanted. It was with
+a publishing firm and the duties involved a wider scope than the usual
+stenography. The surroundings were as pleasant as any office could
+offer, the hours easy, the firm established, conservative to a degree
+that had always rasped Roger's youthful enthusiasm, but satisfied him
+when he visioned the two white-haired, old-fashioned gentlemen as
+Anne's employers. At the end of half an hour he had forced the salary
+up five dollars a month and secured an option on the opening for two
+days.</p>
+
+<p>From old Morrison he got Anne's address, and ten minutes later
+so astonished Hilda by his insistence that he must know Anne's
+whereabouts, that she forgot the definite orders to tell no one and
+described the Saunders home at Quincy so minutely that Roger could have
+found it blindfolded in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>Three hours later Roger got off the train, the sole passenger for the
+windswept little wooden box upon the dunes. To the north and east
+the dun sand swelled to mounds and rounded hummocks, held from their
+eternal drifting by bunches of coarse, gray grass. Across the narrow
+bay, low hills, dense and black with chaparral, each guarding at its
+base a tiny white beach, ran westward to the sea, beating on the rocky
+coast in long, sobbing protest against the lashing wind.</p>
+
+<p>In the vast, clean loneliness of sand and wind and sky, a fear that had
+touched him on the way up that Anne might think it strange for him to
+appear suddenly like this, dissolved. The silent emptiness absorbed the
+misunderstanding of motive, and Roger knew that if Anne did not wish
+the position she would not think him intrusive. He easily found the
+half-obliterated wagon-road Hilda had described and took it across the
+dunes.</p>
+
+<p>As the front gate creaked on its sagging hinges, Barbara Saunders rose
+from the floor, where she and Anne had been trying to force a faded
+blue dimity to contain a yard more material than it had ever had.</p>
+
+<p>"I simply will not wear the thing as it is. Janet can say what
+she likes—she doesn't care what she wears—but I've been to six
+Quarterlies in it—and I've reached my limit."</p>
+
+<p>The gate slammed and Barbara turned to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne! It's a man!"</p>
+
+<p>Anne looked up, still puzzling over the impossibilities of the faded
+dimity. "Do you know, Bab, I believe if we ripped the whole thing and
+turned the top to the bottom and gored it, we could take all the scraps
+left over and——"</p>
+
+<p>"Come here," Bab whispered as if the person below could hear through
+the glass. "He doesn't look like an agent. Who on earth——"</p>
+
+<p>Anne came and stood beside her. With nose pressed to the glass she
+could just see the top of Roger's hat. A loud knock echoed through the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"In a hurry, rather, isn't he? Who——" Bab turned. "Why! Anne! Do you
+know him?"</p>
+
+<p>Before the burning self-consciousness in Anne's eyes, Bab stepped back.</p>
+
+<p>"Will—will—you open the door? Yes, I know him. It's Mr. Barton.
+He—used to be in the same office."</p>
+
+<p>Barbara's sallow cheeks flushed and her eyes scorned Anne's
+insincerity. For five nights Anne had let her go on, in the
+dark intimacy of the same room, piling up the mass of her small
+perplexities, the annoying efforts at adjustment between herself and
+Janet and her mother. And all the time Anne had harbored a romance.
+Anne was not the small, shy cousin, so different from Belle, so like
+themselves in spite of her daily contact with the great world of
+business. Anne knew men. When deprived for a few days of her society
+they came long distances to see her.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, I'll open the door. But don't be long, please. Janet's
+cleaning out the chicken house and looks like a fright. My other waist
+isn't ironed and mother's asleep."</p>
+
+<p>She went. Anne heard her open the door and lead Roger down the creaking
+hall to the dining-room, a bare, dilapidated room, with sagging floor
+beyond the skill of the manless household to repair, and woodwork
+painted streakily by Bab and Janet.</p>
+
+<p>Anne tried to hurry, but her cold fingers fumbled. And even when, at
+last, the hooks were hooked, the hairpins all in place, and Anne stood
+with her hand on the knob, it seemed impossible to turn it.</p>
+
+<p>Why had he come?</p>
+
+<p>Was Belle right? How had she known?</p>
+
+<p>Roger Barton looked up as the rear door unexpectedly opened and Anne
+came toward him, with just the degree of welcome to express her
+surprise, and the exact amount of pleasure at the sight of a friend.
+Her greeting angered and disappointed him. Anne thought she did it very
+well.</p>
+
+<p>"Hunting?" She tossed the word off lightly, as if she had many male
+friends all deeply interested in the sport.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Roger snapped, annoyed at this assumption of social manner in the
+stark, unfriendly room, with its stained walls and broken floor. "No. I
+didn't bring a gun. Besides, it's not duck season yet. I never heard of
+any other game on the marshes, did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I don't think I have." Anne flushed.</p>
+
+<p>Her embarrassment at discovery did not soften Roger; he had been too
+hurt by her greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I have no excuse except one you may think presumptuous. I heard,
+accidentally, of a place I thought might suit you. But you'll have to
+let them know by Tuesday, to-morrow if possible. It's with Wilmot &amp;
+Brown—twenty-five a week."</p>
+
+<p>Anne tried to look as if she were seriously considering, but she had
+scarcely heard. She had not thought of this and now she saw so clearly
+it could have been the only reason for his coming. He had a deep, human
+kindliness for all misfortune, and she had been unfortunate. She, a
+working girl, had given up her place. He had found her another almost
+instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. It was very kind of you. But I'm not sure I'm going back to
+town directly. My cousins," the word contained the broken floor, the
+scratched wall, the worn furniture, "want me to stay for the rest of
+the month. I may do it."</p>
+
+<p>Through the window she saw Janet wheeling a refuse-filled barrow from
+the chicken run. Bent against the wind, she moved, almost doubled above
+the vile load. Bab followed with a pitchfork. They disappeared behind
+the barn. Anne looked straight at Roger:</p>
+
+<p>"There are no men on the place and the school vacations are the only
+time my Cousin Janet gets enough leisure to do anything. We have been
+talking about fixing the fences and mending this floor. If you'd come
+to-morrow instead of to-day you'd have found us calcimining."</p>
+
+<p>Roger's eyes came back to Anne, flushed, defiant, so unmistakably proud
+and hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean it intrusively," he said quietly. "I just couldn't stand
+the thought of you taking any old thing—another rotter like Lowell,
+perhaps—where anything but a machine is wasted. Please believe——"</p>
+
+<p>A sound from beyond the thin partition struck him to silence. It was a
+high, querulous voice calling, "B—a—b."</p>
+
+<p>Anne started. In another moment Aunt Harriet would come trailing in,
+her frail hands moving gracefully to insure safety, her sightless blue
+eyes staring before her. It was years since Harriet Saunders had talked
+to a city man, a professional man, a man worthy of her own Harrington
+culture, a culture guarded through long years with Hilda Mitchell's
+brother, kept undimmed to hand down to "the girls." In another moment
+she would be there, winding about him the snake-like coils of her
+selfish monopolization.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind if we went outside?" Anne whispered, partly because she
+could so convey the need for instant action, partly to bear out the
+quickly invented reason. "Aunt Het is rather an invalid and she has
+been asleep. If no one answers she'll drop off again, but if she hears
+us——"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," Roger whispered back, and they tiptoed from the room
+together, out through the nearer kitchen to the yard. And there Anne
+paused. Where could she take him? There was no spot on that windblown
+dryness, no garden nook. For a moment she thought of the barn, a
+favorite place of her own. But it was so overtoned; herself and Roger
+Barton, who had come to tell her of a position, sitting in the hay!</p>
+
+<p>"It does seem inhospitable to drag you out on a day like this," she
+began, but Roger cut her short.</p>
+
+<p>"I like gray days, and it may be an extraordinary taste but I love the
+wind—in the open. Not city wind filled with dust, like the dead hopes
+of people blowing in your face, but clean, open wind like this."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's face lighted with the pleasure of a shared sensation.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I. It seems to blow all the tangles out of the world and give
+every one a chance to begin again—simply."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess—maybe—that is it—only I hadn't thought of it as a beginning
+again. It always makes me feel courageous, like plowing straight on
+through everything, just as it is."</p>
+
+<p>Anne did not look toward him instantly, but she felt him very sharply,
+so much taller than herself, broad, with that courageous, crisp hair,
+and his clear blue eyes that could look so different according to his
+mood. They would be wide and blue now, with a light in them as if Roger
+were turning it upon this "everything" through which the wind gave him
+the courage to plunge. He would be looking straight ahead, his chin up,
+ready. Anne turned a little, and he was looking exactly like that. She
+felt that she knew him very well, and then, that he was rushing into
+the wind, away from her, leaving her behind.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you will, because—I don't believe you're ever afraid, are
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No—I don't believe I am. You see," he seemed to be feeling his way
+carefully through this new experience of dissecting his own impulses,
+"there is really nothing to be afraid of in the world. Of course there
+is sickness, but when you're well you don't go about fearing a possible
+illness; there's hard work, but that's fun."</p>
+
+<p>"There's poverty."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know there is, but, somehow, the poorer I am the freer I feel."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's so ugly—always skimping and twisting and thinking about
+money. It—it's stifling."</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't stay in a state of poverty for long," Roger laughed.
+"You get busy getting out of it. But while it lasts there's something
+exhilarating in being broke and not knowing what's going to happen. You
+know how it feels on a clear, cold, sunny morning of north wind, when
+the bay's all white-caps and you can almost see the windows of every
+house in Oakland? The air seems more alive than at any other time, and
+everybody goes round with his head up, smiling. Of course the feeling
+wouldn't last forever, but, for a time—it's like being suddenly
+freed from all binding restrictions, being lifted from a groove and
+thrown suddenly out into new possibilities—like being picked up by
+this wind and carried—off to China. There's something safe—and
+depressing—about a steady income."</p>
+
+<p>Anne tried to smile in return. But the tissue-wrapped allotments of her
+childhood were too vivid.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it's the having nothing that exhilarated you, it's the
+excitement of getting the next thing."</p>
+
+<p>Roger stopped and the wind wrapped them about. "I never thought of it
+that way," he said slowly, "but perhaps it was."</p>
+
+<p>They went on again in a moment, their relation somehow readjusted.
+Roger felt masculine and dense; Anne protective and feminine. Roger
+felt her sensitive and intuitive reaction to hidden impulses, and she
+his need to be looked after.</p>
+
+<p>Anne became conscious of this readjustment first and tried to find an
+impersonal path back to the reason for having come out at all, but
+could not. She grew gradually so conscious of the physical motion of
+walking that she felt she was obeying a natural law as inescapable as
+the force of gravity. She would put one foot before the other until
+they had reached the moaning sea two miles away.</p>
+
+<p>By a tremendous effort she stopped. And then the alternative of going
+back to the house and watching Aunt Het's python-like embrace of Roger
+in general conversation, emerged from subconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"There's an old Indian graveyard back a little; would you like to see
+it?" Without waiting his agreement, Anne turned into a depression
+between the dunes and led the way. "When I was a little girl, I used to
+think this was the most wonderful place in the world. We used to dig up
+beads and arrow heads and invent the most conventional Indian stories
+about braves and princesses."</p>
+
+<p>Roger did not answer. The wind swept across the dune tops, leaving
+them in the warm seclusion of a sandy depression. Anne went lightly
+just before him, small and silvery blonde, her arms white and quiet
+by her sides, no physical effort disturbing her swift, quiet way over
+the shifting sand. A sudden turn brought them to it on a slope above
+the dunes. Anne stopped and waited for him. Together they climbed the
+short distance to the small square of parched earth, with its broken
+fence, once whitewashed, now peeled by sun and wind to leprous patches,
+like the little wooden crosses that marked the mounds within. At the
+corners four gaunt gum trees sighed and bent, chieftains wailing the
+degradation of the Christian burials below. Anne passed through an
+opening in the fence and Roger followed, tense now with the realization
+of Anne, of the moaning trees, of the wind searching over the earth,
+and, far away, the sea crying its everlasting plaint to the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>Up one row and down another they went, Anne trying to read the
+rain-washed names on the tiny crosses. "You see, many of them were
+half-breeds, and Father Crowley was the only friend they really had
+among the whites, and so he managed to baptize most of them and bury
+them at last with the rites of the Church. I wonder what they really
+felt while he annointed them."</p>
+
+<p>"Like fakirs, I suppose," Roger said quickly, and moved a little nearer
+to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "No, I don't think they felt like that. They're
+all gone now except one or two, but when I was a little girl there
+were a lot scattered through these hills, and I knew some of them. One
+was very old, wrinkled like an oak leaf, with the most piercing black
+eyes. I used to feel as if he had died, all but his eyes. We called
+him William Black, but he had a wonderful Indian name we never could
+pronounce and he would never tell what it meant. Most often, when we
+asked, he would grunt and walk away, but once he told me that his name
+was dead, and if he told it, it would come back and kill him. I didn't
+know what he meant, but now I think he was sad and ashamed of his
+people and despised us too much to even tell us what he had once meant
+among them. He was the only Indian I ever heard of who refused to be
+baptized. Nevertheless, when he died Father Crowley buried him over
+there. It was really just on the edge of the consecrated ground then,
+but one night the fence in that corner was broken down, and when they
+put it up William Black was outside. I think the others were very proud
+of William, but not so strong as he."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely," Roger muttered, and stepped nearer still.</p>
+
+<p>She felt him so close that the slightest motion on her part would touch
+him, strong and alive against this eternal sleep of a dead race.</p>
+
+<p>"On—on—a clear day—you can see the sea—from here, and the
+spindrift—high as the cliffs—in a rough surf." Her arm, so slim,
+so white, like a wisp of the fog caught in form, pointed toward the
+muffled calling.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning over her, Roger's hand closed gently on the cool flesh. He drew
+her slowly round and they looked silently at each other.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I have always loved you," Roger said at last, like a child,
+whispering a confession strange to itself, born of the tender knowing
+in its mother's eyes. He did not understand this thing himself,
+revealed with such sudden swift quietness, but the earth understood,
+and the fog, and that old, old race asleep. As if the mist had parted
+and revealed it to him, so this love was revealed, something concrete
+in that wind-filled emptiness, something definite and shapeable, a
+thing he could cup in both hands and offer to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>It had come. Belle had been right and so utterly wrong; Belle, with her
+cheap experience, her world-eaten deductions from sickness and disease.
+Roger Barton loved her. The wonder of it held Anne to the exclusion of
+her own feeling.</p>
+
+<p>Roger dropped her hand and Anne looked up quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm pretty clumsy, Miss Mitchell, but——" the pounding in his throat
+choked him. A piercing shaft of joy shot through her.</p>
+
+<p>"You're—you're not clumsy at all. And I—I would like to marry you
+very much."</p>
+
+<p>Sudden awkwardness descended upon them. They looked shyly at each
+other, Anne waiting for Roger to draw her close and kiss her, Roger a
+little frightened.</p>
+
+<p>Wasn't he going to kiss her? Chill crept over Anne. And then he was
+drawing her to him. The surface of her body broke into tiny pricks of
+excitement, triumph, awe. She could feel his breath on her face, see
+the inevitable approach of his lips. Now he was too near to see. His
+lips were on hers. Suddenly, driven by the need to reach through to
+something beyond them both, Anne returned their pressure. Roger felt
+their clinging with faint surprise, deep tenderness and awe.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_FIVE">CHAPTER FIVE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The following morning Anne and Roger went back to town. They strolled
+up Market Street to Third and Kearney and there Anne stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Wilmot &amp; Brown, you said. They're on Mission, aren't they?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked puzzled, until he recalled the position he had found for
+Anne, and laughed. "You're not going to bother with that now."</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly am. Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're engaged."</p>
+
+<p>Anne giggled. "Not yet. I haven't seen them."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not joking. Listen." He drew her to a doorway from the hurrying
+stream. "Don't, dear, please. I don't like to think of you tied down in
+an office, and anyhow it's not worth while. We're going to be married
+soon."</p>
+
+<p>Anne looked away confused, partly because of the strange feeling
+it gave to realize herself engaged, partly at the imminence of the
+wonderful, new experience of matrimony waiting her; and, beyond her
+own acknowledgment in words, curiosity as to how Roger planned to
+marry without a position. In the sweet intimacy of the trip from
+Quincy, Roger had talked of the future, a future that exhilarated and
+frightened Anne in its possibility.</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to live for something worth while," Roger had said, "and
+live for it with every scrap of the stuff that's in us."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's eyes came back to him with a tender smile.</p>
+
+<p>"But we're not going to be married to-day. Besides, I——" Anne had not
+spoken much of her family yet, but at these definite words of Roger's
+about marrying, Anne realized what a difference it would make when her
+income into the house had stopped, especially to many little pleasures
+she had accustomed her mother. "There are lots of things I want to get
+and—and—I like to work, really I do."</p>
+
+<p>Roger frowned. "Will you promise to quit the instant I ask you to?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne laughed. "Are you always going to boss me round like this?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger's hand slipped into hers. "No. Because we're going to want to do
+the same things."</p>
+
+<p>The future was going to be very wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm going to do some of the wanting and you're going to do some of
+the meek and mutual obeying?" she teased, and wished they were alone so
+that Roger could kiss her. Instead he dropped her hand and looked down
+seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean, honestly, that you would rather work until we marry?
+I never want to try to persuade you to do anything against a real
+inclination."</p>
+
+<p>Anne knew that her puckered brows and serious lips were weighing,
+to Roger, hesitation between her own preference and the dislike of
+going counter to this, his first expressed request. But behind them
+the thought clicked away that Roger himself could solve the problem
+by accepting the opening of private secretary to Hilary Wainwright,
+a millionaire ship owner and philanthropist, who had offered him the
+place as soon as he heard that Roger had left John Lowell. But Roger
+was not quite sure that he believed in Wainwright or that he wanted the
+place. The tick, tick, kept saying: "Take the place for a beginning and
+we can marry to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear, I think I do," she said at last, and added gayly, "Now,
+where is Wilmot &amp; Brown?"</p>
+
+<p>They walked east to Mission Street and stopped before the building.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll wait here twenty minutes. If you don't turn up I'll know you're
+taken."</p>
+
+<p>He sought her hands, and linked, they smiled at each other until a
+passing man turned to look again, when Anne snatched her hands away,
+and with a whispered, "Good-by, dear," hurried into the building.</p>
+
+<p>Roger waited half an hour and then went, disappointed.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Every noon hour Roger was waiting for Anne and they had lunch together
+at a nearby cafeteria which Anne insisted was the only kind of place
+she liked for lunch. For the rest of the hour they strolled on the
+sunny side of the street, or, if it were raw and foggy, sought some
+sheltered bench in one of the small plazas and talked. Roger usually
+did most of the talking, a running commentary on the people they
+passed, which linked the individuals up to society as a whole. Roger
+was always seeing people whom he pitied; starved, eager souls, thwarted
+longings, stunted minds, drudges in a mill whose working they did not
+understand, whose spiritual profits they did not share. When he pointed
+out these people and qualities to Anne, she understood, because she
+too had felt stifled and thwarted and full of vague, high longing.
+But she never quite understood how Roger understood, because he never
+seemed to long vaguely, nor to feel suppressed or driven. As the days
+slipped into weeks, Anne came to feel that there was a surplus of some
+qualities in Roger over and above the sum of those same qualities in
+herself. She had ideals and courage and faith, but his ideals were
+sharper before him, his courage deeper, his faith firmer.</p>
+
+<p>Roger never doubted the best within himself, nor allowed a nervous
+over-conscientiousness to distort a quality into its reverse. If he
+had had a family, he long ago would have told them of his engagement,
+while Anne could not yet make up her mind what to do. Sometimes she
+saw her hesitancy as loyalty to Roger, because neither her father nor
+her mother would understand Roger or his standards. At others she felt
+that it was her own need for harmony and peace in the life about her,
+a need so deepgrown that it was a weakness in its inability to risk
+disturbance. And she knew how her father would accept a son-in-law who
+had no position, who talked of the world's misery as if it really did
+matter to him personally, who dallied with the prospect of a private
+secretaryship at fifty dollars a week to begin with because he could
+not quite prove to himself Hilary Wainwright's sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, after an irritating day in the office, when old Mr. Wilmot
+dictated worse than usual and, on rehearing the letters, declared he
+had never used those words at all, Roger's begging to be allowed to
+come up in the evening and meet her people annoyed Anne almost to the
+point of confessing the main difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>It was at the end of such a day, more than a month after she had
+promised to marry Roger, that she came down from the office almost
+wishing Roger would not be waiting. It was a June day of clear
+sunshine, but with a gusty wind straight from the ocean. The air was
+filled with dust that seeped through clothing and got into one's eyes
+and mouth and scratched one's nerves to snapping. But Roger was there,
+holding his hat on with one hand and making his happy little gesture
+of welcome with the other. Anne tried to smile cheerfully, but it was
+difficult with dust blowing into her face and a wind whipping her skirt
+about her. Roger came up quickly and took her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"You mite of a thing. It always astonishes me to think of you getting
+about by yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Anne was glad that a gust forced her to duck at that moment so that
+Roger did not see her unsmiling eyes. She was tired, sick of getting
+around by herself, of being respectful to that impossible old Mr.
+Brown, of keeping exact hours, every one a tiny bit snatched from the
+happy future of which Roger was so sure. It was one thing to refuse to
+work with John Lowell, or in the law at all because it was corrupt and
+unjust, but it was—to-night anyhow—just a bit overstrained to dally
+about over the possible insincerity of Hilary Wainwright. Whatever the
+man might be, at least he was doing real things for civic betterment,
+the kind of thing Roger seemed to believe in. If Hilary Wainwright's
+methods were not exactly Roger's, still it was an attempt. And she and
+Roger could marry.</p>
+
+<p>They had crossed the street and now, in the temporary protection of a
+high building, were safe for a few moments from the wind. Anne could
+not go on with her head bent. She looked up into Roger's smiling eyes
+and succeeded in smiling back. His fingers closed over hers and drew
+her closer to him.</p>
+
+<p>"You mite," he whispered, "you little, silvery-gold princess. When
+we're married I'm afraid I'll worry every time you're out of my sight."</p>
+
+<p>"That'll be nice," Anne said a little sharply, but she was very tired.</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked down quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, when are you going to tell your people? It makes me feel as if
+you weren't sure yourself. You said at first that you wanted to 'gloat'
+all by yourself; that's very flattering and I believe it when we're
+together, but, sometimes after I've left you, I feel—Anne, you are
+sure, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't they expect you ever to marry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I suppose so. We never talked about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it me, 'specially, they would object to?"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Anne hesitated. At last he was giving her the chance.
+Should she take it? But before she could quite make up her mind Roger
+was pleading again, and suddenly Anne felt her strength exhausted. She
+would not evade or pretend any more. It might as well come now as later.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, dear, if you feel that way. Come up to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Roger gave her fingers a quick grip, and they stepped from the
+protection of the buildings into a side crossing. The wind tore at
+them. Bent against it, they reached the opposite curb. In that interval
+Anne felt the matter had been settled beyond change.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I'll take the car here. It's useless trying to walk in this
+wind."</p>
+
+<p>Just then Anne's car came into sight. They hurried out into the street
+and Roger helped her through the crush about the steps. It was nice
+to have Roger making a way for her, to feel the strong, sure lift
+of his hand under her arm, to feel herself swung up by such a small
+expenditure of his strength. Now that the decision was made, Anne was
+glad. After all, no matter what the conditions, her people would have
+found some objection. Clinging to the hand-strap almost beyond her
+reach, Anne went over the best ways of opening the subject to them.</p>
+
+<p>But in the end Anne did not open it. She was catapulted from an
+unusually pleasant meal, straight into it, by a chance remark of her
+father's.</p>
+
+<p>"I see there's likely to be another street railway strike," he
+remarked. "They were running provisions into the carbarn as I passed."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, that will be a nuisance." Hilda beamed round the table. Any
+general conversations at dinner always made her feel that they were,
+after all, a closely knit family. "Thank goodness, I don't have to
+go on a car to do any shopping, although those Saturday sales at the
+Sunset Market are quite a save."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't the company promise the men not to push that matter of open
+shop until the year was up?" Anne, like her mother, was glad of any
+general conversation, and had no intention of bringing down the wrath
+of her father. But he peered at her suddenly over the top of his
+steel-rimmed glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"What if they did? How long do you think the men would have kept their
+agreement not to agitate a strike if they had been in a position to
+call one?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne felt herself chill; a thin surface of frost seemed to cover her as
+it always did when her father talked like this. But she did not want to
+anger him and so she said quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. But I would like to think that there was a little
+decency and honesty in the world. There must be."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's not among labor agitators, let me tell you that. A greedy,
+selfish lot, out for what they can get. They won't take a job and stick
+to it themselves and so they try to stir up others to quit."</p>
+
+<p>"But they couldn't stir the others up all the time, if the others
+didn't really want to be stirred. Something is wrong and people feel
+it."</p>
+
+<p>When James Mitchell delivered an opinion he did not expect to be
+answered, much less argued with. He turned swiftly upon Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that? Who feels things are wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"A lot of people feel things are unjust and wrong and that something
+has to be done. They may not be clear as to exactly what it is or how
+they're going to do it, but they know there's trouble somewhere." The
+icy veneer deepened, but Anne held her ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Who? A lot of Jews and foreigners who never had enough to eat in their
+own country. The trouble with this country is that the natives are too
+good-natured. They won't realize the harm these fools are doing until
+it's done. They ought to be deported now, every last one of them."</p>
+
+<p>Anne nibbled at her lip and did not trust herself to speak. But she saw
+Roger, his eyes deep and sad, watching some weary soul in a city park.</p>
+
+<p>"I think papa's right, Anne. It is mostly foreigners that do the
+kicking. Not the blonde kind. Danes and Swedes are hard workers, but
+Jews and Dagos are always fussing. Don't you remember that Greek,
+Kapoulos, who lived over Martini's after The Fire, always haranguing
+about justice and fair play, and the first chance he got he ran off
+with the firm's funds and went to Greece?"</p>
+
+<p>James shrugged Hilda's efforts aside and leaned across to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me tell you one thing, Annie; these theories won't hold water,
+socialism and I. W. W.-ism and all the other fire-eating babble. And
+they'll never be put into practice, because, at bottom, the working
+man is too smart and he knows he'd lose his job if he tried them, and
+then where'd he be?"</p>
+
+<p>James whisked the tail of this inverted logic in Anne's face and waited
+triumphantly. But Anne did not see the narrow, tired face, the small
+work-weakened eyes of her father. She saw Roger, hunching toward John
+Lowell.</p>
+
+<p>"But men do give up their jobs for their beliefs; not unskilled
+laborers, but professional men who have spent years getting their
+preparation."</p>
+
+<p>"Bunk! You talk like a romantic school girl. Show me one professional
+man, likely to succeed in his line, and show me him quitting."</p>
+
+<p>"I will," Anne spoke with difficulty, "to-night. Roger Barton is coming
+up this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I am glad of that," Hilda breathed a sigh of relief. "I wish
+you would have more company, Anne. It's not my fault the place is not
+filled with young folks."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's he?" James demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"The man I'm engaged to." It was scarcely more than a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>At last Anne looked up, from one to the other. Her mother sat, the look
+of pleasure at the prospect of young company frozen in her eyes. Her
+father peered forward, still amused at her childishness, triumphant at
+his own logic.</p>
+
+<p>"What say?" He too whispered. "You're engaged!"</p>
+
+<p>Anne rose. Sitting, she felt the coming struggle closing down upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I am engaged to Roger Barton and we'll be married as soon as he
+gets a job."</p>
+
+<p>"You're engaged to a man without a job! A fool, that throws up a
+profession—fine profession it must have been—and then asks a girl
+from a decent home to marry him!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence, filled by small, clicking noises from Hilda.
+Then James Mitchell rose too, and with the evening paper screwed to a
+ferule, banged his ultimatum upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>"No damned skunk like that comes into this house, not if I know it. Do
+you hear? What you do outside the house I can't help, and I'm not fool
+enough to suppose I can. I never did have any say in this house, nor
+about you girls. But I'll have my say about this thing and now. If this
+fellow thinks he's going to sneak into this house and have me support
+him, he's going to get left. Go ahead. Marry him; a man that asks a
+girl to wait till he gets a job! Have half a dozen kids and then sneer
+at the state of the world and a steady job." His rising voice reached a
+thin scream. "Do you hear? That blackguard never enters this door."</p>
+
+<p>Anne looked at him, gray, thin, raging, and a sudden pity mingled with
+her anger. He was so tightly locked within his fear of life, his terror
+of all strange ways and wide roads, all experience that had not been
+his. In that moment, Anne's feeling for her father parted in clearer
+strands than she had ever seen it. She scorned and pitied and disliked
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Without another word, Anne went into the hall, took the receiver from
+the hook, and called Roger's number. In the momentary silence until
+she got it, she felt the two gray-headed people peering at her, like
+animals from a hole.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's Anne. I don't think you can come up to-night, dear. I
+twisted my foot getting off the car and it's swelling. I'm going
+straight to bed."</p>
+
+<p>Not even Roger's genuine concern, nor his loving good-night penetrated
+the icy calm that encased her. She hung up, and, without looking toward
+the dining-room, went down the hall to her own room and locked the
+door. Dressed, she lay upon the bed, staring up through the window to
+the stars.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know what time it was when her mother came tapping gently
+at the door. But she did not open, and, after a moment, heard her
+tiptoe away.</p>
+
+<p>Out on the back porch, Hilda Mitchell stood for a long time looking
+out over the city lights and trying to straighten her world so
+suddenly upheaved by Anne. But the fact of the engagement loomed like
+a blank wall before her and finally she gave up. With a sigh she went
+in, locked the back door and, without turning on the bedroom light,
+undressed and got into bed. Beside her the small gray man huddled under
+the clothes, but, by his stillness Hilda knew that he was not asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa, I wish you wouldn't be so harsh with Anne. Young folks can't be
+expected to think ahead like old folks. Anne's not flighty or silly
+like most girls. She won't do anything foolish."</p>
+
+<p>"She can't—after this. My God, what a mess you've made of bringing
+up those girls! Belle was always an obstinate, headlong piece
+but—little—Annie——"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, papa. Have patience."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, shut up. It's no good talking to you." James Mitchell turned on
+his side and drew the clothes high about his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time, Hilda lay beside him, thinking. Then, she, too, sighed
+and turned over.</p>
+
+<p>Life would have been a simple thing to Hilda Mitchell if it had not
+been for her family.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_SIX">CHAPTER SIX</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"You didn't hurt your foot after all?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I didn't hurt it. I didn't want you to come and it was the first
+thing I thought of."</p>
+
+<p>Roger crumbled his bread on the cloth and waited. Anne tried to go on
+calmly with her lunch, but she felt her face flushing and she knew
+Roger was watching her, his eyes growing sterner, his mouth settling in
+that straight line. She felt like a trapped animal, caught between a
+quixotic pity of her people, a pity seen most clearly in moments when
+Anne detested it most, and her longing to have Roger confess, unaided
+by an explanation, the understanding she was sure he had. But Roger sat
+on silent, waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Before the strong, free youth of Roger, her father and mother shrank,
+small, aging, pitiful. Little gray things, scuttling over the surface
+of their flat, uninteresting world, never looking up, their worried
+little eyes fastened on their own food and shelter. Units, among
+incalculable millions of others, all frightened, worried, and avid
+of personal comfort. To explain was to strip them bare, tear off the
+meager covering of their self-respect, expose their one pride in all
+its narrow rigidity.</p>
+
+<p>At last Anne put down her knife and fork and looked at Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger, you asked me to trust you, yesterday. Won't you trust me?
+You're right, I was not ill. Something did happen and I couldn't have
+you come."</p>
+
+<p>But no generous yielding softened Roger's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's different, Anne. Yesterday, when I asked you to have faith in me,
+it was a question between ourselves. But this—there are others. I feel
+surrounded by enemies. I don't even know which side——"</p>
+
+<p>He bit the sentence, but Anne finished it for him.</p>
+
+<p>"——I am on."</p>
+
+<p>"Because you're not being open with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither are you being honest. You do know, but you want to force me to
+say."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's lip trembled and Roger looked quickly away. In this, their first
+misunderstanding, Roger wanted no emotional element to enter.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think I do. Your people don't approve of me. You've always
+known it and that's why you didn't tell them. Why did you pretend it
+was any other? I wouldn't have minded the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"No, because you would scarcely recognize their existence as human
+beings. They are of the 'spiritual bourgeoisie.' They are of the great,
+spiritual middle class you despise so much."</p>
+
+<p>Roger flushed. Anne went on:</p>
+
+<p>"But they are my people. I live with them. I don't share their
+standards. My brain despises their outlook on life. I can't help
+knowing what their reactions will be. My father is bigoted and selfish
+and, on the whole, rather mean. Sometimes, he is jolly and kind and a
+little more tolerant, usually when a bet goes well. He is a clerk, a
+corporation clerk, in body and soul. But he is a victim, too, of the
+smallness of his own soul, just as much as the men who can't get work
+are victims of 'the system.' And mamma——" Anne held her voice steady
+by an effort, "I wouldn't hurt mamma for the world, or make things more
+uncomfortable for her. In time——" but the tears welled over and ran
+down Anne's cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Roger gripped her hand. "Don't, Princess, please don't. I was a brute.
+I do understand, better than you think. But I hate meeting you round
+in parks and public places, sneaking as if there were something to be
+ashamed of. Last night, I wanted to sit close to you, in some warm,
+comfortable room, like a human being."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's lips moved in a warped smile. "You wouldn't have sat in a
+comfortable room. It's one of the ugliest rooms I have ever seen.
+There's a crayon portrait of a brother papa always hated and won't
+have removed, and they would have watched us through hideous chenille
+portières. That is, mamma would; papa would have pretended to read, in
+a chair fixed so he could see us in the mantel glass. It would have
+been ghastly."</p>
+
+<p>Roger smiled, but his fingers held Anne's more firmly. "My high-strung,
+beauty-loving Princess. We'll never have an ugly thing in the house,
+will we?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne shook her head. "No. We'll have nothing in it at all, rather than
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it won't be as bad as that," Roger laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care, Roger. Really I——"</p>
+
+<p>Two people took the vacant places at the same table, so, in a few
+moments, Anne and Roger finished and went. It was another day of
+sunshine and dusty wind.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't feel parky, to-day, do you? Then let's walk." Anne turned
+north and Roger walked close beside her.</p>
+
+<p>They walked slowly, Anne tingling with consciousness of Roger's
+nearness, and of their isolation from others, in a new understanding
+that had come to them. All these hurrying strangers were the world,
+flowing around the little island on which she and Roger stood alone.</p>
+
+<p>Block after block they walked in a silence rhythmic with shared dreams
+and hopes that seemed to throb in unison with the perfect harmony of
+their step.</p>
+
+<p>Roger spoke first: "There was another call from Wainwright this morning
+while I was out and he left word for me to see him this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess he wants a decision," Anne said casually.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Yes, that's it, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't do anything you don't want to do." Anne's voice was even,
+indifferent to the issue. Roger pressed her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, you're a trump. The grandest little chum a fellow ever had."</p>
+
+<p>Anne nodded valiantly. "And some hiker. Look where we've walked to.
+Clear out to the City Hall."</p>
+
+<p>"So we have! It didn't seem but a few blocks, did it?" Roger looked so
+bewildered at the sight of the City Hall just before him, that Anne
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Seeming is not being. There it is and I'll have to take a car right
+straight back."</p>
+
+<p>She moved, but suddenly Roger's hand held her arm and, at the strange
+look on his face, Anne's eyes grew serious.</p>
+
+<p>"Princess, let's go over and get the license now. It doesn't mean
+much—but I would like to feel we'd gotten that far."</p>
+
+<p>"Why! Roger! Now, this minute?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger nodded. "Will you, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>Under his look, Anne colored. She tried to say something flippant but
+could not.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she whispered finally.</p>
+
+<p>They crossed the street and went up the steps into the rather dirty
+corridor, along which fat, red-faced politicians and young clerks
+hurried. In the license office, a bored clerk, just about to leave for
+his delayed lunch, rushed them through the questions. Anne held up her
+right hand and swore. Then Roger. The clerk scribbled in the answers.
+Roger paid the fee. They turned away, as legally two as when they had
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>But to Anne, something had happened, so that never again would she be
+the Anne Mitchell who had come up the steps only a few moments before.
+All the weeks of her hidden secret had not made her feel so irrevocably
+Roger's as this: a few stereotyped questions gabbled by a bored clerk,
+the unimportant fact of her age sworn to with ridiculous solemnity. The
+personal quality of her secret had been hers, even through the ordeal
+with her parents, but now, it was not hers any longer. It had been
+given to the world. This bored, gum-chewing clerk had placarded her
+name and Roger's for the world to see. She and Roger were now tagged
+and listed, in orthodox fashion, for the great event of matrimony. She
+began to tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's—do the—rest—now."</p>
+
+<p>"Anne!" A lump rushed to Roger's throat and he could say no more. Then,
+hand in hand, like two children, they crossed the corridor to the
+judge's chambers.</p>
+
+<p>In ten minutes it was over, witnessed by a stenographer and the
+janitor called in from the hall. The judge made his mechanical speech
+of congratulation, which neither heard nor waited for him to finish.
+Silent, they walked down the stairs and out into the sunny, dust-filled
+wind.</p>
+
+<p>"What—what would you like to do?" Roger felt as if he had suddenly
+been left alone in a strange situation with a strange woman.</p>
+
+<p>Anne wanted to cry. "Are—are—you sorry?" she demanded almost angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, sweetheart!" But the thing he had just done was touching Roger to
+a seriousness beyond his power to treat gayly.</p>
+
+<p>"Only, we can't go away very well till to-morrow and——"</p>
+
+<p>Anne tried to catch the words fluttering about her like bits of paper
+in the wind, but the realization that she was now married, that all
+the rest of her life she would come and go, eat and sleep, share the
+thoughts of the man beside her, paralyzed her power to think or move.
+She could not even look at Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm—going—back to work," she managed at last.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not. Not for a single minute."</p>
+
+<p>The tone left no alternative. Anne thrilled.</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't leave them like this—without notice."</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to do just that. I'll phone Wilmot. It'll be all right."</p>
+
+<p>Anne looked at him with a shy smile. Roger pressed her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"You're mine now, Princess," he whispered. "And to-morrow we'll go away
+into the mountains."</p>
+
+<p>Anne nodded, and then there was nothing small and unimportant to say.
+They stood in a self-conscious silence that had the separating quality
+of space, until Anne broke it:</p>
+
+<p>"I—think—I'll go home now."</p>
+
+<p>"Just as you like, sweetheart." The relief in Roger's tone
+disappointed, although Anne did not know what she had expected. An
+unending stream of cars all going in the wrong direction passed. They
+were both glad of the clanging noise and the wind which made speech
+difficult and filled the silence between them.</p>
+
+<p>At last the right car came and they hurried out into the roadway. As
+Roger helped her in, he whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Till to-morrow—little wife."</p>
+
+<p>The crowd on the step jostled her forward, the conductor, like a
+specialized machine, bellowed his—"Step forward. Fare please. Step
+forward. Plenty of room in the front of the car."</p>
+
+<p>Through the jam on the back platform Anne looked back and glimpsed
+Roger, already hurrying away, holding to his hat. A strange mingling of
+fear and exultation rushed over her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Roger Barton."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to think of it calmly, as indifferently as any one of the
+strangers in the car would have thought of it, but the realization
+danced like electricity along her nerves.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Three-quarters of an hour later, Roger accepted the position of private
+secretary to Hilary Wainwright, at fifty a week, the work to begin in
+two weeks.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_SEVEN">CHAPTER SEVEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The next afternoon while Anne packed her trunk, her mother kept
+wandering to the door and gazing in the puzzled excitement of a child
+who encounters something pleasant, but so extraordinary and unexpected
+that its delight is lost in bewilderment—like being confronted with a
+Christmas tree on the Fourth of July. Without turning from her task,
+Anne felt her come, stare, decide to say something and go, unable to
+express her thought.</p>
+
+<p>At last the trunk was packed, locked and corded. Anne rose and smiled
+at her mother, again in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"By the look on your face, one would think you had never expected me to
+marry."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda came in and sat on the bed-edge. "Of course, I did, Annie. I
+wouldn't like either of you girls to be old maids. Women have a lot
+to put up with either way, married or single. But you have certainly
+rushed right along. First you quit a good job, dash off to a place
+where there isn't a man for miles and come home engaged; don't
+tell a soul for weeks and then marry in the lunch hour. I feel all
+upside-down."</p>
+
+<p>Anne patted her knee. "Well, you'll get right side up again before I
+come back and then we'll have some good times, momsy."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda's pleasure at the prospect vanished almost instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"What papa will say, I'm sure I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I write him a note? I will, if it will make things easier. I
+don't want to upset him needlessly, for your sake. But he wouldn't be
+any better if he had a month to think about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But then, you must make allowances, Anne. At our ages we can't
+shift round so quick as you young folks, and papa thinks——"</p>
+
+<p>"I know what papa thinks. Let's not go into that. But I don't, and,
+as I am the one marrying, papa's opinion doesn't matter. Besides,
+you know, I can get a job any day. I don't have to sit at home and be
+supported."</p>
+
+<p>"Now see here, Anne, you may be a lot smarter than I ever was, but I'm
+older than you, and one thing I've learnt, if nothing else, it doesn't
+pay for a woman to work after she's married. A man may pretend he
+doesn't want her to and all that, but he gets used to it mighty soon
+and takes it for granted. And no woman can do it—keep a home and work
+and have babies. Just wait till some morning when you feel sick and
+have to go out as usual. Why, when Belle was coming, I couldn't lift up
+my head till ten o'clock. I——"</p>
+
+<p>Anne turned quickly and began putting some things in a handbag. In a
+few moments Hilda wandered back again from her own first confinement to
+Anne's marriage.</p>
+
+<p>"And to think you were married yesterday and came home here as cool as
+you please. Now when I was young, if a girl had done a thing like that
+it would have been thought wicked, although I don't know but what it
+is a good thing for the man. It's just as well to keep them waiting as
+long as you can. Besides, an hotel room, just an ordinary room where
+the man's been living right along, seems kind of—coarse."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's flaming face bent lower over the grip. There was a short
+silence. Then Hilda whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Annie—is there—anything—you would like to know?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne did not even shake her head. She had felt like this once,
+strengthless in disgust, when Belle had persisted in showing her the
+colored illustration of a disease in its worst stage. At last she
+succeeded in turning to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to phone for the taxi, now, mamma, and we'll have a cup of
+tea before it comes."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll put the kettle right on." Hilda bustled away, relieved. For she
+had always found it a little difficult to enlighten Anne and had a
+vague idea that it would have been easier if Anne had been a brunette.
+Certain simple truths had a way of splattering all over Anne's
+fairness, and making Hilda uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, I dare say she knows more than I did at her age;
+everything's different than it used to be, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>With this large, comforting deduction, Hilda began to make the tea.
+They drank it in a constrained effort on Anne's part to keep the
+conversation general, and finished just as the taxi driver rang the
+bell. The little trunk went bobbing down the stairs; Hilda took Anne in
+her arms and they clung together, not crying, but very quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"There, dear, I must run, and you can say I eloped and phoned you
+afterwards, or anything that comes handiest."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm not going to lie about it. It's done now. Besides, papa's
+bark's a lot worse than his bite. He'll be decent when you get back."</p>
+
+<p>Anne kissed her mother and ran quickly down the stairs, waved from the
+door and shut it behind her. As the taxi drove off, she looked back,
+but Hilda was not at the window. Anne's eyes clouded.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old moms. She does annoy me sometimes, but she has had a hard
+time. I'm going to see that it's better in the future."</p>
+
+<p>And then Anne forgot all about her old home, and sat nervous and very
+timid on the edge of the taxi seat.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>At dawn, Roger and Anne went down to the lake edge. In the east, the
+cold, night gray was melting in green and silver pools. Not a sound.
+Not a ripple on the surface of the lake. Beyond the lower hills,
+granite mountains rose, peak upon peak, to the snow-covered barrier
+beyond which the world lay. They stood silent, hand in hand, part of
+the eternal youth of the dew-drenched earth.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the towering mountains were cities and hurrying men. Anne knew
+it because they had passed through them the night before, but it was
+hard to remember and impossible to visualize. This was the core of the
+world, calm, absolute in its perfect understanding, untouched by hurry
+or man's confusion.</p>
+
+<p>Anne pressed closer to Roger and he put his arm about her.</p>
+
+<p>The green and silver pools brightened with the coming light; a faint,
+crimson glow, herald of the day, spread its warmth for the advance of
+the sun, and then, suddenly, a great jolly sun looked over the rim of
+the world and laughed at them. They laughed back.</p>
+
+<p>"The old fool thinks he's surprised us. As if we didn't know he was
+there and going to do exactly that."</p>
+
+<p>Anne made a face at the sun, just as the breakfast bell at the ranch
+rang for the milkers' breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Hand in hand, they turned from the lake. The sun was already well over
+the mountain top. The herald had rolled his crimson carpet and gone.
+Day had come.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose a dewdrop should be meal enough, but I hope it's at least
+bacon and eggs and pancakes."</p>
+
+<p>"With cereal and cream first," Anne laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Roger squeezed her hand. "I'm awfully glad, Mrs. Barton, that you
+suggested marrying me."</p>
+
+<p>"Always take my suggestions. You'll find they will always be right,
+even if I do say so," Anne teased.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a doubt of it." Roger stopped and took Anne in his arms.
+Tenderness beyond passion was in his hold. "Princess—it's—so good to
+be alive and love you."</p>
+
+<p>Day after day, deeper and deeper in their understanding, Anne and Roger
+wandered in the hills. Icy streams tumbled roaring through granite
+gorges, suddenly emerged to wide sunny meadows, and spread in flat
+stillness. The fat, black earth of the lower mountains thinned to sheer
+granite slopes, where sparse trees grew miraculously in tiny crevices,
+their roots hanging like ropes from the cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>They sat by the lake, which, beginning a hundred yards from the ranch,
+stretched to the blue distance of the hills. The lake fascinated Anne.
+No fish swam in it, no birds alighted upon it, the wind seemed scarcely
+to ruffle its terrible stillness. No one drank of its water. No one
+swam in it. No craft sailed it. In its own brackish depths, it hid
+the reason of its existence. No one knew how many centuries it had
+lain there, acrid, wide, as indifferent to man's need as man to its
+uselessness. "The lake," the rancher and his wife spoke as if it were
+a person who had committed some unmentionable crime and been banished
+from human intercourse because of it. There were legends that, ages
+ago, the Indians had worshipped a god living far out in its bitter
+depth. But now, they were afraid of it. The Christian God had stolen
+their god and given them fear. But the lake was as indifferent to this
+Christ as it had been to their pagan deity. It needed neither god nor
+man.</p>
+
+<p>They talked and were still. They were very near.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the second week, the first sheep-man came. Early in
+the morning, Anne and Roger were waked by the baaing of the lambs, a
+piercing wail of terror, as of children pursued by a malignant force.
+They went quickly to the window. Hundreds of gray, dusty sheep were
+coming up the road. Every now and then they stopped to nibble the
+thick, sweet grass. But the dogs, at a call from the shepherd, ran
+among them and with uncanny knowledge, drove them on. Bleating, they
+obeyed. The rancher hurried out and opened the gate. The dogs began to
+maneuver them through. Behind the band, the shepherd came, carrying a
+lamb in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"A hierarchy of authority," Roger said. "The shepherd directs the dogs,
+the dogs drive the sheep."</p>
+
+<p>At last they were all safely through and the gate closed. In a few
+moments, the bleating was over. The sheep were contentedly munching the
+lush grass.</p>
+
+<p>"They are like people. A moment ago and they seemed really to have some
+definite point of view. They wanted to do something. And now, they've
+forgotten what it was. They'll eat the meadow flat and then the dogs
+and the shepherd will drive them on, and they'll rebel and yield and
+eat another meadow flat—and go on—and on."</p>
+
+<p>Anne patted his hand, resting on her breast. Roger was always seeing
+things so, analogies between animals and mountains and trees and
+people. Nothing was just itself to Roger, but always a picture of
+something else. It made Anne very tender and filled her with the same
+sense of deep protectiveness that a child's belief in fairies does; a
+gladness, touched faintly with wistful envy and regret that faith must
+go.</p>
+
+<p>As they sat down to breakfast they realized a new feeling of bustle and
+industry in the air. The sheep had come. Soon tourists would follow.
+Automobiles would pass, meals would be called for at all hours. The
+rancher and his wife talked of rooms to be opened, supplies brought up
+from cellars, bedding aired. Roger and Anne sat silent, as silent as
+the dark Indian girl who served them.</p>
+
+<p>The rancher ate quickly and went. In a moment his wife followed. They
+crossed the rear yard and disappeared in a storehouse. Roger looked at
+Anne and sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it's the end. The place will be all cluttered up with people
+soon."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it will. It's been perfect, hasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger's hand moved over and took hers. "Absolutely perfect. We——"</p>
+
+<p>A note so clear, so sweet, so rounded that it seemed to be the spirit
+of the earth slipping into sound, stole into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Anne whispered and held fast to Roger's hand.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian girl straightened and stood listening. A brightness
+flashed over the brown silence of her face and vanished as she moved
+noiselessly to the door and passed through. Outside, in the sun-filled
+meadow, the Basque shepherd stood among his sheep, his arms raised, a
+little wooden flute to his lips. Once more he sounded the clear, sweet
+call and then, at the sight of the girl, the happiness of the whole
+earth came rippling and dancing from his flute.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, the girl remained motionless on the doorstep. Then,
+without a sign of recognition, glided away toward the dense high reeds
+of the lake edge. Still playing, the Basque shepherd moved after
+her through the munching sheep. At the edge of the reeds, the music
+stopped. He parted them and they closed, thick and blank, behind him.</p>
+
+<p>That evening, Roger and Anne took their last walk. They walked far
+along the lake, until a chill little wind crept out from the cañons, a
+jealous little wind, guarding the tremendous silence of the night from
+these paltry, human intruders.</p>
+
+<p>Roger and Anne turned back. The sheep were huddled a dark mass in the
+corner of the meadow. Over the embers of a campfire, the Basque herder
+and two half-breed milkers were playing cards. Against the door of her
+whitewashed shack the Indian girl leaned, her black hair in two great
+braids to her waist, facing toward the glow of the dying fire. As Anne
+and Roger crossed the front yard, she slipped inside and closed the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>The rotation of the days had fulfilled its promise. The perfect had
+come to its own end. Anne lay in Roger's arms.</p>
+
+<p>"I always felt there was something perfect somewhere," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Roger drew her closer to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you, I love you, I love you," he answered hotly. Anne's
+arms closed about him. Through the force sweeping him, almost to
+unconsciousness of Anne as a separate body, he felt her lips, warm,
+soft, as eager as his own.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_EIGHT">CHAPTER EIGHT</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In the next weeks, it seemed to Anne that the world had been recreated
+while she and Roger loved by the lake. The old world of definite
+working hours, through which strangers claimed her physical energy and
+brain, as deeply strangers one day as the next; the old family life
+of repression, grown unconscious from habit; minute but never ceasing
+spiritual adjustment, strengthless rebellions against habits set in
+steel bands before one awakened to their cramping horror, all had
+dissolved in a community of interest in a larger and much simpler world.</p>
+
+<p>In this world, men and women tried to increase happiness. They worked
+with ideas; many ideas and many people striving to embody them in form.
+Often in the mornings, after Anne had watched Roger vanish round the
+corner of the street far below, she continued to stand on the porch of
+the little cottage they had found on a rocky crag that rose from the
+grass-grown cobbles to a view of the bay and Tamalpais. It was like
+her inner life here, high above the confusions of her mother's muddled
+thinking, her father's petulance, Belle's brutal experience. Above the
+confusion of The Niche, the unironed laundry, the unreasoned bursts of
+Hilda's extravagances, the intrusion of uninteresting gossip. The three
+white-painted rooms with their sweep of bay and hills, close to the
+stars at night, walled from the city below by the spicy fragrance of a
+tangled garden, was another world.</p>
+
+<p>Anne dreaded anything that might disturb its peace. No discordant
+note must enter the full day, when alone in her new home, she made it
+beautiful, or prepared for the guests Roger like to ask to dinner;
+nor the pleasant evenings when she and Roger read or talked before
+the fire, or went to the many meetings included in Roger's duty as
+Wainwright's secretary.</p>
+
+<p>But, at the end of two months, when Anne realized that this guarding
+of her new peace had excluded her family, that neither Belle nor her
+father had seen the place at all, and her mother only once, she was
+ashamed and decided to ask all three to dinner the first night Belle
+could take off and to make a little celebration of the occasion. On
+the next Thursday evening, when Roger was at a conference with Hilary
+Wainwright, Anne went especially to arrange the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Well! I was just wishing you'd phone or something!" Hilda hurried
+half-way down the stairs to meet Anne and walked back with her arm
+about her daughter's waist. "It was kind of lonesome to-night and I
+was just thinking of running down to Mrs. Welles for a minute, but
+this is the night she goes to church and it didn't seem worth while. I
+am glad." Hilda hugged her effusively; for, although Anne had made it
+a rule to go home once a week, if only for a few moments late in the
+afternoon, Hilda greeted each visit with such amazed admiration that
+Anne had been able to include it among the many responsibilities of her
+new life.</p>
+
+<p>For Hilda was now very deeply impressed with Roger's importance as the
+private secretary of a millionaire. Millionaire philanthropists had
+not existed in Hilda's knowledge of the social structure and Roger's
+close connection with one filled her with awe. The status of Hilary
+Wainwright in the financial world had done much, also, to reconcile
+James. And when, one day, shortly after Anne's marriage, he had chanced
+to see Roger in earnest talk with the president of the Coast Electric,
+James Mitchell had accepted Roger, in no generous apology to Anne for
+his attitude the last night before her marriage, but in a thinly veiled
+eagerness to know all about the schemes of the great man.</p>
+
+<p>Anne despised herself for yielding to this curiosity, but it was so
+much pleasanter when things moved smoothly, that she catered just a
+little to him. She admitted him, without apparent consciousness of
+his real purpose, to the projects of Hilary Wainwright for increasing
+the total of human happiness. She threw off carelessly such phrases
+as: "welding of classes," "the larger democracy," "the obligations of
+wealth"; phrases which James Mitchell heard with satisfaction, as he
+might have observed the social minutiæ of a class above him. As working
+theories he did not visualize them at all, but it gave him a feeling of
+Roger and Anne—hence vaguely himself—moving in high places.</p>
+
+<p>To-night he was specially interested, for the papers were full of some
+scheme of Wainwright's for getting sugar more cheaply to the market
+from his plantations in Hawaii. In the office, James Mitchell had
+spoken with authority upon the subject that very afternoon, and had
+enjoyed the respectful attention of the other clerks.</p>
+
+<p>He accepted the invitation with such unusual grace that Anne was
+ashamed for him; but when, a little later, as she said good-by to her
+mother in the hall and Hilda whispered: "It will be a great occasion
+for us, Annie. I never saw him so delighted," Anne forgave him. Her
+mother had so few pleasures and this mood of her father's was almost
+as great an event as the dinner itself. "I don't believe he remembers
+a word he said that night," Hilda went on in the same confidential
+whisper as she went with Anne down the stairs. "Anyhow he's never said
+another thing about objecting and now—everything's going to be lovely.
+I feel it in my bones. But three extra to dinner! I'm afraid it will
+make a lot of extra work for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, mamma, don't be silly. Besides, you haven't the least idea what a
+fine cook I am."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't doubt it a bit. Any one who can get up a dinner for a
+millionaire! Goodness, I should be scared to death."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Wainwright's simple. Roger says his god is simplicity." But
+as Anne herself was not quite sure how Roger sometimes meant this, she
+hurried over the puzzled stare in her mother's eyes. "Next Wednesday at
+seven."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda sparkled. She had never eaten later than six and the fashionable,
+if inconvenient hour, clinched her belief in Roger's efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll finish my new waist for the occasion and see that papa gets a
+good shave."</p>
+
+<p>She went as far as the street corner with Anne and gave her an extra
+hug.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to dinner with my married daughter. Why, I feel like a young
+girl going to her first dance."</p>
+
+<p>Anne kissed her. "You dear thing, you're going to eat a lot of meals of
+your daughter's contriving only—don't expect too much this first time.
+In spite of my boasting, I'm not always absolutely sure, especially
+about salad dressing and gravy."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take a chance." Hilda nodded, her eyes so bright, that Anne drew
+her quickly back and kissed her again.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't forget, seven sharp."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll be there in cap and bells, never fear."</p>
+
+<p>She stood on the pavement until Anne had disappeared, then went smiling
+back to the flat. Hilda Mitchell was indeed deeply grateful for her
+daughter's happiness. In spite of her denial of the fear that Anne
+might have been an old maid, she had never been quite sure of Anne's
+powers of attraction. Anne was so "highfalutin'," what Belle called a
+"spiritual aristocrat"; and, like most women who refer to the physical
+relation with their husbands as "duty," Hilda considered spinsterhood a
+disgrace.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>To Anne's relief, by which she measured to a hairline her previous
+anxiety, the dinner was a success. If Roger made an effort to meet
+the Mitchells on their own ground, his tact exceeded Anne's keen
+sensitiveness to discover. He kept the conversation at anecdotal level,
+apparently because that mood was his own. James Mitchell laughed as
+Anne had rarely heard him laugh, and reciprocated with uninteresting,
+tedious reminiscences of the office. In her delight at "papa's mood,"
+Hilda was sobered to quiet dignity. Belle was a little bored, as she
+always was when she did not direct the conversation, but content, for
+she had expected to shoulder the social responsibility at this initial
+dinner, and she was not in the vein. She watched Roger and Anne and
+wondered whether they were really as united as they seemed. Belle had
+had more experience than even Hilda suspected.</p>
+
+<p>Roger felt the evening glide pleasantly away and was glad that Anne had
+done this. The Mitchells interested him not at all. He thought Hilda
+a vapid fool, Belle pretentious and James a nonentity. They were a
+perfect illustration of the bewildered and confused sheep. Anne's birth
+among them was a miracle. But the miracle had happened and they would
+always be more or less in the background of life.</p>
+
+<p>A little after ten the Mitchells went. They kissed Anne and Anne
+returned their kisses while Roger tried not to resent this very natural
+act. They had kissed Anne and she had kissed them years before he
+had known of her existence, but now, she was so exclusively his, her
+delicate fairness so fully the outward expression of their love and
+understanding, that this intimate physical contact with the Mitchells
+echoed a discordant note in the perfect harmony.</p>
+
+<p>So he forced himself, in rebuke of his jealousy, to the unnecessary
+courtesy of seeing them down the long flight of stairs with a
+flashlight, because the porchlight just missed a weak spot below the
+second landing. But he came back three steps at a time to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, little hostess, that was some dinner you got up." He went about
+switching out all the lights except one, as he always did when people
+had gone. With this dimming of the light, he closed out intruding
+personalities, focussed life back to the points of himself and Anne.
+"How did I behave?"</p>
+
+<p>He had then felt the need to "behave."</p>
+
+<p>The unconsciousness of the confession chilled Anne's joy a little. It
+made her feel a traitor to her people and she moved away and stood
+looking thoughtfully down into the fire. Her mother, so stiff and
+subdued in the new waist, so happy in her happiness; Belle, bored,
+but generous always in her love; even her father so genial that she
+had wondered several times during dinner whether, if the conditions
+of his life had been different, he would have been quite so dull and
+gray-souled and selfish. Each in his own way was a little vain and
+proud of the way she now lived. To her father and mother, at least, she
+was a very real part of life; through her, they touched experience not
+their own. But they were no longer a needed part of her life. Across
+the chasm of the full present and her future with Roger, they stood
+apart in the past, a tiny group, a little isolated and lonely, even
+Belle.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes filled with tears and Roger took her quickly in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Princess, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Roger, it is tragic, really. I felt it all evening, and when they
+followed you down the stairs and I knew you would come back alone
+and they would go to that cold, dismal flat—they seemed suddenly so
+cut off, so separate. They were the Mitchells and—and we were the
+Bartons—and it hurt."</p>
+
+<p>"But, honey girl, that's such a natural thing. It's always that way.
+How did you expect to feel toward your lawful husband?" he added,
+trying to force an answering smile into Anne's eyes. But she only
+burrowed deeper into his shoulder and he felt her body quivering.</p>
+
+<p>"It's awful the way children grow up and go away. Mamma hasn't anything
+really but me and Belle. She's gone on all these years—kind of looking
+forward, feeling in the midst of life—oh, I can't get it into words,
+but she doesn't seem to have anything. She's always been so cheerful
+and planning and doing the best she knew how—and now—there doesn't
+seem to be any reason for her to keep it up."</p>
+
+<p>Roger stroked Anne's hair gently. "I know, dear, but any one who hasn't
+anything of his very own in life, has to come to that point. And most
+people haven't."</p>
+
+<p>"But she did have something of her own. We were her own. She's lost it."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody can be anybody else's own, not lastingly their own. Men and
+women who haven't anything but their children, haven't really anything
+at all. They're just vehicles for the next generation, a kind of
+machine to keep things running. And what's the good of keeping things
+running, unless you make them better?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne lay close to Roger, her nerves relaxing under the soft touch of
+his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger," she whispered after a long silence, "don't you ever want
+children?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger's stroking of her hair ceased. She looked up into his suddenly
+grave eyes. Already Anne was seeing life in relation to children, and
+he had not thought of a child at all. It seemed very necessary to be
+honest in his answer.</p>
+
+<p>"It's this way. I do, if you do. But there's so much to do in the
+world, and there are so many people in it already, that it seems to
+me selfish just to add to the numbers. There's a lot of talk about
+children being the highest work of the race and all that, but it seems
+to me it's on the part of people who can't do anything else. Most
+anybody can have children, and very few can do anything else; but
+what's the good of perpetuating a race on and on without time or space
+to grow in? As for the comfort of children, the selfish clutching at
+companionship or less lonely age—well—if the children are really
+worth while as human beings, if they're going to add anything to the
+sum of life, they have to be so far in advance of their parents'
+generation—that you just can't bridge the gap. And even if they're
+not, but just trudge along in the old groove—still they're themselves
+and not you really. They——"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't," Anne cried, "it breaks my heart."</p>
+
+<p>Roger held her closer still and began stroking her hair again. But he
+felt, for the first time, a difference between himself and Anne. Was
+this just the difference between all men and all women? Or was it a
+difference between one viewpoint and another? The natural growth of
+life, the widening of human outlook, the wrenching of any bonds, these
+were pain to all the Mitchells in the world. The sentimental, clutching
+possession of "family" was Love to them. Roger wished he knew exactly
+what Anne was thinking, drawn close to him, her arm creeping up until
+it circled his neck in a clinging hold.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger, let's never grow apart. Let's share always. Wait, if one of us
+has to, but never go on alone. I—I—couldn't bear it, Roger, now."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither could I, Princess." Roger took Anne's face between his hands
+and tried to smile into her eyes. But, at the cool firmness of her
+cheeks beneath his fingers, the smile burned to a flame that scorched
+Anne's eyes; with a little sigh she closed them and raised her lips to
+his.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_NINE">CHAPTER NINE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It was a few weeks after the Mitchell dinner that Roger came back to
+the office one afternoon to find Hilary Wainwright pacing up and down
+in a frank perplexity that he did not often permit himself to show;
+although, as the months had passed, Roger had come to feel very keenly
+that Hilary Wainwright, who never doubted his own point of view on a
+business matter, was growing more and more uncertain of his former
+enthusiasm for carrying out what he always called "the responsibilities
+of wealth."</p>
+
+<p>Hilary Wainwright had been born to wealth, in a generation that had
+begun to question the right of such inheritance. Roger had always
+felt that Hilary was glad of this generation, which permitted him
+to enjoy his wealth, and, at the same time, by discussing his right
+to it, admitted him to the inner circle of intellectuals who doubt
+and lead civilization. He owned vast shipping interests, many sugar
+plantations in Hawaii and was often called upon by other capitalists to
+arbitrate their difficulties with labor. He went to strike meetings in
+a limousine.</p>
+
+<p>He lived in a great, old-fashioned, inherited mansion far out on
+Pacific Avenue near the Presidio, surrounded by lawns and clipped
+hedges and conservatories. He lived alone, except for the servants, and
+entertained in down-town hotels. Long ago mothers had ceased managing
+their daughters in his direction, but the upper social crust was dotted
+with matrons, mothers of grown girls, who still had, in the depths of
+their hearts, a soft spot for this "idealist." If they had married
+him, they were sure he would have understood them so much better than
+did their husbands. These women contributed largely to the charities
+and civic betterment schemes in which Hilary was interested, and never
+refused committee work.</p>
+
+<p>These schemes for the just treatment of labor and the improvement of
+living conditions among Wainwright's workmen, were Roger's special
+province, and he now saw them as a pond upon the surface of which he
+was paid to swim. Coming from an investigation into the justice of
+some strike, or from tense discussion with the leader of some industry,
+Roger felt like a diver bringing back strange fauna and flora, after
+which he had not been sent. Hilary always listened attentively, but
+sometimes he tapped his desk in a gesture that recalled John Lowell.
+He had a habit of saying "Yes. Yes," in an emphatic way, as if his
+mind were a hammer tapping each nail. But when Roger had finished, no
+completed structure ever rose from Hilary's agreement.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Barton, I, personally, agree with you. There is a lot to
+be said for the other side. But, after all, present society is founded
+on wealth, and one can't disturb the foundations without jeopardizing
+every one—every one," Hilary would repeat, unconsciously warning
+Roger that he himself might go down in the welter, if every Wainwright
+suddenly put his principles into operation.</p>
+
+<p>The first time he had explained this kindly to Roger, but, as the weeks
+slipped by, and Roger had continued to make the same suggestions for
+the adjustment of conditions which Hilary pretended were disturbing
+him, Hilary had gradually allowed his impatience to appear.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the good, Barton, of talking like that?" he had demanded almost
+angrily one day, about a week before the Mitchell dinner. "It's the way
+the man who has never had wealth talks, as if it were an excrescence,
+something that can be cut away from the possessor without injury to any
+one else. Wealth is an essential plank in the social structure of our
+day, the keystone in the arch. Redistribute wealth suddenly and the
+whole thing will fall."</p>
+
+<p>It had been a tiring day full of very clear deductions on Roger's part
+that something was fundamentally wrong with the whole economic system.
+He shrugged impatiently. "I don't know but what it might not be a good
+thing if it did—only the wrong people would probably be underneath."</p>
+
+<p>Sitting in the well-appointed office of his employer the man's
+manicured nails, his ostentatiously unconventional soft shirt and tie
+were as offensive as the smug personal safety of his theories.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Wainwright had not answered. Then, with marked repression
+and annoying calm, as if Roger were a fractious child to be excused
+because of his usually good behavior:</p>
+
+<p>"That's rather wild talk, Barton. You can't knock out the essential
+plank of a structure and not make things worse for every one."</p>
+
+<p>"And you can't expect Tom and Pete and Jim to get all worked up over
+the luxuries Mr. Vanderbilt might have to go without under a new order."</p>
+
+<p>"Because the average workingman doesn't think clearly. His mind is
+untrained. He doesn't see beyond the food and clothes of the day."</p>
+
+<p>"No. The average man doesn't think—yet."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it will take many years." Hilary had reminded Roger of one
+perfunctorily mourning the death of a hated relative whose passing was
+to his financial advantage.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not so sure," Roger had said shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah—let us hope you're right."</p>
+
+<p>In the pause that followed, a feeling that Roger had always had from
+the very first interview suddenly crystallized. The man was spiritually
+smug, soaked through and through in unconscious insincerity.</p>
+
+<p>Why had he ever consented to work for Hilary Wainwright? Instantly
+Roger had pushed the question from him and never again had he allowed
+it to rise clearly before him.</p>
+
+<p>But now, as he came into the office and for a moment unobserved,
+watched Wainwright pacing slowly the length of the thick, rich rug, the
+well-kept hands clasped behind his back, frowning so seriously, Roger
+felt a positive repulsion of the man's smugness touch him, an almost
+physical inability to go over to his own desk and seriously begin
+consideration of one of Hilary's futile little problems.</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of the door closing, Wainwright turned.</p>
+
+<p>"That Sabatini case has bobbed up again, Barton, and I wish you'd look
+into it. All kinds of welfare committees are pestering me about it and
+your legal experience will make a report valuable."</p>
+
+<p>"He's that Sicilian fisherman who burned down the warehouse of the
+United Fish Company and incidentally almost killed Joe Morelli?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's the man. It's straight arson and attempt to murder, as far as
+I can see, but the Republicans and the Democrats are fighting for the
+elections and this thing has been dragged in. The fishermen worship
+Sabatini. He has power. Worse, he has a wife and eight children. There
+is no issue in the Latin Quarter at present to hang a fight upon and
+so Sabatini's friends are using him. The present district attorney is
+against him, but—the present district attorney wants to be reëlected.
+Sabatini speaks very little English, wears gold hoops in his ears and a
+red sash, and his children are really beautiful. The Settlement is very
+fond of the family and a lot of sentimentality is creeping into the
+thing, I'm afraid. Could you make it to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. There's nothing special. I'll report back to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"If you could. I'd like a clear, logical report before to-morrow. I'm
+being pestered a good deal by some people," Hilary smiled the smile
+that meant "women," "and I want to know more and take a stand."</p>
+
+<p>An hour later, Roger stood beside Angelo Sabatini in his prison cell.</p>
+
+<p>The man sat on the narrow cot, his elbows on his knees, his face
+buried in his grimed and broken hands. His broad, bent shoulders, the
+shoulders of a toiler from childhood, were hunched to the flat-backed
+head, covered with coarse, curly black hair. On the floor at his feet
+lay a little pile of torn paper, the citizenship papers of Angelo
+Sabatini. Roger stood silent, leaning against the steel door of the
+cell. Outside, a guard stopped every now and then in the monotony of
+his walking to stare.</p>
+
+<p>"You deliberately waited until you knew that Joe Morelli was in his
+office, then you set fire to the building and when you saw that Morelli
+had a chance to get away you tried to knife him?" Roger spoke very
+slowly and distinctly, so that Angelo Sabatini caught the drift.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. "Morelli—he no buy and sell de feesh—he buy and sell
+de mens—me and Paolo and Giacomo—everybody—and de babies of me
+and Paolo and Giacomo. Many days—we have no meat—and no shoes—but
+Morelli have much meat and de childrens fine shoes. Ecco." With a
+gesture that laid before Roger the primitive justice of survival,
+Sabatini paused. "We work all night on the sea. We bring much feesh.
+Morelli he trow it all—all—back into the sea. Much feesh—too cheap.
+Ecco."</p>
+
+<p>Roger paced the short cell length and came back again to the steel bars.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you tell the judge all the circumstances, the meat and shoes of
+Morelli, your own children, the tons of wasted fish?"</p>
+
+<p>The small black eyes blinked. "Che disc'? No caspic' good Inglis. Too
+queer talk."</p>
+
+<p>Roger repeated slowly. The heavy face lit with a scorn before which
+Roger was ashamed. "Yes. I tell. And I show dat." A grimed and hairy
+finger pointed to the pile of torn papers. "I tell dat I come America
+to get good chance and I no get. All mens is de same and Morelli do me
+bad. Many times me and Paolo and Beppo go to Morelli and tell: 'Throw
+no feesh into de sea. We must live.' Morelli laugh. Den me and Paolo
+and Giacomo talk many nights in de cellar of Beppo. We make—I don know
+in Inglis—de leetle papers in a hat. It tells me. Ecco. I go."</p>
+
+<p>"And you told the judge?"</p>
+
+<p>"De seguro, I tell. I make swear on Libro Santo to say true and I tell.
+Ecco."</p>
+
+<p>Roger's body sagged against the steel bars with the hopelessness of
+this man's case. He had done this thing and confessed it. No twisting
+of ethics, no pointing of advantage, could make him change one comma.
+His code was dearer to him than all the complications of the law that
+might set him free. As long as Giuseppe Morelli lived and threw the
+fish into the sea, Angelo Sabatini would try to kill him. And Giuseppe
+Morelli would continue to throw fish into the sea and keep up prices,
+as long as society permitted him to do it.</p>
+
+<p>On the cot, Angelo Sabatini was leaning again with his face in his
+hands, the tiny gold hoop in his right ear twinkling through the black
+curls. He had told his story again, in spite of his lawyer's warnings,
+because Angelo Sabatini saw no reason to withhold the truth. In time,
+perhaps, some one would believe, understand that he had done this thing
+because he had been chosen to do it and his children needed as many
+shoes and as much food as the children of Giuseppe Morelli. But, the
+quiet form of Roger, leaning against the bars, his chin on his breast,
+Sabatini understood. This man was only another with the right to ask
+him many things and go away and leave him.</p>
+
+<p>Roger wanted to put his hand on the bowed shoulder and say something.
+But there was nothing to say. Tell him to hope? Against the United Fish
+Company? To brace up? Before twenty, thirty years in prison walls?
+Angelo Sabatini, who had lived all his life in the sun on the sea, ever
+since as a tiny boy in the old country he had gone out before dawn
+in his father's blue painted boat. Roger moved and the man looked up.
+Already the hope had gone from him. His small, black eyes were dead
+embers in the dull, brown face. He looked at Roger, stupid, dumb,
+confused. In five years, in less, he would be scarcely human.</p>
+
+<p>Roger beckoned the turnkey and without another word, went out. Angelo
+Sabatini did not move. As Roger passed the desk, a woman with a baby
+in her arms and a little boy of ten beside her was trying to make the
+man behind the desk understand. The little boy translated, in an awed
+whisper, what his mother said. The man behind the desk shook his head:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her not to keep coming here. She can't see him except on
+visitors' day and if she keeps up this pestering she won't see him
+then."</p>
+
+<p>The child translated. The woman wrung her hands and pleaded. Under the
+torrent of harsh Sicilian dialect, the man behind the desk rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out!"</p>
+
+<p>The child pulled his mother's skirts and they hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>Roger went straight home. It was dusk, the wood fire was lighted, and
+the dinner table spread before it. Anne came quickly at the sound of
+Roger's key and he kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" she laughed. "It's me, not a wax image in a shop."</p>
+
+<p>Roger kissed her again. "I beg your pardon, Princess, but I'm all
+wrought up. I never want to have another afternoon like this one."</p>
+
+<p>While Anne put the finishing touches to dinner, Roger told her of
+Angelo Sabatini. Anne made no comment until, the dinner served, they
+faced each other across the little table.</p>
+
+<p>"But he's scarcely human now," Roger repeated. "A year of those granite
+walls—and he'll be a beast indeed."</p>
+
+<p>Anne shivered. Roger had drawn the man very vividly, hunched on the
+cot, his thick neck, his round, flat head.</p>
+
+<p>"If he'd only stopped to think," she said, "he must have seen that you
+can't go round burning property and murdering people."</p>
+
+<p>"No, he wouldn't have seen it. As Wainwright says," Roger spoke
+bitterly, "the average working man's mind is untrained. He doesn't
+think. He's too busy getting food and clothes."</p>
+
+<p>Anne thought of her father, his servile acceptance of rules and
+orders. His ever-haunting fear of losing his job, of a rainy day.</p>
+
+<p>"I think Mr. Wainwright's right, don't you? The average person does not
+think."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he's got to be made to think," Roger said with such sudden
+vehemence that Anne started. "It's not because he doesn't want to
+think. He hasn't got time to think. And he realizes the uselessness of
+thinking when he can't do anything with his thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"But everybody has time to think, Roger. You're always talking about
+the way machinery affects men, they just do things over and over with
+their hands because it gets mechanical and they don't have to think
+about it. They can think while they're working, if they're the thinking
+kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Try it. Make the same motion over and over for eight hours and see how
+alive your brain would be. Make it for a week, a month, all a working
+life. You're dead."</p>
+
+<p>Anne looked thoughtful. She liked discussing with Roger and they
+usually agreed. But a note had crept into Roger's line of argument
+lately, that disturbed her almost physically, just as it did to hear a
+soap-boxer shrieking on the corner. It always made something inside her
+curl up and retreat, so that she could never stop and listen to what
+the man was saying.</p>
+
+<p>She got back again to particulars. "But he did do it. He burned a
+building and tried to kill a man."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he did it, just as a machine that is started by a clever mechanic
+does the work for which it is made. It obeys its law. Angelo Sabatini
+is obeying his law, the law that ground him and his ancestors down
+until there was only a spark left—the spark that brought him six
+thousand miles—to the 'Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave'.
+And then we tried to kill that spark and Sabatini kicked out. Why, it's
+this spark, this will and courage to kick, that's the only thing in the
+man worth saving."</p>
+
+<p>Anne felt a little frightened. "But, dear, I know things are all wrong
+and ought to be different, but they're not different yet. If you do
+wrong you have to pay the price."</p>
+
+<p>Roger pushed back his almost untouched plate and began walking up and
+down the pretty room. "But that's just the point. The guilty, the
+really ethically guilty, do not pay the price. Angelo Sabatini is a
+victim of society, just as much as he would have been the victim of a
+beam falling on him. This isn't a personal fight between one fisherman
+and another, it's the whole social revolution. And that's what fools
+like Wainwright don't see or pretend they don't. They patch and sing
+hymns while they patch."</p>
+
+<p>Anne laid down her dessert spoon hastily. "Roger," she said quietly
+after a silence, filled only by the dropping of the burned wood and
+Roger's even tread the length of the room, "you're not going to quarrel
+with Mr. Wainwright, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger smiled. "Hilary Wainwright doesn't quarrel with his employees. He
+dismisses them."</p>
+
+<p>Anne looked quickly away into the fire. After a moment she asked,
+almost indifferently: "Do you think he will dismiss you?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger shrugged; then stopped and looked at the little figure turned
+toward the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said slowly. "He won't dismiss me—yet."</p>
+
+<p>Anne got up and began to clear the table. Roger came forward to help as
+he always did, but Anne insisted he was tired.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides you have to make the report to-night. I can do these few
+things quite well."</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked at the clock. "And I'd better hurry, too. It's half past
+eight now."</p>
+
+<p>Still he continued to walk up and down while Anne thoughtfully washed
+the dishes. She had just finished when he came to kiss her good-night.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't wait up, dear, I may be late."</p>
+
+<p>Anne went to the door with him, then came back, turned out the lights
+and made up the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Deep in the easy chair, Anne felt the battling and struggling far down
+under the pleasant surface of life. Rough men, like Angelo Sabatini,
+were striking blindly up at her peaceful security. Anne looked slowly
+around the quiet room, uncluttered by useless furniture, wide, clean
+and calm. She loved her living-room. It was almost alive to her. Anne's
+lips trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"He takes things so hard," she whispered to herself, "and one person
+can't really do anything."</p>
+
+<p>It was after eleven when Roger came in. He thought Anne was asleep and
+got into bed quietly. But after a little while, she turned to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What's Mr. Wainwright going to do, Roger?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," Roger said heavily. "Nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>Anne crept closer to him and stroked his cheek. "I'm so sorry, dear."</p>
+
+<p>Roger moved impatiently. "Don't do that, Anne, it fidgets me."</p>
+
+<p>Anne instantly withdrew her hand. Roger reached for it and clasped it
+listlessly. "Excuse me, dear, but I'm all tensed up. He was so damned
+judicial and—and 'just.'"</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TEN">CHAPTER TEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>For several weeks after Roger's outburst, Anne sensed a new element
+in her life, as if she had come face to face with something hidden
+before. This element was a quality in Roger that changed the angle of
+their relations. She felt that she might be suddenly called upon for
+calm judgment, a need might arise for a balancing force between them.
+The foundations of her new life, of the deep peace and security she
+had felt for the last six months, were not quite so secure as she had
+thought them. There was something in Roger she was not quite sure of.</p>
+
+<p>Often during the day, Anne stopped her housework, and made
+conversational beginnings calculated to lead to an opening of this
+subject with him. But when she concentrated her uneasiness in words,
+it seemed always to gain more substance than it really had. Roger did
+not approve of Hilary Wainwright. He never had, exactly. But Hilary
+Wainwright was not crooked as John Lowell had been. At worst, his
+methods might be mistaken. He was trying to do something worth while,
+even if he went more slowly and cautiously than Roger's enthusiasm
+demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Again and again, Anne concluded that she was exaggerating the tension
+between Roger and Wainwright, only to have her fear reach out of the
+most unexpected situations and touch her with a small, cold finger.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not start managing him. It gets nowhere and does no good."
+Anne's logic always led her to this point, where, by an extra effort,
+she usually succeeded in leaving it for the time.</p>
+
+<p>And then, two weeks before Christmas, something happened that drove all
+other thoughts from Anne's mind. She was going to have a child. She
+knew it now beyond a doubt. The vague fears and tenuous analyses of the
+last weeks vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"It's what mamma would call 'my condition,' I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>The world had changed, suddenly, and Anne's relation to it and to
+herself had changed. Everything seemed bigger, wider and full of soft
+mystery. The universe, a great, shadowy stretch far beyond her or
+her immediate concerns, now centered in herself. She was the center
+of something beyond ordinary life, beyond any small, blind struggle
+of mistaken millions, almost beyond the law that governed the daily
+comings and goings of mere humanity. No mystic ever felt nearer to
+bodies unseen, heard far voices more clearly, than did Anne in the
+first days of her sureness; when, her secret guarded for the perfect
+moment of revelation, she sat hour after hour, looking out across
+the tangled garden to the Bay, to old Tamalpais, quiet, eternal,
+understanding.</p>
+
+<p>The Wednesday before Christmas the weather turned. The long period of
+sunshine was blotted by the first rain. All day it fell, soaking the
+garden and shutting Anne from the world behind a thick, soft curtain.
+Roger came early that night, less troubled than he had seemed of late,
+and after dinner sat reading before the fire, instead of staring into
+it as he had done so often since the Sabatini case. She felt small and
+happy and understanding, shut within the warm peace of her home by the
+pouring rain, very near to the man sitting so close beside her. She
+would tell him now. When he closed his book she slipped her hand into
+his and then, leaving her chair, curled up in his lap.</p>
+
+<p>Roger's arms held her gently, and he leaned his cheek against her hair.
+Anne waited, a little disappointed that he did not sense instantly the
+secret just behind her lips. Surely if Roger had had anything so vital
+to tell her, she would have known it. But he only stroked her hair
+and now that she was listening with every nerve in her for a key to
+Roger's mood, she felt that he was really far away. He was thinking of
+something that had nothing whatever to do with her, while she felt so
+strangely, almost terribly, one with him. She sat up.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Princess?" Roger drew his attention from some distant
+point. "Aren't you comfy?"</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know it was anything? You were miles away."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I was. Not so far, however, not farther than the office."</p>
+
+<p>Anne frowned. "Has Hilary Wainwright come to live permanently in the
+house with us? It was really much nicer when we were alone."</p>
+
+<p>Something in Anne's tone made Roger look at her intently. He had come
+as near having a quarrel with Hilary Wainwright that afternoon as he
+could come, and still keep the secretaryship. He had intended to laugh
+off his seriousness and to say nothing until he was surer of himself,
+but, at the look in Anne's eyes, he changed his mind:</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, the man's false. I don't believe he really believes a thing he
+says. It's a pose, as much of a pose as those silly soft shirts he
+wears and those ready-made clothes. He thinks it brings him nearer to
+'The People.' He——"</p>
+
+<p>But Anne did not hear beyond the first sentence. Roger stood before
+her, defying John Lowell, giving up the law. She rose slowly from his
+knees and said quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"Let's not talk about that to-night. Roger,—we're going to have a
+baby."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Anne an hour that they stood staring at each other while
+she saw understanding dawn slowly in Roger's eyes. Understanding, and
+then such a blank look of helplessness, that Anne felt the fears of the
+last weeks form visibly before her and swarm down, almost suffocating
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord!" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Tears ran down Anne's cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Roger brushed his hand across his eyes and reached to her, but Anne
+stepped back.</p>
+
+<p>"You—don't—want—it," she whispered fiercely, "but I do. I don't
+care how many people there are already. I want my baby. I——" She was
+almost hysterical now.</p>
+
+<p>Roger took her firmly in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I want it, too, Anne. There, dear, there."</p>
+
+<p>Just as if she were a child, crying for a toy, instead of a woman
+telling the father of her child the most wonderful news in the world!</p>
+
+<p>Anne lay close, afraid to move away, to make concrete to herself her
+own hurt and anger and separateness from Roger. He had not wanted
+it. His first reaction had not been joy, but fear. Fear of what?
+Over-burdening the world with one small baby more? Or fear for himself,
+the new weight of responsibility?</p>
+
+<p>"Please, dear, won't you believe me? I am glad. But it came so
+suddenly. Why——"</p>
+
+<p>It was Roger now who was suddenly afraid to voice his question. Why had
+Anne chosen that moment to tell him? Had she thrown the thing at him,
+a grapple to hold him fast in safe acceptance of Hilary Wainwright's
+insincerity? Roger pushed the thought aside.</p>
+
+<p>"This is not the usual way of whispering the 'sweet secret,' is it,
+dear?" He turned Anne's face up and smiled into her eyes, wet and hurt.
+"Whisper it now, Princess," and he bent his head.</p>
+
+<p>But Anne could not smile. It would take all her strength and courage
+to forget—and forgive—that first blank, helpless bewilderment in
+Roger's eyes. He might be glad—he had said he was, but he was glad
+for her gladness. He had none for the baby itself. He was cheating the
+baby of its full meed of welcome, accepting gracefully now for his own
+peace and comfort, something he could not escape. And she had hoarded
+her secret. She had even thought of saving it to Christmas day! Of
+giving Roger this, the biggest present in her power, early in the dawn
+when they always waked. She had seen it so clearly, herself creeping
+close to Roger. Then the rain had come, walling them in together, and
+Roger had seemed nearer than he had for weeks and the depth of her own
+happiness had forced the secret from her. And Roger had said:</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord!"</p>
+
+<p>Anne moved away to physical freedom. In this spiritual isolation she
+did not want Roger's arms about her, nor to have him touch her in any
+way. Roger straightened at Anne's movement and they stood, one on each
+side of the fireplace, outwardly two people very near in the intimacy
+of the low fire and shadowed lights, inwardly far apart.</p>
+
+<p>Why had Anne told him, at just this moment? Why had she done it? Had
+she felt him slipping over the edge of Hilary Wainwright's insincerity,
+out from these months of his own uncertainty, into spiritual freedom,
+and thrown the silken lariat of her dependence over him, drawn him back
+to the safety of 'a job'?</p>
+
+<p>Without turning, Roger felt Anne standing small, almost prim, by the
+fireplace, distrusting him, clinging fast to her safety, as James
+Mitchell clung to his little job. Afraid to dare, clutching comfort at
+any price. Perhaps she had deliberately decided this thing should be.
+She so often understood his unuttered thoughts, clarified his reactions
+before they had emerged clearly to himself from their first chaos of
+emotion and enthusiasm. If Anne had done this, feeling the safety of
+their present comfort slipping! But, when he turned to her—she was
+so silvery fair, shame of his own thought rushed over him. Against the
+reluctance he felt in her, he drew her to him again. And Anne, in her
+desperate need to believe, came back. He kissed her and smiled into
+her eyes, and this time, Anne smiled too. But she was glad that Roger
+did not insist again that she whisper "the sweet secret!" She did not
+want to talk of it until this mood was dead in the past. After a long
+silence, she looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma phoned to-day. She wants us to go there for Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>Their first Christmas to be spent with the Mitchells!</p>
+
+<p>"It's going to be the first real Christmas party mamma has ever had,"
+Anne went on, "and she's as excited as a child. Dr. Stetson is back
+from the East, more successful and famous than ever and he's asked
+Belle to go out twice in three weeks. He's coming, and I believe moms
+has some kind of idea that when he sees how successful matrimony can
+be, he will be moved to go and do likewise."</p>
+
+<p>Roger tried to smile, but none of Mrs. Mitchell's ideas ever amused
+him. This was so exactly the kind of crude thing she would do. But he
+had hurt Anne too much to-night to do anything but pretend genuine
+pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll do our best to help the good cause along. Shall I hold your hand
+and murmur sweet nothings? Come on, let's practice."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be silly. But I do wish Belle would marry him." Anne spoke in
+such a matronly tone that Roger laughed. "You needn't laugh. Belle's
+awfully independent and all that, but she'd make a corking wife for
+some man. And this Dr. Stetson does seem more persistent than most.
+She usually frightens them off. I shouldn't wonder a bit if something
+doesn't come of it." Anne looked oddly like Hilda for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you can coach me up, or we'll arrange a code to entangle the
+gentleman in domestic felicity. I'll do whatever you tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's sure to be a success. But, Roger, I do want this to be a
+nice dinner. It's really the first effort mamma has ever been able
+to make at a jolly Christmas. And she would so have loved trees and
+Santa Clauses and all the regulation fixings. Only they cost so much,
+and it never seemed worth while, because it would have taken all the
+money—even if she could have scraped it together—just for the
+machinery and there would have been no party."</p>
+
+<p>Roger's own childhood had not been very full of treats, but at the
+picture of little Anne deprived of the usual Christmas, Roger's heart
+melted.</p>
+
+<p>"You sweet baby, you. Ours will have a tree the very first year."</p>
+
+<p>Anne nestled to him. "Oh, Roger, he will be cute, won't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. It's got to be a boy."</p>
+
+<p>"I rather hope so myself, although I should never dare to prophesy so
+vehemently. But I daresay you are right. What's his name? No doubt that
+detail's settled, too."</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly is. He is Roger Mitchell Barton. How do you like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Great," Roger said very quickly.</p>
+
+<p>But after he and Anne were in bed, and he had held Anne and assured her
+of his own free will that he was glad, and Anne was sleeping with his
+arms about her, Roger whispered to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"Roger MITCHELL Barton!"</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_ELEVEN">CHAPTER ELEVEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>After days of tentative discussion, Hilary Wainwright decided on
+Christmas Eve to have a Christmas tree at his office for the children
+of the striking stevedores who loaded his sugar fleet. When he
+announced the decision Roger almost flatly refused to have anything to
+do with it.</p>
+
+<p>"The children really should not be made to pay for their fathers'
+obstinacy," Hilary said, and recalled to Roger the sanctimonious aunt
+who had brought him up, trying to force a cookie on him after she had
+unjustly spanked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not settle the strike?" he suggested, without looking at Hilary.
+"The men are only asking ten cents an hour more, and the right to
+organize."</p>
+
+<p>He felt Hilary's lips compress, exactly like that aunt's, and wanted to
+laugh, although he was angry and disgusted.</p>
+
+<p>"The matter is being arbitrated, and, in the meantime, Christmas is
+here. I don't like to think of children unmerry on Christmas day."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be uncomfortable," Roger said in a tone that made Hilary
+glance at him with the look of a financier considering an uncertain
+investment. But, whatever Hilary Wainwright's reaction to Roger's tone,
+he dismissed it and said pleasantly:</p>
+
+<p>"I guess we'll have to deliver the invitations personally. There's
+not enough time for notes. Could you take half? I have the names and
+addresses. They all live rather close together."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Roger hesitated. Then he agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"I can probably cover the lot. They all live in one section."</p>
+
+<p>Hilary nodded. "That would be great, if you can."</p>
+
+<p>Years afterwards, when Roger recalled the thing that had made him most
+ashamed of himself before men, it was this house-to-house canvass of
+Hilary Wainwright's stevedores.</p>
+
+<p>They all lived in mean, dilapidated buildings, down close to the great
+wharves, on narrow side-streets, never free from the smell of tar
+and bilge water and refuse. The men were mostly physical giants, with
+badly shaped heads, small, close-set eyes, and brutal mouths. The women
+were worn and dull, although here and there, among those with fewer
+children, faint traces of an anemic, youthful prettiness were fading to
+shrewish angles and deep lines about the pale lips. The children were
+dirty and sharp-eyed, with the shifting look and the quick, darting
+movements of children who live in the streets, dodging policemen and
+irate parents and passing trucks.</p>
+
+<p>The men glared sullenly at Roger, and, for the most part, made no
+comment. Some of the women reviled Hilary Wainwright in gutter speech;
+some were confused; none were grateful. But in the end, they all
+accepted. If the "kids" did not go to this tree, they would have none.
+The kids would like it.</p>
+
+<p>On Christmas morning Anne went to the office and helped with the
+tree. It was the finest that Hilary could find and weighted under
+innumerable, if cheap, presents, and bags of candy and lights. It was
+finished a little before twelve, and the clerks and clerks' wives who
+had helped stood back and admired it.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lot better than my children are going to have," one woman
+whispered to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"It really is pretty, isn't it, Roger?" Anne had enjoyed hanging the
+thick, silver tinsel and concealing the colored electric globes in the
+most effective places.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It's pretty." Roger had made up his mind to see the thing through
+decently, but it was difficult.</p>
+
+<p>The lights were switched on for a trial view; every one exclaimed
+"O-h," and, after other appropriate remarks of appreciation for the
+beauty of the tree, and Hilary's generosity, left. Anne came close to
+Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"Next year," she whispered, "we're going to have one exactly like this,
+only a teeny, weeny one, aren't we?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger did not answer, but as Hilary called to him just then, Anne did
+not notice. In a moment Roger returned.</p>
+
+<p>"He wants me to come back after lunch and start things going. His
+sister can't get here until half past three and the tree's scheduled
+for three."</p>
+
+<p>"Half past three!" The Mitchell dinner was to be at four, to give Belle
+time to get back to her case at seven. Roger could not possibly be
+punctual and James Mitchell hated a meal to be delayed. But Roger could
+not refuse Hilary.</p>
+
+<p>"It's one now. There's hardly time to go home for lunch and get back
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you. I'll go round the corner and get a bite and then clear up
+a few reports I didn't have time for yesterday and stay right on until
+she arrives. I'll leave the minute she comes."</p>
+
+<p>"Try not to be later than you can help, dear, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try. But don't wait for me. I won't be much behind. I'll come
+right out."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. I guess you've got to stay, but—I wanted us to go
+together. Don't be any later than you can help," Anne again warned
+Roger as he took her to the elevator.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't." But coming back to the office, Roger wished that Miss
+Wainwright would not come at all. The Mitchell dinner, from a boring
+incident, had become in the last forty-eight hours, through Anne's
+constant reference to it, an ordeal not unlike the delivery of the
+invitations and the tree itself. He had wanted a quiet home dinner,
+with liberty of silence afterwards, a small space in the cluttered
+confusion of the last days, in which to take careful stock of his
+almost irrepressible scorn of Hilary Wainwright.</p>
+
+<p>But Hilda Mitchell had never had a pleasant Christmas!</p>
+
+<p>Roger frowned and tried to shrug off his unjust impatience. "I wish
+to the Lord they'd all go and live in China or somewhere. I suppose
+it will be worse after the baby comes. Roger Mitchell Barton!"
+he whispered. "Sabatini would be better." But at the impossible
+combination of Roger Sabatini Barton, Roger laughed.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>At two the children began to arrive, surprisingly clean and well
+dressed; the girls with bright hair ribbons and white stockings
+and patent leather shoes and the boys with plastered hair and neat
+suits. A clerk, with no family ties, who had come from the shipping
+office to help, made a running line of comment aside to Roger on the
+extraordinary and warped viewpoint of men who could afford patent
+leather shoes for their children, striking for higher wages.</p>
+
+<p>"If they came in the things they wear at home during the week, you'd be
+afraid of germs," Roger exploded.</p>
+
+<p>The man looked at him suspiciously, but ceased his comments.</p>
+
+<p>Anne waited for Roger until three and then left the house. By Hilda's
+concern at seeing her alone, Anne knew that her mother was not quite
+sure that Roger would come at all.</p>
+
+<p>"He's coming, but yesterday Mr. Wainwright sprang a Christmas tree for
+the children of his striking stevedores, and his sister can't get there
+to help him entertain until after three. The children will begin coming
+long before that and he needed Roger. I would have stayed too except
+that I knew you wouldn't like us both to be late."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I think that's mighty kind of Mr. Wainwright. Not many rich
+people, men 'specially, would have thought of such a thing. Yes, dear,
+it would have made it a little awkward for you both to be late, but
+we'll wait a bit for Roger anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"No, please don't. He won't be much behind and he'd rather you didn't."</p>
+
+<p>Anne and Hilda were in Anne's old room where she was taking off her
+things. In the front room, Belle and Dr. Stetson were talking. Hilda
+closed the door softly.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe there is something doing," she whispered with raised
+eyebrows and quick nods. "He's one of those thin, decided-looking men
+and he's got Belle going. I heard him tell her not to smoke so much and
+she actually threw her cigarette away."</p>
+
+<p>"They must be married."</p>
+
+<p>"Anne! No, they're not married. I don't believe he's asked her yet, but
+I hope he will. Belle says he's a wonder at his line, cuts the queerest
+things out of you, and never makes a cut for less than a thousand
+dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe he'll do it cheaper for the family. I couldn't afford a pin
+prick at that rate."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you'll never need it. But papa seems to like him. Listen.
+That's him laughing. I like his voice, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne thought it was cold, rather like one of his wonderful knives, but
+she said it sounded pleasant and followed Hilda down the hall to the
+kitchen, where she gave her the black silk underskirt she had brought.
+Hilda's eyes filled with tears, and she touched the thick messaline
+lovingly.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the first real silk petticoat I've ever had, Annie. It's almost
+too nice to wear."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, mamma, you put it right on."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda hesitated, then dropped the torn gingham she was wearing, made a
+face at it, slipped into the new skirt, and waltzed about the kitchen
+holding up her dress skirt like a ballet dancer.</p>
+
+<p>"You're just a girl, yourself, mamma. I don't believe you'll ever grow
+up." Anne watched her mother with the deep tenderness and sense of
+protection. No piece of finery could ever make her as happy as this
+black silk petticoat made her mother. It was a shame that she had
+never been able to have pretty things. The old resentment against her
+father, somewhat allayed since her marriage, rose in Anne, and she
+was glad that Dr. Stetson's presence prevented her having to give him
+at that moment the box of good cigars she had brought. She had always
+resented giving her father presents, ever since, as a little girl of
+ten, she had discovered one Christmas morning, that the handkerchiefs
+with "papa's love" had really come from Hilda's manipulation of the
+tissue-wrapped allotments. She had succeeded in losing every one of the
+handkerchiefs before New Year, but she had gone on giving him gifts and
+thanking him for his.</p>
+
+<p>Hilda had waltzed into the bedroom, and now returned with the family's
+remembrances to Anne and Roger, a silver cigarette case from Belle, a
+necktie from James and Hilda to Roger. Three pair of silk stockings
+from Belle to Anne, a hand-embroidered nightgown from Hilda and James.</p>
+
+<p>And then, the matter of presents being over, they both felt a little
+freer. Hilda looked at the kitchen clock. It was five minutes after
+four.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't think Roger would really mind, Anne, we'll begin. I want
+a nice, long talky dinner, and a little evening after." Hilda gave her
+petticoat a last flirt, twirled about on her toes, and began dishing up
+the turkey. "Belle came early and made the salad, something extra fancy
+she's learned. The plates are ready in the pantry, Anne. If you'll just
+carry them in, then I'll introduce you."</p>
+
+<p>Anne carried the salad into the dining-room, catching a side view of
+Dr. Stetson through the drawn portière. He looked as she imagined he
+would look from his voice; slim, and exceedingly well groomed. He was
+leaning back now in the rocker, his thin, strong white hands clasped
+behind his sleek, dark head. He was listening to an animated anecdote
+of Belle's and smiling. Anne thought he was the most collected,
+self-possessed being she had ever seen. He might have removed every
+nerve in his body by one of his own skillful operations.</p>
+
+<p>"If Belle marries him, she'll toe the mark." Anne smiled and went back
+to the kitchen. When the turkey and cranberries and sprouts were dished
+and in the hotplate, Hilda took Anne into the parlor. Dr. Stetson rose
+instantly, gave her a penetrating glance as if she were a patient,
+dismissed her as much less interesting than Belle, and they all
+followed Hilda into the dining-room beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, where's Roger?" Belle demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll be along shortly. Hilary Wainwright's giving a party, a
+Christmas tree to some poor children, and Roger had to help get the
+thing going."</p>
+
+<p>"If there were a few more Wainwrights in this country there wouldn't be
+any labor trouble," James explained, squinting and pursing up his lips
+as if he had private information of this certainty. Belle laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm glad I'm not a philanthropic millionaire if he can't even
+take Christmas off. It must be worse than nursing or surgery, don't you
+think so, Doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"It must be if it keeps any one from a salad like this," Dr. Stetson
+smiled at Hilda, who was saved in the nick of time by Belle's look,
+from disclaiming the honor.</p>
+
+<p>Roger's absence was not further commented upon and the talk became
+general. Dr. Stetson had traveled extensively before the war in Europe
+and he described people and places well, always picking out with the
+unerring accuracy of his famous thousand-dollar cuts, the weak or
+ridiculous spots in people and conditions. James Mitchell scarcely
+stopped smiling. Belle's ringing laugh interrupted every few moments.
+Anne, too, was interested. She felt the charm of the man's culture and
+experience. It would be nice to travel and meet interesting people, go
+to wonderful concerts and luxuriate for a little while in pleasant,
+easy places. To meet people concerned in creating beauty or enjoying
+it; not only those always striving to divide it up. Perhaps, some
+day, when Europe had settled again to a semblance of what it had been
+before, she and Roger and Rogie would go. Anne began in imagination to
+travel.</p>
+
+<p>A loud peal of the doorbell brought her back from Rome, and stopped Dr.
+Stetson in the middle of a story.</p>
+
+<p>Roger came up the stairs two at a time, explaining to Hilda as he came.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm awfully sorry, but I couldn't make it sooner. Miss Wainwright was
+later even than she expected. The train was stalled or something."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right. We've only just about begun."</p>
+
+<p>When Roger had said he would come straight on, Anne had not thought of
+his clothes, and now, as he followed Hilda, she saw that he was in his
+everyday suit, rumpled and covered with a fine powdering of dust from
+the tree. A bit of wool and a scrap of tinsel clung to his sleeve. He
+looked tired. She saw Dr. Stetson size him up and a touch of annoyance
+cloud Belle's eyes. She was annoyed herself. Roger took the vacant
+place and Hilda made a great to-do about getting him salad, although
+Roger said, more emphatically than one usually refuses a course at a
+special dinner, that he did not want any. And when it came, he ate it
+as indifferently as if it had been plain lettuce. Anne saw her mother
+watching him and tried to catch his eye, but Roger's head was bent
+and she gave it up. Dr. Stetson had caught again the thread of his
+interrupted story, but Anne heard little of the rest. She wished that
+Roger would not sit so, absorbed in his salad as if he were alone at a
+lunch counter.</p>
+
+<p>The others, seeing that Roger was not entering the talk, abandoned
+their pretense of eating slowly until he caught up with them, took
+their second helping of turkey, and disregarded him. As Hilda removed
+his salad plate and passed him turkey, Anne managed at last to catch
+his eye. He looked puzzled, frowned slightly, and with a distinct
+effort banished his thoughts and turned to the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the same in all countries," the doctor was saying, "there's just
+a small group of people who really care for what's beautiful. We hear
+a lot about the artistic French and Italians. The average Latin—the
+ordinary man—doesn't respond to beauty, pure beauty, in itself, any
+more than does the average Saxon. They grub along with their eyes in
+the dust in exactly the same dull way."</p>
+
+<p>"What is pure beauty, in itself?" Roger demanded, as if he were
+heckling a witness on the stand. "What is impure beauty, or beauty out
+of itself?"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stetson regarded him for a moment with a smile of forced amusement,
+as if this were a joke, in poor taste, but to be condoned in a family
+gathering.</p>
+
+<p>"The Latin past," he elaborated, "was very closely tangled up with
+Art, and, as they have nothing to be proud of now, they fall back a
+few centuries and rave about their paintings and marbles, which never
+did interest more than a very few of them. And it's the same thing
+with other nations which have not much now to boast of. They go back
+to something centuries ago and find comfort in it. You can't talk ten
+minutes to an educated Portuguese before he's referring to the dead
+glories of the Portuguese fleet and dragging in Vasco da Gama as if
+he lived to-day. A Spaniard—at any rate up until the time of the
+Spanish-American War—would talk as if Mexico and all South America
+were still theirs. Nations, like people, the less they have as a whole
+to boast of now, the more they blind themselves with the dreams a few
+choice souls among them had generations ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Just as we, in America, blind ourselves with the dream of liberty and
+equality that Washington and Lincoln had," Roger interposed so quietly
+that his inference was lost for a moment in the echo of Dr. Stetson's
+sweeping assertions. The doctor himself was the first to catch it, and
+turning to Roger with a look as if he were diagnosing an unexpected
+symptom said, with the same smug assurance with which Hilary Wainwright
+regretted the slow coming of the Average Man's ability to think:</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think the cases are parallel. At least I, personally, am
+old fashioned enough to believe we have liberty and equality for all."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right." James Mitchell threw out his narrow shoulders and
+glared at Roger. "Liberty and equality! There's too much of them now,
+allowing every dirty foreigner and crack-brained native to stir up any
+fool that will listen. Let me tell you," and James Mitchell cut the
+heart of the problem from the air before him with his knife, "if there
+isn't a little less 'liberty and equality' pretty soon, this country's
+going to be in the same rotten mess as Russia. The people are half
+asleep. If I didn't know that down at bottom, the great middle class of
+America is really sane——"</p>
+
+<p>"——we might get somewhere," Roger spoke almost sadly, so that
+Belle and Dr. Stetson looked toward him, puzzled; but Anne, her face
+flushing, looked down. "It's the great, sane, middle class that's
+holding back liberty—killing it. The rich, to a certain extent, have
+it. The poor are struggling for it. It's only in the middle that
+they're dead, and safe. The middle class. There is no middle class,
+really. It is the dividing class. It's the blow-neither-hot-nor-cold.
+It's the lackey-souled. It's the misfortune of any country that has
+it, this great, sane, safe, middle class."</p>
+
+<p>"From your point of view, whatever that is, it may be. Not from mine."
+Dr. Stetson now spoke in crisp, sharp tones; like tiny glittering
+knives they seemed to pare the emotion from Roger's words. "The
+lackey-souled are, on the whole, the clean bodied. Your struggling
+poor, battling for so-called liberty, are unfit, humanly below par.
+They can't function efficiently as humans where they are, much less
+direct matters. Perhaps you don't know the number of mental defectives
+there are in this country. The draft records showed a tremendous
+proportion of men with the mental capacity of children. They work
+at trades requiring little skill, they marry and raise others like
+themselves. It's ridiculous to talk about increasing the liberty of
+these people. It ought to be restricted, anyhow redirected. At the
+other end of the scale, we have, of course, the effect of over-license,
+but, it may surprise you to know that in school tests taken through all
+classes, it was the children of the rich who, on the whole, averaged
+highest."</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't surprise me at all," Roger said quietly, while Hilda
+fidgeted and made little clucking noises, as if trying to swallow the
+too large portions of mental food offered by Dr. Stetson. "It's exactly
+what I would expect under the present system."</p>
+
+<p>"Which system is the result of these conditions, not the other way
+round. The upper class, using it in a broad sense as the directors of
+the world, are there because they are most fit."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," James Mitchell interpolated like a stinging wasp. "Look
+at the directors of any corporation, quiet, clean, sharp-eyed men.
+Look at the soap-boxers, the I. W. W.'s, the union organizers—all
+shifty-looking, as if they'd never had enough baths or enough to eat."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe they haven't," Roger said slowly, while Anne's face flamed and
+with difficulty she kept back the tears.</p>
+
+<p>Why did Roger persist? What did it matter anyhow who was right or who
+wrong, at this first real Christmas of her mother's?</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps they haven't," Dr. Stetson conceded, "but that doesn't alter
+the fact that, socially, they are not fit to function as directors.
+They are mentally below par," he repeated in clean, crisp finality.
+"They are to be classed roughly, to the layman, in the same general
+division as idiots."</p>
+
+<p>"Idiots!" Hilda murmured with a shiver.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, mamma." Belle's hand pushed away Hilda's excited, intruding
+interest. "They're not idiots. That's just the point. Idiots, real ones
+that everybody recognizes, get locked up. These people—why you meet
+them every day. You wouldn't know them, very likely. You——"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Belle! I certainly would know an idiot when I see one."</p>
+
+<p>"They're not idiots, not driveling idiots, Mrs. Mitchell," the doctor
+hastened to her aid; "they are—well, just the average unskilled
+worker, the laborer, the migratory worker, the seasonal worker. Many
+stevedores and longshoremen, fruit pickers, the simplest work in
+machine shops—an appalling percentage of these men aren't over ten
+or twelve years of age really. From these sub-normals or variants,
+come the criminals. Criminology is only just beginning to associate
+itself with psychology, but I could tell you some apparent miracles
+worked in prisons by small, minor operations. Which proves," he turned
+now, including Roger, "that it is not a question of opportunity or
+will—Nature isn't romantic or emotional—it's a scientific question.
+Deficiencies, variations, do exist. Perhaps, in time, all this may be
+correctable, but only by scientific methods—not by talk." He allowed
+himself the last thrust, covering it by a genial smile. "A clinic is
+enough to make one doubt the right of the democratic principle."</p>
+
+<p>"Not unless you refuse to look below the surface. Nature may be
+scientific, but she's not insane. She doesn't turn out millions upon
+millions of human beings that a few may scramble to themselves all the
+beauty of the universe. I grant you all the mentally inefficient you
+claim, but, what started it, what caused it? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"A thousand things, many too intricate, too subtle to explain. And
+remember we know very little about it. The field is new. There are a
+thousand threads tangled in the problem, pre-natal influences, going
+back for generations, malnutrition of mothers, early environment of
+the baby, nervous stimuli—dozens of influences. A psychopathic clinic
+in any of the big, free institutions, a ward in a baby hospital,
+a maternity ward—it's enough to make one doubt the right of the
+democratic principle," he repeated as if he found the phrase so exact
+he needed no other.</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked at him. "It would be very hopeless, if it were true:
+I mean if nothing preventive could be done." Hilda moved uneasily
+and James Mitchell cleared his throat. Anne's flaming face was still
+lowered. "But since, according to science, malnutrition, pre-natal
+conditions, unhealthy nerve conditions, do play a part, it seems to
+me there is a chance. As you say, the children of the rich, under the
+best physical and educational conditions, do average higher; if these
+conditions, or even approximately these, were extended, it ought to
+help some, don't you think?"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stetson saw where Roger was leading and looked at him coldly.
+"Really, Mr. Barton, it's such an intricate subject, and, on the
+whole, so impossible to discuss with a layman, that"—he beamed round,
+his charming smile of culture and advantage—"I think we'd have to
+give more time to it, and more seriousness, than I, at least, am
+able to give under these conditions." A gracious gesture laid the
+responsibility for this upon the well-cooked turkey.</p>
+
+<p>Hilda got up to remove the dishes and Anne rose quickly to help. Out in
+the kitchen, Hilda closed the door and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth is the matter with Roger?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. He simply can't take those things
+lightly. He gets all wrought up about the state of the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think he's dropped it now?" Hilda said hurriedly, detaining
+Anne as she was about to pass back to the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Anne said shortly. "He won't say any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, it's enough to scare one to death," Hilda went on in her
+hurried whisper, as she slipped the mince pies from their pans to the
+serving plates. "Idiots and criminals lurking round and you can't tell
+them from sane people! Sometimes I think Christian Science must be an
+awful comfort. Look at Charlotte Welles, she never gets all stewed
+up. She just goes round saying—All is Love—and she doesn't have to
+bother about fixing it. What with Dr. Stetson saying you can almost cut
+wickedness out of people, and Roger wanting to feed it out of them,
+and Charlotte saying there is none in them—one doesn't know what to
+believe."</p>
+
+<p>Belle's laughter drifted from the dining-room. Hilda heaved a sigh of
+real relief. "That's nice. I guess everything'll be all right now.
+Belle has a lot of tact."</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the meal went off pleasantly. Although Roger made no
+definite contribution, he no longer sat frowning and crumbling his
+bread. It was after six when they rose from the table, and, according
+to a prearranged scheme of Belle's, had black coffee in the other room
+before the gas log. But Anne saw that Belle did not quite trust Roger
+yet, because she so evidently kept the conversation in her own hands.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a shame," Anne decided. "He couldn't change them, and this is
+the first time Belle has ever brought any of her friends home and had
+things pleasant."</p>
+
+<p>As soon after the black coffee as she could, she let her eye catch
+Roger's and, at the question in his, nodded faintly. The others would
+have a better time when he had gone, and they would all be going soon
+anyhow. She slipped out as Hilda took the empty coffee things.</p>
+
+<p>"I think we'll have to go now, mamma. Roger has had a tiring day and
+there may be reports to do yet. This is Mr. Wainwright's busy season."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you have to go, dear, really?" Hilda could not keep every atom of
+relief out of her voice, for neither was she sure of Roger. Perhaps
+James would let the dinner pass, but not if Roger annoyed him any more.</p>
+
+<p>"I think so. It was a lovely dinner. I'd like to help you with the
+dishes, but I suppose you'll leave them till morning."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda laughed. "I'm not going to do them at all. Mrs. Welles' Jap
+schoolboy's coming at half past eight for an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Good for you!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's papa's present," Hilda said proudly. "Really, Anne, papa's
+changing quite a bit."</p>
+
+<p>Anne put her arms about her mother. "You dear, patient thing. I wish I
+were more like you."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, you flatterer. There's Roger coming to look you up."</p>
+
+<p>"They're going to play bridge for a while. Do you want to play, dear?"
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No. We'll just slip out the back way. They won't notice."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Anne, that's awfully rude. Of course they'll notice."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?" Anne asked coldly, as Hilda disappeared for a moment into the
+pantry. "Well, I don't think it matters if it is now."</p>
+
+<p>She got her things quietly and joined Roger again in the kitchen. Hilda
+leaned over the porch railing and waved as they disappeared into the
+covered tunnel that led to the street. On the sidewalk, Roger slipped
+his hand under Anne's arm, but Anne drew violently away.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, honey, what's the matter? Surely you don't——"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely I do care for common decency and politeness. Mamma got up a
+lovely dinner; every one was having a good time, until you got one of
+those excited streaks on. You might know they wouldn't agree with you.
+What sense was there in insisting? Besides, Dr. Stetson is an authority
+and you don't know anything about subnormal psychology or criminology."</p>
+
+<p>Under the stream of Anne's anger, Roger's nerves quivered. Like fork
+lightning, fears cut across his mind, phrases of Anne's, moods, likes
+and dislikes, resemblances to the Mitchells. He had been longing to
+get away from the house, now he wanted to get away from the stream of
+Anne's invective. But, once started, Anne clung to her hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, Anne, quit it," Roger said as they reached the corner where
+they had to take the car. "I don't want to hear any more about it."</p>
+
+<p>The car was just coming into sight. "No," Anne said hurriedly, "you
+never do, after you've had your say."</p>
+
+<p>Side by side, hurt and angry, they sat through the long ride home. But,
+as they climbed the hill, quiet at this hour, the earth sweet with long
+rain, the stars clean and shining from a densely blue-black sky, Roger
+took Anne's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry I hurt you, dear. I really never meant to."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how you could have helped meaning it," Anne said coldly,
+and then, because she too was afraid of this their first real
+disagreement, pressed his fingers faintly.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWELVE">CHAPTER TWELVE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>They did not mention the dinner again, but for weeks it hung in
+the background of all Anne's thought. The long silences and sudden
+irritations of Roger she interpreted by it, as well as her own growing
+inability to discuss his work with him. All their talks now were
+touched with the same dislike, almost fear, she had always had of
+dropping the curtain of Hilda's Niche behind her, and being left alone
+in the dark confusion of the interior.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the brilliant light of her own happiness in the coming of the
+baby, the still positive joy in her pretty home, there was something
+dark, hidden and unclear. It was as if Roger himself had absorbed some
+of the dumb hatred, the bitterness of revolt that saturated the outside
+world.</p>
+
+<p>The longshore strike hung on; other strikes threatened in sympathy. The
+newspapers clamored for settlement. Through January and February, Roger
+was out almost every evening with Hilary Wainwright, attending useless
+efforts at adjustment. From these he returned, his anger throttled to
+consideration of Anne's condition, a consideration so palpable that
+Anne felt the foundations of her peace tremble.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, one night at the beginning of March, when, after a brief rest
+of exhaustion, the rain was again pouring hour after hour, a mass of
+water from sky to earth, Anne spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"A penny, Roger. You've been staring into the fire half an hour by the
+clock. I spoke twice and you never heard a word."</p>
+
+<p>Roger turned to her. "Didn't I? I was thinking."</p>
+
+<p>Anne put aside the tiny white nightgown she was hemstitching and drew
+her chair closer. "I should hope so. I'd hate to think you were just
+gazing blankly. You're getting awfully quiet, Roger."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I? I suppose I am. There's so little time to really think in the
+day. It's so cluttered up doing—nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought Mr. Wainwright used to overwork you at first. It's about
+time he did a little more himself." Anne watched Roger's face, with
+something of the same tense interest with which one waits for a stage
+curtain to roll back.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he gives me enough to do. It's not that. It's the kind of thing."</p>
+
+<p>"What's he want now?" Anne was going to say: "Another Christmas tree?"
+but the subject had closed itself naturally on Christmas night and
+neither had again referred to it.</p>
+
+<p>"He wants to call a meeting of the strike leaders; the heads of
+the other unions he's afraid are going out in sympathy—a bunch of
+charity buttinskies, Rockefeller Foundation people and Russell Sage
+investigators, and—some of his own stock-holders. The thing's to be a
+cross between a directors' meeting and a church social. He's going to
+have refreshments served—after a friendly, informal talk, served by
+his private butler, brought down from the house for the occasion!"</p>
+
+<p>Anne laughed. Roger smiled, and then laughed with her. "If it wasn't
+pitiful, wicked in a way, it's so dense and stupid, it would be
+a scream. Black Tom O'Connell, and the Reverend Kenneth Peabody
+Smythe—being buttled with expensive sandwiches."</p>
+
+<p>Now that he had really started to talk about it, Roger felt the
+enthusiasm of communication sweep him. It was nice to talk again
+like this to Anne. The habit had dropped out lately, ever since the
+Christmas dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"He's obsessed with the idea that if he can persuade Capital and Labor
+to eat a sandwich together, all will be harmony and brotherly love."</p>
+
+<p>"The men will swallow their claims with their sandwich, as it were?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. And his directors will swallow their just grievances at the
+men's obstinacy, and everything will be exactly as it was before."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you try to dissuade him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. It would do no good. He cannot or will not see the thing as an
+indicator. To him, each strike is a separate act of obstinacy, or
+anger, or a monetary demand on the part of the men. He concedes some to
+be just and some unjust, but the just ones are getting fewer, rapidly
+fewer. He sees the whole labor situation as a kind of rising shriek on
+the part of the workers, higher and higher, like angry and perverse
+children who have found a way to terrify their nurses. He's looked
+the shrieking baby over and can find no pins in its clothing and so
+he's going to give it a lollypop and tell it to be good. If it doesn't
+obey—he'll set it down with a thump and leave it to itself."</p>
+
+<p>Under the grotesque figure of his speech, Anne felt Roger's anger. He
+now hated Hilary Wainwright with a personal bitterness Anne had not
+believed in him. After a little, she asked quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"When's this meeting coming off?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow night. The invitations went out days ago; off-hand,
+'comradely' notes to the labor people; beseeching little appeals to the
+Russell Sagers, et al. 'to help out'; I didn't see those to the company
+directors; he managed them himself."</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a short silence, filled to Anne with cold little puffs
+of anxiety blowing from beyond the warm security of their pretty rooms.</p>
+
+<p>"Can outsiders go, Roger? There wouldn't be any real objection, would
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no. I don't see that there would. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to go."</p>
+
+<p>"Really?" Roger turned to her, his eyes full of a pleased surprise that
+hurt Anne a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I would. It sounds interesting."</p>
+
+<p>"Interesting? Yes, it will be interesting as a psychological problem—a
+kind of clinic for studying the blind stupidity of Hilary Wainwright
+and his kind. It may be rough, too. I wouldn't answer for Black Tom
+O'Connell—if he comes."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it won't be so rough that I can't stand it—if you can," Anne
+added in an emphasis that escaped Roger, visioning again the absurd
+sandwich that was to unite Labor and Capital.</p>
+
+<p>But the next evening, as she followed Roger into the already
+well-filled room, Anne forgot her personal interest in the feel of
+suppressed antagonism that filled the very air. Almost abnormally
+sensitive to hidden currents, as Anne passed down the empty space so
+clearly separating the two factions of the audience, she felt the
+currents playing across her.</p>
+
+<p>On the right, in little knots and groups about Hilary Wainwright's
+desk, were the directors and their wives, the Russell Sagers, et al., a
+few thin, rather pale young men and a woman with horn-rimmed glasses,
+stringy hair and a note book. On the left, a fat man with a red face
+and very black hair and two women, one scarcely more than a girl, with
+bobbed chestnut curls, and great violet eyes, child-like eyes above
+the scarlet lips of a woman.</p>
+
+<p>As Roger led to seats just opposite this girl, Anne noticed that the
+girl looked at them, and said something to the woman beside her, but
+the latter did not answer, nor even turn to them. She was a squat,
+heavily built woman, with a swarthy skin, and densely black, living
+hair, without a thread of gray, although Anne judged her more than
+forty.</p>
+
+<p>She gripped Anne's attention and held it. She was so still. She looked
+as if she could wait forever and, in the end, the thing she waited
+would come. She was like the earth, silent, indifferent to all the
+play of light and shadow in life. She lived for a purpose. Whatever it
+was, Anne felt it like a thick, brown shell about her. Again the girl
+with the bobbed hair spoke to her. This time she frowned and shrugged
+aside the girl's remarks. It was like the motion of a tree disturbing
+the poise of a bright insect lodged for a moment upon its leaves. The
+girl laughed and the heavy woman lit a cigarette. She smoked in deep,
+violent draws that obscured her face in a cloud of stinging blue smoke.</p>
+
+<p>At the odor, a short, bald-headed man rose on the other side of the
+room and opened a window. When he came back to his chair the woman
+beside him bowed her thanks. She was a large, gray-haired woman,
+conspicuous as the one bright spot amid the dark tailored suits of the
+other women and the business clothes of the men. Her amber-colored
+tunic, of soft silk, blended into the golden tint of her rounded,
+unlined face. Her skirt of golden-brown broadcloth toned in perfect
+harmony with her brown suede boots. When, through her gold lorgnette,
+hung on an amber chain, her brown eyes smiled their thanks to the man
+for his service, she seemed to come down from some height for the
+special purpose. She was like a rich, perfectly-ripened apricot, hung
+beyond reach. Next to her, on the left, the black-coated slimness of
+the Reverend Kenneth Peabody Smythe stood out like an exclamation
+point, calling attention to his presence in this extraordinary
+gathering.</p>
+
+<p>At his desk, Hilary Wainwright kept glancing anxiously from the door to
+the group of men talking together in the third row. These men were all
+beyond middle age, with well-brushed gray hair, white, well-kept hands
+and tailored clothes. Two of them were lean, sharp-eyed men, their
+bodies tightened like springs, perfect mechanisms for the gripping
+and adjusting of any obstruction before them. The other was shorter,
+with a heavy neck and predatory eyes, the cheap cartoonists' favorite
+illustration of a capitalist.</p>
+
+<p>Hilary Wainwright was just moving to join them, when the door opened
+and a large, raw-boned man in an untidy overcoat entered hurriedly
+and, without looking to the right or left, came straight to the seat
+beside the bobbed-haired girl. His boots left a muddy trail across the
+rug, and, as he shrugged himself out of his overcoat the ashes from
+his cigar stub fell on the girl's lap. With a dainty flip of her white
+fingers she brushed them aside, leaned close to the man, and whispered.
+He nodded, and the girl patted his knee. With a tap of his gavel,
+Hilary Wainwright called the meeting to order.</p>
+
+<p>Under cover of the preliminary remarks on the present situation among
+the longshoremen, Anne whispered to Roger:</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Black Tom O'Connell. The idol of the laboring world."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that heavy woman this side?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's Katya Orloff, the inevitable Russian Jew."</p>
+
+<p>Anne looked beyond her to Black Tom. He, like Katya, was sitting
+perfectly still, the unlit butt of the cigar hanging from his lips.
+His long, thin face was badly shaven and grayish from overwork. His
+worn clothes hung loosely on his large frame, bent and gnarled from a
+childhood of work and the passions which Anne felt were always tearing
+the man. Again and again, Anne tried to look away, to listen to the
+smooth flow of Hilary Wainwright's studied periods, but her eyes always
+came back to the still, slouching form next to the pretty girl. Their
+physical proximity disturbed her. She felt an element in the girl
+reaching to this man, scarred, untidy, old enough to be her father.
+When the girl for the second time laid her soft, white hand on his
+knee, Anne felt herself flush and looked quickly away to Hilary.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever he had been saying, he had now reached the end of the first
+period. With a distinct bracing of his shoulders, and a decided
+hardening of his lips, he went on:</p>
+
+<p>"And so it seemed the best thing for us all to get together and talk
+the thing out frankly and honestly. The situation is serious and it
+concerns us all, every one of us and the whole city," he added, to
+impress the fact that it was not his peculiar position as main owner
+in the sugar fleet, not the financial interest of the other keen
+directors, that had brought them there, but their world interest in all
+that touched humanity. "Until now, the strike has been fairly orderly,
+but it will not continue so much longer. The city, the common people,
+cannot be made to bear much longer the brunt of curtailed sugar supply,
+or idle shipping. The boats have got to be run." He paused. Anne felt
+Katya Orloff move for the first time, a slight movement toward them.
+She turned slightly and saw that Katya was now looking with faint
+amusement at Roger, the only one in the room listening intently to
+Hilary.</p>
+
+<p>The directors, bored by having to give up their evening to this
+"hare-brained scheme of that idealist, Wainwright," but realizing the
+importance of having every morning paper blazon the fact that they
+had met with Labor and tried to reach a sane compromise, sat back in
+noncommittal placidity. The Reverend Kenneth Peabody Smythe looked
+worried, and the lady in apricot disgusted. The thin woman with the
+notebook chewed her pencil while studying the severely plain and
+expensive suit of the woman in front of her. It was impossible to tell
+whether Black Tom even knew where he was, and the bobbed-haired girl
+toyed with a string of jade beads and yawned. Anne moved a little and
+so obstructed the view of the squat woman. Hilary continued:</p>
+
+<p>"There was, of course, no written and official agreement that the men
+would not strike, but it was understood, by the law of good will and
+decency. The world has been through a period of bitter suffering and
+now it is the duty of every one, from the top to the bottom, to pull
+and pull together. That it is no longer possible to pay the war time
+wage, when labor is scarce, is not the fault of any one individual. We,
+those who happen to be the hirers of labor, regret this as much as any
+one. The men ought to understand. They refuse to do so. Every method
+has been tried, short—of strike-breakers." Hilary paused to let the
+significance sink in. "But the country is full of men eager to work,
+desperate for work, with a right to work. The mayor understands the
+situation. He will protect the right of these men to sell their labor.
+He——"</p>
+
+<p>Black Tom was on his feet, his long, narrow head thrust forward, the
+stinking ash of his cigar falling again on the bobbed-haired girl,
+who again brushed it off with an exquisitely dainty fillip of a white
+finger.</p>
+
+<p>"He will, will he? How long does he think he's going to run this town?"</p>
+
+<p>Hilary Wainwright tapped with his gavel, a little sound like a
+woodpecker. Every one but Katya was looking at Tom now.</p>
+
+<p>"Just—about—as—long as it will take to bring in those
+strike-breakers." Black Tom's stained hand moved in a quick, drawing
+motion, gathering the strike-breakers to him. "Just that long and no
+longer. Bring them on," he commanded. "You can't bring them too soon.
+Bring them, dozens, hundreds, thousands—you will need them all."</p>
+
+<p>The heavy hands moved now in a low, undulating wave, the wave of
+advancing thousands. Anne felt Roger rigid beside her and her own heart
+was beating thickly. The force of the man was terrific. It rayed from
+his gaunt body, burned in his deep-set, brown eyes. "Bring them, I tell
+you, bring them, the poor, starving victims you'll fool with higher
+wages than you're paying the present ones; hand out the promises you're
+laughing in your sleeves to see them believe. But—they won't believe
+them long. They'll take the jobs because they have to, with shame in
+their hearts, the decent ones, and in the end they'll come to us." He
+paused, and a smile, so sad, so understanding, so full of pity lit his
+face that Anne saw Roger's hands grip the chair arms.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Hilary Wainwright seized the opening. "That's the spirit
+that's doing so much harm. We came here to-night, each to take
+advantage of the other's greater knowledge along certain lines, but we
+can get nowhere unless——"</p>
+
+<p>"Unless liars like you get out," Black Tom thundered, filling the room
+with the fury of his anger, although he scarcely raised his voice. It
+was the warning rumble of thunder, distant, rolling nearer. "You've
+held the power, until the best of you have forgotten that God Almighty
+didn't create the world for you. But he didn't and He's getting sick
+of seeing the mess you've made of it. Not much longer, not so very
+long now." In the pleasantly warmed air before him he seemed to see a
+vision, a vision that suddenly quelled his anger. He smiled a slow,
+understanding smile of love and forgiveness. "You can't do it; why do
+you try? It's not you against us; can't you see that? It's the new
+against the old, the worn out, the rotten. It's not this strike, or any
+one strike; it's men, men beating their way up out of the dark below.
+They're coming, coming." His head, bent now, seemed to hear them in
+the stillness that filled the room. "Coming slowly, with bleeding feet,
+the way your God marched on to Calvary, but—nothing will stop them.
+Nothing." And then he laughed, so genuinely amused, that the terrible
+silence shattered in little clicks of disgust. "Strike-breakers! Good
+God, a bunch of starving boobs—to hold back the Social Revolution!"</p>
+
+<p>The apricot-colored woman was the first to move. With a decisive
+gesture she snapped her gold lorgnette and motioned the bald-headed man
+to bring her cape. At his desk, Hilary Wainwright looked helplessly
+about for a moment, then rose and walked down to the group of directors.</p>
+
+<p>Katya Orloff drew on the jacket she had only partly loosed. The pretty
+girl was already pulling a grass-green tam over the chestnut curls.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Tom. Pete and Ikey are having a blowout. Let's beat it.
+There's lots of time."</p>
+
+<p>The man did not seem to hear, but he followed her. Too impatient for
+the elevator, whose driver, expecting a protracted "row," had gone into
+the pool parlor in the next basement, they ran down the stairs. Before
+they turned the first flight, Anne heard the girl laughing gayly.</p>
+
+<p>Katya stepped up to Roger with a look that Anne resented personally.
+It was the smile of an older person to a small boy, not a precocious
+annoying small boy, but the kind of boy one refers to as "an
+exceedingly bright little chap."</p>
+
+<p>"Your meeting was not a success." She spoke with a soft burr,
+impossible to reproduce, a thick, throaty tone with an odor of
+foreignness in it.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Roger answered shortly. "It wasn't."</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to be going to say something else, changed her mind and
+clumped off alone.</p>
+
+<p>The elevator man had come back to his post. In a few moments the room
+was empty of all save Roger and Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you have to wait," Anne began, when a long, pale face,
+apparently disconnected from any body, appeared at the door of Hilary's
+private office.</p>
+
+<p>"No need, Williams; they're gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Gone, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Gone. Slipped. Vamoosed," Roger added in an urge to shock the frozen
+composure of that face. "Sandwiches all wasted unless—you eat them
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>The face retreated in shocked but respectful silence. Roger laughed and
+Hilary Wainwright entered. There was a short, awkward silence, and then
+Hilary said hurriedly, as if, in the interval of his absence, he had
+accumulated unforeseen but important duties:</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind locking up, Barton?" He took some papers from his desk,
+his raincoat and umbrella, and, with a gracious smile to Anne, moved to
+the door. "See you in the morning, Roger," he threw back and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Williams had already disappeared. The untouched sandwiches Roger put
+into a box, switched off the lights and locked the doors. When he
+presented the astounded elevator boy with at least a hundred very
+delicately cut sandwiches, the boy grinned; but Roger did not smile in
+return.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's walk," Anne suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel like it? I'd like to."</p>
+
+<p>They went on in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that pretty girl with the bobbed hair that went out with Black
+Tom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Merle something. I don't know her last name. She lives with Black Tom."</p>
+
+<p>Anne stopped. "Lives with him! Do you mean—that—that they live
+together?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He has a wife somewhere who won't divorce him. He hasn't even
+seen her for years, I believe. But I don't know much about it."</p>
+
+<p>Anne shuddered. "She's so young and clean and pretty. He's all worn and
+old enough to be her father."</p>
+
+<p>Roger shrugged. "Sex is queer. You can never tell a thing about it."</p>
+
+<p>Disgust touched Anne. She had felt the man's spirit, but now his body
+obstructed her vision. She could think of nothing but those scarred
+hands, and wide, rather heavy lips caressing the clean daintiness of
+the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes me sick," she said in a tight, hard tone. "A leader of men, a
+kind of prophet of the oppressed living like that! It's sickening."</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked at her quickly. "What has his private life to do with it?
+He is a leader, a prophet."</p>
+
+<p>"It has a lot to do with it. For a moment there, he looked as if he
+were really seeing visions, clean, high, unselfish ideals. It's a pity
+he can't see himself and—and that child."</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbish, Anne. She's no child. He probably didn't kidnap her."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor will Hilary Wainwright and those men Tom O'Connell despises kidnap
+the strike-breakers," Anne went on hotly. "They will come of their own
+free wills—'the poor, deluded victims, fooled with promises.'"</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked at her helplessly. He wished he had not taken Anne's arm,
+because now, he could not very well drop it. If he did, Anne would
+think he was angry. And he was not angry.</p>
+
+<p>They walked on again in silence, until Anne asked with a pecking,
+personal intrusion into the calm he had captured again in the silence:</p>
+
+<p>"Does Katya Orloff live with some one too?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Roger answered impatiently. "Really, Anne, I don't know
+anything about the private lives of any of them."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_THIRTEEN">CHAPTER THIRTEEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The next morning Roger reached the office at half past nine but Hilary
+was already there. It was the first morning of a clear sunshine after
+weeks of rain, and Hilary, even more groomed and manicured than usual,
+looked as if he, too, had emerged into a new mood. There was a new
+crispness in his manner; business efficiency sparkled in his quick
+movements, his hasty finishing of a memorandum, the way he nodded to
+Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a moment, Barton. I'll be through in a jiffy." Usually Roger
+passed on to his own partitioned end of the room, and began on work
+arranged the night before. But now he sat down and waited for Hilary.
+Seated so, to one side and just a little behind Hilary, Roger saw him
+spiritually foreshortened in the reflection of last evening. He looked
+tight and secure, encased in his own assurances of safety as in a
+spiritual corset. In a moment he had blotted the paper and turned to
+Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he began genially, "we didn't put it over, did we? Not
+discouraged, I hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all."</p>
+
+<p>Hilary seemed balked, reconsidered what he had arranged for his next
+sentence, and said instead:</p>
+
+<p>"I rather over-reached myself in having Tom O'Connell. He's an
+uncertain quantity, a regular firebrand. And he isn't the power he
+thinks he is. When it comes to a pinch, the men will desert him.
+They're more level-headed than he gives them credit for."</p>
+
+<p>"The men forced to scab," Roger inquired, and, at the sharp look Hilary
+darted to him, added "by the pinch of hunger?"</p>
+
+<p>Hilary tapped for a moment, then made his decision with a quick frown.</p>
+
+<p>"Barton, just where do you stand on that meeting last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"With Tom O'Connell," Roger said and rose.</p>
+
+<p>Hilary rose too. They looked at each other. Roger smiled first.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it was bound to come," Hilary said, relieved.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I have thought for some time—yes—it had to come." Roger almost
+respected him for his honesty and when, with a truly regretful smile,
+Hilary held out his hand, Roger was able to return the shake without
+scorn. "We see things too differently to work well together."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I feel like a fish out of water, more so every day."</p>
+
+<p>Hilary twinkled. "Well, if you're going to jump into the sea I think
+you're headed for—I hope you won't drown," was his comment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try to swim," Roger agreed, and then followed a short talk of
+work Roger was leaving undone. "If it will help out, I'll stay till you
+get some one."</p>
+
+<p>"N-o, you needn't. I'm taking on Hawthorne from the auditing department
+as my private secretary. In fact, I'm thinking of changing the angle
+of some of the work quite materially. It's no good wasting brains and
+money on conditions that aren't ripe for them."</p>
+
+<p>"None at all," Roger agreed.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of a quarter of an hour it was over. Roger was out again in
+the warm morning sunshine. And then he thought of Anne.</p>
+
+<p>Would Anne understand? Once he would have been sure. Now he did not
+know. He was getting to know less and less how Anne would stand on
+many questions. Last night she had seemed to grasp the power and soul
+of Tom O'Connell, and then, when the one great fetish of the sane
+and respectable middle class was violated, when the conventional
+sanctity of marriage was imperiled, Anne had retreated behind the
+great bourgeois virtue of "decency," as smug and prim and spiritually
+corseted as Hilary himself.</p>
+
+<p>Roger went slowly up the long flight of steps and came on Anne, weeding
+the trailers from a border of violets. Bent so over the bed, her hands
+and arms spattered with rich black earth, her silvery blonde hair
+shining in the sun, Anne looked like a little girl. Tenderness touched
+Roger. Anne looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"You've quit," she said quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Roger nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I knew you would—last night." Anne rose and shook the loam
+from her fingers. Still her tone had told Roger nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I did wrong? Are you angry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Roger, what a silly question. If you felt it was wrong to work
+with him, of course you did right. And I would never be angry at your
+doing what you thought was right. I don't think that's quite fair, do
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>And still Roger did not know how she really felt.</p>
+
+<p>Anne picked up the basket and trowel and Roger took them from her.</p>
+
+<p>"Finished? You look as if you had just started in." Ten minutes earlier
+Roger would have been disappointed that Anne could go on with the
+ordinary day's work in face of the great event; now he resented her
+silent attitude that the course of the day had been terminated by his
+act. He walked beside her to the kitchen door, but it seemed impossible
+to go in between walls and leave the pungent earth and blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, let's celebrate. Let's go over to Tamalpais. We've never taken
+that scenic trip. We'll make a whole day of it, have lunch at the
+inn." Still, in her centuries of rest, the Sleeping Beauty lay along
+the ridge. "Look at the old girl, isn't she clear? I was always a bit
+uncertain about her nose, but there it is. Quite a feature; looks as if
+she were sniffing this gorgeous day. Well, do we sniff too?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne smiled and put her gardening things on their shelf by the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't, dear, not to-day. Mamma's been waiting for me to come up and
+finish that house dress. To-day's the best for her. Pretty soon I won't
+have a thing I can wear."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you wouldn't do so much sewing, Anne. Can't you buy baby
+things and—and maternity clothes? I'd a lot rather you did or would
+hire somebody, than refuse to go on picnics with me," he ended with a
+pleading, boyish look, that did not influence Anne in the least. It
+seemed hardly the time to suggest buying clothes or hiring help.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But it's so much cheaper. I don't mind sewing."</p>
+
+<p>Roger felt his pleasure in the picnic die. "All right, honey, run along
+if you really want to. But let's go to somewhere for dinner to-night. I
+feel spaghetti-ish. How's Ramillotti's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's wait and see how we feel then," Anne parried. "A celebration
+that's all cut and dried beforehand isn't much of a celebration, is
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>And then, because Anne did look so pretty in her big gardening apron
+standing in the full sunshine, Roger picked her up and kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't sew too hard and get all tired out. I think I'll go down to the
+library for a while. There's a lot of reading I've been wanting to do
+for a long time. I'll get a chance now."</p>
+
+<p>Until Anne reached Hilda's front door, she wondered what she would do
+if her mother were out. She could scarcely sit on the front steps and
+she would not go back. But she was just in time. Hilda was half way
+downstairs when Anne rang.</p>
+
+<p>"Of all people! I just knew something nice was going to happen to-day."
+Hilda trilled with a gay laugh, for Anne rarely came in the morning,
+and Hilda adored all-day visits.</p>
+
+<p>"You were going out, mamma."</p>
+
+<p>"Not any place I had to. I just couldn't stay in alone to-day." They
+went upstairs hand in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought, perhaps, we might finish that gingham. The idea of it's
+hanging round half done has gotten on my nerves."</p>
+
+<p>"Never felt more like sewing. A nice long day ahead always seems to
+have so much more time in it than the same number of hours chopped up
+during the week. You ought to be glad Roger doesn't come home to lunch,
+Anne. When I was working at Belle's baby clothes it seemed to me as
+soon as I got started it was time to stop and fix lunch. I'll just put
+these dishes out of the way and we'll get right at it."</p>
+
+<p>She took off her things, carried the unwashed breakfast dishes into the
+pantry and closed the door on them. The broken egg-shell and scraps of
+toast on the stove she swept into the coal-scuttle, the crumbs from
+the oilcloth-covered breakfast table followed, and the scuttle was
+deposited on the back porch. While she rolled the sewing-machine in
+from the hall, Anne swept the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"This is nice." Hilda's eyes danced; even the gray curls on her neck
+seemed to bob merrily. "Now, if you'll just slip off your dress, I'll
+fit it."</p>
+
+<p>When it was pinned to the right length, Hilda leaned back on her heels
+and admired.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a fine pattern. Wonderful how they get things regulated now—no
+riding up in front as you get bigger. Why, you won't scarcely show in
+that at all, right up to the end."</p>
+
+<p>Anne felt the same touch of distaste she always did when her mother
+referred to her physical condition. There was something in Hilda's
+manner that stripped the miracle to its physiological basis, and,
+although she tried not to, Anne always felt naked before it. She had
+endured a really difficult half-hour when she had first told Hilda of
+Roger Mitchell Barton.</p>
+
+<p>"It's pretty. What's more important, it will keep clean a long time
+without washing."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda laughed. "Getting practical at last. Nothing like a baby for
+doing that. Do you remember the arguments we used to have when you were
+fourteen, about that black sateen petticoat? You always insisted that
+it must be just as dirty as if it were white, and wanted to send it to
+the laundry every week?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne nodded. How she had loathed dark clothes supposed not to show the
+dirt! "I must have been a nasty child, always fussing about something."</p>
+
+<p>"You weren't at all. But you were pretty finicky and highfalutin. I
+never did know what was going to send you off. And how you loved pretty
+things! Even as a tiny baby, I always felt you enjoyed having your best
+things on. You used to feel one dress, rub your little hands up and
+down it softly—it was really a lovely cambric; papa's boss's wife sent
+it; her baby had outgrown it—and goo and smile. I suppose you would
+have a fit to see his Highness dressed in any one else's cast-offs, but
+I was glad to get it. How far along's the layette?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most of the under-things are done, not quite all. I haven't begun on
+dresses."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were going to buy those, the best ones?"</p>
+
+<p>"No—I don't—think I will. They'll be cheaper to make."</p>
+
+<p>"But they're such close sewing and you don't like that kind of work,
+tucks and hemstitching. Don't be a penny-wise and a pound-foolish and
+get all frazzled out, Anne."</p>
+
+<p>"No—at least—I won't be a pound-foolish. Roger's left Mr. Wainwright."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Hilda gasped. "Oh, Anne, when did it happen?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne tried to laugh. "This morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think you'd better go right straight home, dear?" she
+whispered as if Anne had communicated Roger's sudden death.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? There's nothing to do."</p>
+
+<p>"N-o. I don't suppose there is. But—what happened, with the baby and
+everything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing special. They don't agree. It's been coming on for some
+months. Roger doesn't feel that Mr. Wainwright is sincere and he can't
+work with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must say——"</p>
+
+<p>"And I wouldn't have him stay a minute when he feels like that."</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear, I don't suppose you would," Hilda hastily conciliated Anne's
+"condition." "But it does seem too bad that his conscience got worked
+up just at this time. A few months more——"</p>
+
+<p>"This is the best possible time," Anne said decidedly. "There's no
+extra expense now."</p>
+
+<p>"No. But when a woman's carrying, she likes to feel a good safe road
+ahead. It's nature, I suppose, like birds building nests and all that.
+If papa had suddenly given up his job when I was in your condition,
+like as not you would have been an idiot. I should have worried myself
+sick. But you always were a cool little customer."</p>
+
+<p>Anne forced a smile and slipped the gingham over her head.</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll stitch the skirt seams, mamma, I'll baste this collar.
+That's the only tricky part in the whole thing. Perhaps we can finish
+it to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"We certainly can. We'll stay right with it till it's done."</p>
+
+<p>And they did, stopping only for a cup of tea and some very stale cake,
+about one o'clock. At three the dress was finished.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you go lie down and take a nap and when you wake phone Roger
+to come up for dinner. He hasn't been round for ages, not since
+Christmas." Having become involved in the exact date, Hilda slipped
+over it quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"We will some other time, moms, but I can't to-night."</p>
+
+<p>The long day of sewing and chatting, and constant steering away from
+the subject of Roger, had exhausted Anne and she wanted her own quiet
+home, which, even if its peace were now disturbed, held its past
+security, and a calm, quiet cleanliness that her mother's never had.
+"I've got all the things in for a fussy kind of supper and they'd
+spoil."</p>
+
+<p>"Then of course you can't." Death itself could not have been a greater
+deterrent. "What-all are you going to have?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a fussy pudding, and mayonnaise and things."</p>
+
+<p>Anne was putting on her things in the bedroom and Hilda stood watching,
+a little envious of Anne's calmness. Mayonnaise and fussy pudding!
+Perhaps, if she had dared, years ago——</p>
+
+<p>"You certainly have learned to be some cook, Anne."</p>
+
+<p>"I like to try new dishes." Her things on, Anne moved from the room and
+when she had passed Hilda, said, "but it's the so-called fussy things
+that are easiest. Whipped cream and eggs make a great show, but any
+fool can beat them up. Lots of things are harder. I don't believe I
+could make a decent pot-roast, if I tried. I don't even know what part
+of the animal to buy."</p>
+
+<p>"There are different parts. Cross-rib's fine, but chuck's cheapest, and
+I like it just as well."</p>
+
+<p>"And it takes hours and hours, doesn't it?" Anne was still moving
+toward the stair-head, her back to Hilda.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it doesn't. Lots of people think it does and they make those dry,
+leathery roasts. A piece big enough for us never took more than a
+couple of hours, going slow, with plenty of suet."</p>
+
+<p>"Chuck, going slow, two hours, plenty of suet," Anne entrenched it in
+her memory, and then Hilda was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"You never used to like it, but I'm sure I don't know why. I don't
+think there's any gravy like the gravy of a good pot-roast. And there's
+always plenty of it."</p>
+
+<p>As usual, she walked down the stairs with Anne and kissed her again at
+the front door.</p>
+
+<p>Roger was not in when Anne reached home. She lit the gas-range and put
+the pot-roast on before taking off her things. When it was simmering
+at the right rate, she shut the kitchen door to keep the odor from the
+living-room, changed into a kimono, and lay down on the living-room
+couch.</p>
+
+<p>It was dusk, with the first faint stars winking uncertainly in the
+deepening twilight, when Roger came running up the stairs. He was out
+of breath, cool-skinned and glowing. He came straight to the couch and
+kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Princess, which is it, Pietro's or the Pheasant? I felt
+spaghetti-ish this morning but it's gradually worked round to planked
+steak."</p>
+
+<p>Anne sat up and said gayly, "It's neither. It's pot-roast, and it'll be
+ready about six."</p>
+
+<p>Roger stared, the sparkle in his eyes receding slowly. Still Anne
+smiled gayly at him. "It's the first one I've made and it's going to be
+a dandy."</p>
+
+<p>But Roger took her hands in his, and Anne's gayety died. They looked at
+each other, and then Roger said:</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, please, never do a thing like this again. Don't you trust me,
+dear? We believe in the same things, don't we? We're not afraid of
+anything, are we, honey?"</p>
+
+<p>Something in Anne urged her to stand her ground. Something else made
+her want to cry and creep close to Roger and be held safe from her
+own fears and "common-sense." She was very tired. Her lips trembled.
+Roger drew her quickly into his arms. They clung so for a moment, as
+if holding fiercely against a force reaching toward them. Then Roger
+turned Anne's face to his.</p>
+
+<p>"Princess, let's throw that damned pot-roast out."</p>
+
+<p>Anne smiled faintly. "That would be silly. It's really an awfully good
+pot-roast. There, you can smell it. It must be going a little too fast."</p>
+
+<p>But Roger did not smile. "I won't eat it. It smells—like death."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really feel like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do, Anne, really."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'll go and have planked steak."</p>
+
+<p>In the sweetness of reconciliation, Roger forgot to throw out the
+pot-roast. They had a gay and expensive dinner at the Pheasant and went
+to the theater afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>But, for the rest of the week, Roger ate savoury ragouts, and meat
+pies which taxed Anne's ingenuity to the utmost, especially when the
+pot-roast had dwindled to a dry, outer rim.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_FOURTEEN">CHAPTER FOURTEEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>There were times in the next month when Roger seriously considered
+going back into the law. He even went so far as looking up Walter
+Marsh, an old college chum with whom he had rather grown out of touch,
+now a very successful corporation lawyer. But at Marsh's hints that
+there was an opening with him if Roger cared to consider it, Roger
+always hurried away from further discussion. Nor did he tell Anne of
+these visits.</p>
+
+<p>Anne never referred to his leaving Wainwright, nor did she ever again
+serve pot-roast. Apparently their method of life was unchanged. Roger
+could not put his finger on any one incident, recall a single allusion
+of Anne's, but he now felt encased in an atmosphere of watching, of
+tight guardedness, and of economical maneuverings. Outwardly Anne
+seemed as cheerful as ever, but Roger could feel unexpressed criticism
+moving shadow-like about him, and his nerves tightened. He often grew
+irritable and then desperately contrite. Irritation at this time
+was brutal, but Roger could not shake off the feeling of breathing
+imperceptible particles of objection. Sometimes he started to talk
+out their situation frankly, but it always ended in a fog. He felt as
+if he were beating with exaggerated violence in a cloud of dust. The
+air was full of minute, subtle differences, sudden closings of Anne's
+lips, sentences caught and deftly turned from their first intention;
+and of Anne's patience. This patience was the hardest to stand without
+reference.</p>
+
+<p>Again and again Roger tried to explain this growing tensity between
+them by Anne's nervous condition. But Anne had never felt better in her
+life. Always pretty in a cool, silvery way, there were moments now when
+Anne seemed to send from within a living, golden flame. Often, in the
+evenings, when Anne sat, her head bent above the small, white sewing in
+her lap, Roger trembled, awed and a little frightened before the marvel
+of this thing that was happening to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>It was after a sudden, stabbing vision of Anne like this, that Roger
+went to Walter Marsh's office for the second time in one week.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello." Walter Marsh put away some important work to greet Roger.
+"Well, what's the decision?"</p>
+
+<p>Up to the very door, Roger had intended to accept the good opening
+Marsh had definitely offered him at the last visit, but, now, as he
+looked about the beautifully furnished office, the hard processes of
+the law softened by the tinted walls, the thick rugs, the great bunch
+of chrysanthemums in the old-blue, China vase, he sparred for time.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't made one yet."</p>
+
+<p>Marsh frowned. His genuine admiration for Roger's ability was scarcely
+proof against a certain quality in Roger that he had always felt might,
+and now feared had already, swamped Roger's sense of proportion. As
+he put it to his wife, Helen: "Roger's got that dog-goned idealist
+sophistry in his bean, that nothing can be right or just or fine—if
+you make a decent living at it. And the joke of it, or the tragedy for
+men like Roger, is that it's only outsiders like him who feel that way.
+You can't get a real radical to do a thing without paying him up to the
+hilt. I'll wager that Labor god, O'Connell himself, has a pile salted
+down safely." For, like all financially successful men, Walter Marsh
+had a fixed belief that no able, sane person worked long for an ideal
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's up to you," he said shortly.</p>
+
+<p>For, although he was willing to talk the matter over with Roger for the
+rest of the afternoon if it would lead anywhere, he was not willing to
+waste more time even on Roger, who, after seven days' consideration
+of a decidedly advantageous opening, still announced that he had
+reached no decision. He picked up his pen, not quite indicating the
+interview over, but very clearly expressing his feeling toward Roger.
+Years after, Roger used to wonder what he would have done, if Walter
+Marsh had not picked up his pen in just that way, at just that moment.
+He looked quietly at Marsh, only a few years older than himself, but
+already with the fine lines of nervous concentration about his eyes,
+blue eyes glazed in assurance of their owner's mental processes; the
+eyes of a very successful man who realizes the uselessness of fretting
+his conscience over conditions beyond his personal power to change.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't think I'll take you up," Roger went on as if no interval
+had intervened. "I've grown too far away from the law. I can't go back."</p>
+
+<p>"Or ahead," Walter almost snapped in his honest disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not." For a moment Roger felt very much alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't change you and I won't try. I hope you'll make a go of
+anything you settle to." Unconsciously Marsh intimated his doubt of
+Roger's ever settling to anything worth while.</p>
+
+<p>Roger smiled, his momentary sadness dissolved in Marsh's solicitude.
+Walter Marsh might have been an elderly uncle, washing his hands of a
+wild nephew.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, just the same, old chap. Your offer was certainly generous."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment the other felt inclined to tell him that it would remain
+open, changed his mind, and took Roger's out-stretched hand.</p>
+
+<p>"When you get settled, let me know. And come over to dinner some night,
+you and Anne. Helen's always asking me why I don't make you."</p>
+
+<p>"We will."</p>
+
+<p>Roger left the office, glad that he had not told Anne where he was
+going.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was ready when he reached home and they sat down at the daintily
+set table on the porch. Now that spring was come they had gone back
+to the pleasant custom. To-night, in his relief at having put the
+possibility of Walter Marsh behind him, Roger was gayer than he had
+been for weeks. Anne noticed and wondered and tried to edge the talk
+around to discovery, and finally, to Roger's astonishment, mentioned
+Marsh.</p>
+
+<p>"I see Walter Marsh's been engaged for that big Southern Pacific case."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he's getting ahead wonderfully. He'll end way up yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think he's honest?" Anne asked after a moment filled with
+pouring the black coffee into the small cups.</p>
+
+<p>"Y-e-s, in a way. Personally, he's as straight as a die. But he's
+divided his life into sections, private and public. He'll do as
+corporation lawyer for the Southern Pacific what he would never dream
+of doing for himself."</p>
+
+<p>Anne drank her coffee slowly. "I suppose he compromises by being 'a
+mild progressive' and making things better 'along the line they are.'"</p>
+
+<p>Roger leaned back in his chair and laughed until Anne joined him.</p>
+
+<p>"Princess, you'd make a first class lawyer yourself. Walter calls
+himself a liberal already."</p>
+
+<p>"And you're—a Socialist, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger stopped laughing. "I suppose I am. Are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I—don't know. I don't know enough about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know much myself, not the technical details. But it seems to
+me it's the only thing that isn't trying to patch a rotten piece of
+cloth. It wants to weave a new one, from what I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Some job," Anne said and lit the single cigarette she ever smoked, the
+after-dinner cigarette that Roger had taught her to take soon after
+their marriage, when they had done all things together.</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly is. But a worth-while one. Anne, suppose we frankly join
+some radical group and begin weaving, too."</p>
+
+<p>Anne puffed, flicked the ash into the tiny lacquer tray, and said with
+more calmness than she felt:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I will, Roger. Not till I know more about it. I don't
+believe in jumping in and out of things."</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked away. He felt that he had again been caught in the cloud
+of dust. Anne smoked her cigarette and lit a second. Only by this
+extraordinary act could she bring herself to the point she had decided
+upon that afternoon. When it was smoked quite through, she said calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you go and see Tom O'Connell?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" he echoed stupidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Your sympathies are with him."</p>
+
+<p>Now that Anne had worded it, Roger recognized the longing he had been
+stifling for weeks. To do something he believed in with his whole soul.
+His eyes softened and coming quickly about the table he knelt beside
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Princess," he whispered, "you're the most wonderful thing in the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>Anne looked down into Roger's eyes and wondered. Why did he think it
+wonderful for her to suggest this thing that she had felt in him for
+weeks? Had he been waiting for her to do so? Why? What would he have
+done if she had not?</p>
+
+<p>Before her quiet, searching look, Roger's eyes fell.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, honey," he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Roger had mistrusted. His plea for forgiveness proved it. Something
+deep in Anne hardened, but she patted his cheek and said cheerfully:</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you look him up to-night? It's early yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to get rid of me?" Roger teased with a look in his eyes
+that had not been there for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>"No—of course I don't," Anne said, and he kissed her.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_FIFTEEN">CHAPTER FIFTEEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The next day Roger went to Tom O'Connell. Through a cloud of tobacco
+smoke, Roger saw him at the end of the dusty loft, sprawled on the edge
+of a table behind a low railing and listening to two short, heavy men
+talking at once. Some maps and statistical charts hung from the rough,
+wooden walls; a magazine-stand stood close to the door, piled with
+papers and pamphlets, red-bound, or with glaring red splotches in their
+cover designs. Close to the bench on which Roger waited some one was
+pounding a typewriter behind a partition. The east end of the loft was
+enclosed as a separate office and from this enclosure came the voices
+of men and women talking loudly. The whole room vibrated to the feel of
+a rushing force, of many violent plans being made and driven through to
+execution in an incredibly short time. No restraint here, no polish,
+no modulation. Right or wrong, these people believed in themselves.
+Society was a wall through which, by brute force, they would drive
+the spike of their ideal. Roger's excitement grew. He felt like the
+unfortunate son of the leading citizen in a small town, watching a
+magnificent back-alley fight by "de gang."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the typewriter beside him stopped, and Katya Orloff peered
+over the top of the partition. If she was surprised she did not show it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in. Tom will be through in a minute." She disappeared and Roger
+went round to the gate she opened. Katya's desk was piled with papers,
+carbons, and cigarette ashes. Teetering on one edge, the dregs of a
+cup of black coffee, into which Katya had dropped the crust of a ham
+sandwich, threatened to destroy a pile of clean copy, but didn't.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down." Katya motioned to an upturned apple box and Roger sat down.
+Then, for the first time, Katya smiled. A spark lit in the little brown
+eyes, but the heavy mouth remained unmoved. It was as if her power
+to smile was slowly dying. The eyes alone refused to petrify in the
+devastating seriousness of Katya's purpose. Roger smiled back.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would come. I expected you sooner."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you?" Roger withdrew his smile, resentful of her assurance. He
+felt that Katya caught his feeling, but she did not apologize. Instead
+she offered him one of her vile cigarettes. Roger refused.</p>
+
+<p>"They are beastly, but I can't smoke anything else any more." She
+inhaled and the cigarette was gone in a few deep breaths. "But I'm
+really glad you didn't come any sooner. It means you've thought it
+out carefully. We're overloaded now with enthusiasm, twigs not strong
+enough to keep the pot boiling. Hear them crackling?" Her frowsy black
+head jerked toward the voices of the two men talking to Tom. "Poor Tom.
+He'll have to pour water on them and then—two more vanity-wounded
+enemies."</p>
+
+<p>Katya's voice, husky from too much loud speech-making and the vile
+cigarettes, had unexpected soft spots, rest places, quiet corners of
+pity in the roar of her faith. Roger felt that the woman might have
+many of these hidden places, little corners of pity and gentleness, and
+forgot his resentment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll promise not to crackle."</p>
+
+<p>"How old are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-nine. Almost thirty."</p>
+
+<p>"You're married, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Katya lit another cigarette. "Got any ideas?"</p>
+
+<p>"No." Roger began to feel like a small boy again.</p>
+
+<p>"That's good. You're too inexperienced to have any worth while; too
+obstinate to put up with having any rooted out. What do you know about
+the movement, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>"Practically nothing," Roger snapped. After all, Katya had not invented
+her Social Revolution. It was not her personal property.</p>
+
+<p>"'Virgin Soil,'" Katya grinned. "Ever read it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not much."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"It didn't get me."</p>
+
+<p>"Russian literature is a fad with most Americans, only they won't own
+it. But some day you will like it."</p>
+
+<p>She might as well have said: "Some day you will develop to the point of
+understanding Russian literature."</p>
+
+<p>For the present, however, she had finished with him. She rose now above
+the fence and gave a long, clear whistle. Instantly the two men stopped
+talking.</p>
+
+<p>"No more time to-day, boys." Black Tom answered the whistle with two
+short notes and Katya opened the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, you're not going to let the thing hang in mid-air, are you?"
+one of the men demanded belligerently. "You think you've got the whole
+thing in your own pocket. Well, you haven't. The rest of us——"</p>
+
+<p>"Get out," Tom thundered. "Neither of you has a suggestion worth
+listening to. I tell you we're not ready yet. You're like a lot of
+kids with firecrackers, can't wait till the Fourth to make your little
+splutter. I'm not going to fight just for the sake of fighting."</p>
+
+<p>"You tin Czar——"</p>
+
+<p>"Get out."</p>
+
+<p>The men banged out of the loft and Katya led Roger over to Black Tom.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger Barton."</p>
+
+<p>The big man stared at him, still concerned with the others, until Katya
+laid a hand on his arm and drew him back to the present.</p>
+
+<p>"Hilary Wainwright's secretary. Sent out those invitations." They
+smiled at each other, and Roger bristled. The courtesy of these people
+was an extraordinary thing. "He's left and wants to talk to you." Like
+a nurse delivering her charge, Katya clumped away.</p>
+
+<p>Black Tom glanced at the desk clock, frowned and said shortly:</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that means you want to look us over with a view to coming
+in?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether I do or not," Roger flung at him.</p>
+
+<p>Black Tom seemed to see him for the first time. He smiled and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, but we get pretty gruff in this thing. So you've
+left Wainwright? Consequential ass. What do you want to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anything that will stop the output of more—consequential asses."</p>
+
+<p>Black Tom leaned back in his chair and laughed, a laugh so deep and
+eternally young, that Roger knew the man could never seriously annoy
+him again.</p>
+
+<p>"You've come to the right place. That's our specialty," and added, "any
+party affiliations?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger shook his head. "Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right. Don't—till you're ready. When your faith needs to
+sign itself to some register, do it. Right Wing, Left Wing Socialist,
+Syndicalist, Communist, I. W. W., they're all headed right and there's
+something the matter with them all. It doesn't matter really; start
+a new party if you like. Names, names," he added, a little wearily,
+"all names for the same thing—the new world that's struggling to be
+born. Science, art, religion, politics, we're all fighting for the same
+end—to root out the dead old forms, give new growths a chance. We're
+all beating in our different ways toward the same thing—Understanding,
+Beauty, Unity. One fits in where he can." He looked across the dirty
+loft to a group of men waiting for him on the bench where Roger had
+sat a few moments before. "This is mine. I had no special training,
+nothing but physical strength and longing." His gaze came back to his
+own hands, broken and sparsely covered at the wrists and knuckles with
+stiff black hair. "I worked in a Pennsylvania coal mine when I was
+twelve. I read at night. When I was nineteen I went for a while to
+night-school with kids thirteen and fourteen. I never had three square
+meals a day until I was twenty-three. I lived in mines and shops and
+libraries."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and it seemed to Roger that he had gone away, back down the
+years, alone. In those crowded years, herded among men, he had learned
+to slip away, leave his gaunt, over-worked body to the crowd. Privacy
+was a spiritual possession, free to his will.</p>
+
+<p>He jerked himself back with a motion of his bowed shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you had any special training along any line?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm a lawyer."</p>
+
+<p>"Great. We need——"</p>
+
+<p>"But I'd rather not practice, anyhow not plead in court for a while. I
+don't feel that I understand enough about the thing as a whole. I want
+to soak in it, feel myself honestly a part before I undertake to defend
+men. Is that an out-of-the-way request?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's an out-of-the-ordinary request. I wish more men felt as you do.
+There wouldn't be so many misunderstandings and shiftings around and
+party splits. I guess we can fit you in somewhere. How little can you
+work for?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger did not answer instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Married?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'd better talk it over with your wife."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not necessary. She—she's with me in this."</p>
+
+<p>"We need lawyers, but we can't pay what the meanest scrub can't better
+in a very few years. What have you been getting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty a week."</p>
+
+<p>"About ten beyond our possible limit—with expenses when you
+travel—but not fancy ones. You can take outside cases on the side—if
+you get them once you're known as one of us. That will have nothing to
+do with us."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want any 'cases on the side,' not for the present anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>Black Tom smiled. "When do you want to begin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now."</p>
+
+<p>Black Tom hesitated. Roger felt his first resentment returning. He
+leaned forward.</p>
+
+<p>"This thing doesn't belong to any group," he began. "We all happen to
+be at the same point at the same time. I know what I'm doing. I——"</p>
+
+<p>Black Tom laid a hand on his knee. "Boy, you'll have to excuse a lot of
+manner when you're one of us. Our material's men and we get to handle
+them sometimes as if they were—pig iron." He whistled and Katya popped
+above the fence. "Bring me the Anderson case."</p>
+
+<p>When Katya brought it he said briefly, "Barton's going to work with us."</p>
+
+<p>Roger noticed that he did not say Comrade Barton and wondered whether
+Black Tom did not quite trust him yet. But he found later that Black
+Tom tagged no man with artificial distinction, except in addressing a
+meeting whose sympathy he was not quite sure of. In a few moments he
+had explained the case to Roger, and turned him back to Katya.</p>
+
+<p>"You can work here if you like. It's noisy at times, but we can fix
+you up with a kind of office down in the corner. Or you can work
+elsewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Here. I don't mind noise."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Jim to fix up the office Philips used to have," he ordered Katya,
+took his hat, and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go and have lunch," Katya suggested. "Tom's probably forgotten a
+lot of details you ought to know."</p>
+
+<p>But Anne was expecting him and anxious to hear. "Suppose you come home
+and have lunch with us?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger thought that Katya smiled, but was not quite sure. One never was
+sure whether Katya smiled unless her eyes actually twinkled, her face
+was so swarthy and still.</p>
+
+<p>On the way home Roger listened with interest to Katya's history of the
+Anderson case, but, as they came to the bottom of the long flight, he
+wished he could run ahead and prepare Anne. He led and Katya followed,
+still talking. At the door they met Anne. For a moment she looked
+disturbed and then greeted Katya with such ease that Roger felt all
+responsibility for the lunch drop from him. While she skilfully reset
+the table and twisted the menu to include three instead of two, Katya
+talked on.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did she stop when Anne summoned them, and only for short periods
+during lunch. From the Anderson case and the Labor Movement, she
+drifted to Russia, to her native village, to the Jewish pogroms, her
+struggles for an education, her imprisonment under the Czarist system,
+her escape and flight from Siberia through Sweden to Finland and
+the United States; her gradual migration westward, from an eastside
+tenement in New York, through New Jersey, to Chicago, to San Francisco.
+She talked vehemently but without bitterness. In her long fight for an
+idea, she had become impersonal.</p>
+
+<p>She ate almost greedily, but neither Anne nor Roger felt that she knew
+what she ate. She smoked cigarette after cigarette, lighting one from
+the other, and drank cup after cup of black coffee without noticing
+that Anne refilled her cup. Anne was considering making more coffee,
+when at last Katya broke off.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a perfect hostess, Mrs. Barton. I don't believe you've said a
+word."</p>
+
+<p>Anne flushed. Evidently this woman had not expected her interest.</p>
+
+<p>"It's fascinating," she said, with just a touch of primness that
+brought an odd look to Katya's eyes. Roger felt uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"We've never had a chance before to get it first-hand," he said
+quietly, and saw Katya's eyes twinkle. She rose and, to Roger's
+embarrassment, ran her hand over his thick, wavy hair.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a nice boy."</p>
+
+<p>She put on her things, waited a moment for Roger to join her, but when
+he made no motion, shook hands with both and went clumsily down the
+stairs without looking back.</p>
+
+<p>"Almost as conceited as Hilary Wainwright, in her own way, isn't she?"
+Anne said demurely.</p>
+
+<p>Roger laughed. "You're a wiz. I hope you never take a dislike to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Not much of a wiz to get that slam about a perfect hostess. As if one
+couldn't believe in Man and fruit salad at the same time."</p>
+
+<p>Roger put his arm about her. "We can, but then, you know, we are
+exceptional people."</p>
+
+<p>"Because, really, I should loathe beet soup and pickled fish and those
+Russian foods."</p>
+
+<p>"Honey and violet stems for ours." Roger bent to kiss her and Anne ran
+her fingers through his hair, stopped abruptly and said:</p>
+
+<p>"She's really a terribly lonely soul, for all her world interests."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder. She didn't mention any relatives, after her
+childhood, did she?"</p>
+
+<p>When they came again into the house Roger picked up the Anderson case
+and went over to the couch. Anne began clearing the table. As she
+gathered up the doilies, she asked carelessly:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the salary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forty. And expenses," Roger answered, making notes on the margin of
+a sheet. "Outside cases if I want to. But I shall not take any for a
+while—anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>Anne went into the kitchen without comment.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_SIXTEEN">CHAPTER SIXTEEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Through the next three months Anne thought more about money than she
+had ever thought in her life before. During the Wainwright days she
+had often been able to save ten dollars a week, but now that this sum
+was abstracted before it reached her, the remainder refused to include
+all that it had included then. Their small bank balance Anne refused
+to count an asset. She never mentioned it and was not sure that Roger
+remembered they had it. When he suggested some extravagance, a week-end
+trip, or absurdly expensive theater seats, treats that in the past had
+been supposed to be made possible by this balance—but which, in the
+end, Anne had always managed without touching—she now escaped on the
+plea of fatigue. Nevertheless, when Roger stopped suggesting them, Anne
+was hurt and angry.</p>
+
+<p>Each week she put aside something for little Roger's need. And if
+gradually his clothes began to be finer, his bassinet more elaborate,
+his weighing scales unnecessarily expensive, she did not allow herself
+to word the reason. Only when Roger donated with extra liberality to
+some strike benefit or defense fund did Anne deliberately go out and
+buy something little Roger could very well have done without.</p>
+
+<p>In their daily intercourse there was now more of the old comradeship
+than there had been for months, but often, her light housework
+finished, Anne sat in a shady corner of the garden, spicy and sweet
+again in the hot spring sun, and wondered whence had come this feeling
+of silently and strongly holding out against something that was always
+in the background of her mind. Once she had felt this something to be
+in Roger himself, a kind of accidental quality that circumstances might
+or might not develop. But now she felt it as something beyond Roger,
+something permanent functioning through him. Between herself and Roger
+there was some essential difference. Their attitude toward the coming
+of Rogie, to Black Tom O'Connell and Merle, to the futile efforts of
+Hilary Wainwright, even their union against the duplicity of John
+Lowell, had held this germ of difference. Hour after hour Anne pried
+into her own motives for action and Roger's, trying to find the source
+of this difference, but when, in an entirely fictitious future, she
+sometimes glimpsed its possible scope, she fled back to the concrete
+present and Rogie.</p>
+
+<p>It was always after one of these exhausting exhumations of motive and
+impulse that Anne gripped more firmly the old habit of discussion with
+Roger; that they went to one of the many protest meetings which, now
+that Anne refused concerts and theaters, had come to be Roger's chief
+interest outside the direct round of his work; or that Anne called for
+Roger at the loft, and, while she waited, tried to feel a little of the
+enthusiasm mounting sometimes almost to fever heat in him.</p>
+
+<p>But the force and driving power that Roger felt as an almost concrete
+thing never included Anne. She could never lose herself in it, nor be
+carried away on its flood. It was too loud, too insistent, too hot,
+like hissing black steam, screaming through a narrow vent.</p>
+
+<p>It did not frighten, but deadened something within, so that Anne,
+waiting quietly on the bench where Roger had first waited for Black
+Tom, felt her effort to believe in the ultimate aim of all this
+striving shrink and grow cold within her. To hear the violent click of
+Katya's typewriter depressed her. To see Black Tom suddenly rise, and,
+with the same sweeping gesture with which he had opened before her the
+advance of strike-breakers, throw clear to Roger some new plan, made
+Anne feel that the man's broken and unkempt hands had actually drawn
+her with them. Nor could she ever look at him without thinking of Merle.</p>
+
+<p>Like a brilliant bird, Merle flitted about the dusty place, getting in
+every one's way, interrupting at her own whim, indifferent to their
+amused tolerance or irritation. Birdlike, she perched on the gate of
+Katya's den and chirped through Katya's clicking, or disturbed Roger
+with her flutey recital of a movie she had taken the afternoon off to
+enjoy. Only Black Tom's absorption did she respect, but sometimes,
+when she came and chattered to Anne, Anne saw her watching him with a
+wistful longing that was not in the least birdlike or gay.</p>
+
+<p>Anne grew gradually to feel a protecting tenderness for Merle, quite
+distinct from her realization of the girl's shallow mind and different
+moral standards. It had a little of the same personal tenderness she
+felt for Hilda's confused thinking and perpetual gayety. When Merle
+referred to some mass meeting of protest that had fired the enthusiasm
+of the others to fever heat as "a beastly bore," and Roger or Katya
+demanded to know why she went, Anne felt that she understood.</p>
+
+<p>For neither could Anne enter the spirit of these meetings. The hatred
+of the men and women, massed to demand justice for this and that, swept
+on high above Merle's head, but it weighted Anne and stuck to her like
+an unclean substance. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of bodies smelling
+of sweat and dust and the day's toil in factory and machine shop,
+nauseated her and stifled the purpose of their rebellion. Alone, high
+in the clean sweetness of her own home, Anne could rebel against the
+blockade of Russia, the forced toil of little children, the throttling
+of free speech and liberty. But the air, thick with human breath, the
+shrill voices of boys and girls selling revolutionary pamphlets, the
+mass weight of their hatred, woke in her a rebellion against the stark
+ugliness of its expression that took all Anne's control not to express
+by rising and leaving the hall. When, inflamed by what she came to
+feel, as the weeks passed, was deliberate manipulation of this human
+capacity to hate, protest broke in that mounting cry of rage, that
+long-drawn, rising bellow of hatred, that inhuman baying with which
+they greeted the name of some oppressor, Anne shivered with actual
+cold. "B-o-o-o," it rose and fell and rose again like an icy blast,
+freezing Anne's capacity to share their anger.</p>
+
+<p>Like bells, certain words and names rang out in signal—war-lords, wage
+slave, master class. Through the months with Hilary Wainwright Anne had
+heard them often and used them herself glibly. Now she felt that she
+would never again be able to utter them. As Hilda stripped the facts of
+birth and love to their biological skeletons, so these men and women
+stripped the words of their conventional acceptance, their usefulness
+as tags of common understanding, and released raging genii to perform
+their tasks. After such a meeting the surface of her body was covered
+with a clammy dampness.</p>
+
+<p>But no torrent of unleashed hatred chilled Roger or made him cold and
+weak. Coming, at the end of May, from the largest meeting they had
+attended, Anne felt Roger throbbing with enthusiasm, even after they
+had walked blocks under the peaceful stars.</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't Tom great?" he demanded for the third time, unconscious that
+Anne had not answered. "When he talks as he did to-night he makes me
+think of Christ driving the money changers from the temple."</p>
+
+<p>"The Bible would never have remained literature if Christ had ranted
+like that."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't ranting, Anne. He sees things like that, literally sees the
+workers slaves, just as bound and owned by capitalistic pressure as
+ever a black African savage was owned by a Southern cotton planter. He
+sees the 'masters' in their great Wall Street offices just as clearly
+as any master with the legal right to beat his slave." Roger tried to
+speak patiently, but sometimes the shadings of Anne's sensitiveness
+rasped him as much as this "ranting" rasped Anne. Was it really her
+dislike of Black Tom, what she insisted on calling the "coarseness of
+his moral fiber," that made her blind to the man's sincerity? Could
+not, or would not, Anne see above and beyond this single breach of the
+world's standard? Roger did not know. And, like Anne, fleeing before
+the definite revelation of the difference between herself and Roger,
+Roger, too, hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause and then Roger said:</p>
+
+<p>"That was the biggest collection I've ever seen taken up at a meeting.
+Carson certainly can get the cash."</p>
+
+<p>Anne saw, as if he had been there in the night before her, the thin,
+bowed shoulders of Robert Carson butted out over the edge of the
+platform in the final gesture he always took before defying the
+audience not to "give and give their all." His lank, black hair fell in
+a long side lock across his high forehead, his black eyes burned in his
+pale, thin face. She shivered.</p>
+
+<p>"It's terrible to use hate like that, or pain, or any feeling, fan it
+to that white heat and then mint money from it."</p>
+
+<p>Roger bit his lip. "It isn't hate or any pain. It's not a destroying
+force. It's the demand for universal justice and the right to Beauty
+that centuries of oppression have not been able to kill. It's love,
+Anne, not hate."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe," Anne said drearily, with such an unexpected cessation of
+personal interest that Roger turned to her quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"You're tired, Anne. You ought not to have gone."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were concerned for her, for her personally, her body and her
+comfort. Anne swallowed the lump that rose suddenly in her throat.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I am. It was so hot and noisy and they last so long. It must
+be almost twelve."</p>
+
+<p>Roger drew her arm into his. "I ought not to have let you go."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I will any more—before Rogie comes."</p>
+
+<p>"I sha'n't let you," Roger warned, and Anne smiled up at him. Roger
+smiled back: "You're nothing but a baby yourself."</p>
+
+<p>But he was glad that Anne had decided not to go to any more meetings
+until after the baby came. Perhaps, then, he and Anne would go and
+understand together, as they had understood that day on the Bluff in
+the sweeping wind; and by the lake in the green and scarlet dawn.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN">CHAPTER SEVENTEEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In July the baby was born. Anne was very ill and Hilda fluttered about
+looking reproachfully at Roger. But, with the least impatience of Roger
+toward her, she propitiated him with assurances that many women were
+worse, that Anne would not die or be a wreck for life; and when, at
+the end of two weeks, Anne took a decided turn for the better and the
+doctors let him go in for a few moments to see her, Hilda acted as if
+she had personally managed this for his peace of mind.</p>
+
+<p>Anne was so small and white, so exhausted and utterly content, and his
+son was such a mite of a thing; although the nurse assured him that
+little Roger was an "exceptional" fine and healthy boy, Roger felt
+that any life encased in such a tiny and strengthless form must be
+precarious. They were so small and helpless, dependent so completely on
+him. It frightened Roger. Now that his son was there before him, Roger
+was humble. His own part in this creation no longer seemed a thing of
+choice. He had been used by the force of Life, which refused to stop.
+It would go on and on and on, through little Roger and little Roger's
+sons; on, in its majestic stride indifferent to the means it used, to
+him as an individual, on to the fulfillment of its own purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Roger went back to the office and was glad that Katya was alone.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a boy," he said queerly, "such a wee mite of red. He fumbles with
+his clenched fists and sucks in the air. He doesn't seem human."</p>
+
+<p>She listened without looking directly at Roger and did not ask after
+Anne. Just then Merle came in and Katya began to work again.</p>
+
+<p>But Merle announced that the moment Anne was home she was coming up to
+see the baby. Roger laughed:</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't know which end to take hold of, Merle. He's not bigger
+than a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"You clumsy brute. I'll bet you're afraid to touch him yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I am, just about."</p>
+
+<p>Merle giggled. "Well, I'm not and I'm going up to play with him next
+week."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be two of a kind," Roger teased, "only don't teach him any of
+your swear words. They're picturesque—but remember, he's a pure soul."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry. I wouldn't teach him or any other living soul a thing.
+He'll get enough of that before long, poor little devil. This place
+reeks with instruction."</p>
+
+<p>"But you've escaped," Roger teased on; "the first axiom of the Social
+Revolution never got under your skin."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes it did. Only it started to fester—and I cut it out." On that
+she went whistling, the green tam pulled coquettishly to one side.</p>
+
+<p>When Anne was home again Merle kept her promise. At first she stayed
+only a few moments, but gradually the habit formed for her to drop in
+late in the afternoon, several times a week. As Anne grew stronger and
+began again to get regular meals, she often let Merle undress Rogie and
+make him ready for bed. It seemed to please the girl to take off the
+tiny garments and feel the soft, warm roundness of the strong little
+body.</p>
+
+<p>One night in mid-October, a warm evening of glowing sunset, Anne came
+into the bedroom from the kitchen at the sound of Merle's low crooning.
+Merle's single song was Tipperary and she had mangled the martial notes
+to a strange lullaby. Anne laughed and Merle turned quickly, Rogie
+clasped tight as if from intrusion. Then she laughed, too, not quite so
+gayly as Anne, and together they put him to bed. When he was tucked in
+and the window open, Merle followed Anne back to the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you really want Rogie, Anne, or was he an accident?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne flushed at the unwarranted intimacy. But Merle was leaning against
+the wall, her full throat rising so young and white from her brilliant
+smock, her eyes so serious, that Anne relented.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted him," she said hastily.</p>
+
+<p>Merle did not answer for a moment. She seemed to be looking at
+something in no way connected with Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if it would have worked out all right—if I had gone ahead.
+But I haven't your grit, Anne. And I was bugs about Tom; oh, nuts,
+simply nuts. I believed he was God. If he'd told me to jump off the
+ferry boat, I'd have done it without waiting to ask him why." There was
+no bitterness, just the bewildered statement of a fact, a fact that had
+once been true and that Merle wished were true now.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first reference she had ever made to her relations with
+Black Tom O'Connell. Anne wished she had not said anything but it
+seemed unkind to cut her off.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't—he—want—one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not so you could notice. He has some of his own, you know, so
+perhaps that makes a difference. I don't suppose if it had been the
+third or fourth I'd have been as excited myself as I was. But when I
+told him, he said 'Good God!' and looked so solemn I was scared to
+death. Having a baby seemed the most terribly serious thing in the
+world; and then he began to talk of all the suffering and poverty in
+the world, just as if we were responsible for it, until I saw the poor
+little beggar starving to death under my nose. Well, perhaps he might
+have," Merle added with a shrug. "We were sure in a hell of a mess. We
+were broke, as usual. The police were watching Tom—it was the first
+months of the war when they were locking up everybody—and I never knew
+when Tom went out whether he would come back. I own that I felt pretty
+solemn myself at times. The world seemed to have gone mad. It's died
+out now, but you remember that feeling as if the bottom of life might
+drop out at any moment or the heavens open and sweep us all away? There
+did seem to be so many needless millions in the world already. And what
+for? Gunfodder. So—I—had it done."</p>
+
+<p>There was no mistaking Merle's meaning. Anne put the saucepan down on
+the sink very slowly and stood with her back to Merle. She felt the
+girl's eyes on her rigid body, but it was beyond her power to move or
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you wouldn't have done it. Nobody could scare you like that,
+but I must say that Tom didn't force me. He didn't even suggest it.
+He just frightened me to death with the responsibility and left the
+decision to me. But he never said afterwards that he wished I hadn't,
+although—I got to feel that way myself. I got to thinking about it,
+seeing it—and although I knew it wasn't really alive, it kind of grew,
+in the night specially when I was waiting for Tom and didn't know
+whether he had been arrested or not—staring at me with those big,
+bulging eyes. You know—kind of seeing nothing and yet knowing all the
+time what I had done to it. I got woozy——"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop." Anne dragged herself round and, gripping the sink board,
+stared, white and sick, at Merle. Merle flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come off, Anne; you needn't look like that. Thousands of women do
+it; a million a year, here in the United States alone, and you know it.
+Because they're too lazy to have them, or want to gad, scores are doing
+it all the time. Everybody knows it. Besides, it's not nearly so bad
+to——" Merle hesitated, and then at the loathing in Anne's eyes, threw
+the words at her, "to abort it before it's really alive at all, as it
+is to let it come and then see it starve or go to the devil."</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't say any more about it, Merle. I can't stand it."</p>
+
+<p>Just then Roger turned the key in the latch.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm—not blaming you, Merle, but it—makes me sick all over."</p>
+
+<p>Quick to forgive, Merle came and put her arm across Anne's shoulder and
+Anne succeeded in not shuddering. "You're just like a little silver
+fairy, Anne. And I bet you spoil Rogie like the devil."</p>
+
+<p>"But you forget this stern parent," Roger laughed from the doorway.
+"I'll discipline him; he's going to be the finest young revolutionist
+you ever saw."</p>
+
+<p>Merle grinned: "Aren't you and Tom and Katya going to get the poor old
+world straightened out before that?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're a scoffer." Roger came to Anne and kissed her, but she wanted
+to take little Rogie and run far from every one; far from those
+terrible, bulging eyes; those blind, embryonic eyes, resentful,
+unseeing, so eternally wise.</p>
+
+<p>She served the dinner, but ate little, and was grateful when Merle
+went. Until she had gone Anne did not feel that she could go near
+Rogie. But the moment after she had left, Anne went softly into the
+bedroom. Kneeling by the baby's crib, she looked so long that he seemed
+to feel it and frowned and moved in his sleep. He was there, safe,
+alive and hers. But Anne felt all the babies in the world, the babies
+thwarted of life, staring at her in the warm blackness of the night.</p>
+
+<p>She had wanted him and he was there, but she felt as if, somehow, he
+had missed a great danger. As if he had won to life by a chance.</p>
+
+<p>Had Roger really wanted him?</p>
+
+<p>Anne rose quickly. Again she saw the look of stupefaction in Roger's
+eyes. Heard his "Good Lord!"</p>
+
+<p>Anne went slowly out of the room. Roger was reading under the shaded
+light. He was very strong, very sure of himself, sure that he was
+right. She stood looking at him speculatively. For the first time since
+her marriage Anne thought of Roger as the man she had married.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling her eyes on him, Roger glanced up.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever wish—before—after I told you that Rogie was
+coming—that—that—I—that some way——?"</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth are you talking about," Roger asked after a pause in
+which he waited bewildered for Anne to finish.</p>
+
+<p>Anne moistened her lips. "Did you ever
+feel—like—suggesting—that—I——?"</p>
+
+<p>She could not say it. Roger frowned and then understanding came to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you trying to say, Anne? Do you mean did I ever wish that you
+wouldn't go on with it?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Roger rose and put both hands on her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you, Anne? No, of course I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Not—once, not even once—the least wish——"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Roger said quietly. "I never thought of it once."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you glad now, really glad we have him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly am, Anne; what on earth is the matter with you?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne began to cry. "Merle told me—Tom—oh, Roger, it makes me sick
+all over. I—I loathe that man. How can he care about the world
+and—and—be like—he is?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger's hands dropped from Anne's shoulders. "Let's not discuss Tom,
+Princess; we never agree."</p>
+
+<p>Anne flared. "You don't think it's wicked or disgusting, you don't
+really—you wouldn't have—minded."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop it, Anne, please. You're being awfully unjust and you know it.
+He was poor, broke, hunted, everything was chaos. The cases aren't the
+same at all. Besides, Merle isn't fit to be a mother."</p>
+
+<p>"She's fit to be a mistress."</p>
+
+<p>Roger turned to the couch again and picked up his book.</p>
+
+<p>Anne stood where she was, tense, her lips drawn.</p>
+
+<p>"So you knew it? Perhaps he boasts of it—as one of his 'sacrifices for
+the Revolution.' When did he tell you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't tell me," Roger answered patiently. "Katya did, one day when
+we were talking about Merle."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's small frame tightened. "Well! Of all things to discuss with
+another woman!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hell," Roger exploded, "come off that pedestal, Anne. It's
+ridiculous."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN">CHAPTER EIGHTEEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>For a week the tension between Roger and Anne lasted, pulling a little
+weaker each day under the pressure of proximity, little Rogie, and the
+habit of agreement. Anne did not mention Merle again and tried not to
+think of the staring, embryonic eyes of what might have been Merle's
+child. She knew such thought was morbid and unhealthy. As Merle had
+said, one million women a year, in the United States alone, recognized
+this as their right of escape. To Belle it was perhaps a very ordinary
+occurrence. Anne herself would have hesitated to call it "wicked."
+She called it "horrible" instead. But she was glad when Merle stopped
+coming and never asked about her.</p>
+
+<p>Autumn passed and the holiday season came with early rain. Hilda spoke
+tentatively of another Christmas dinner, although Belle was in Europe
+now with a rich patient. But Anne evaded these suggestions and did not
+even mention them to Roger.</p>
+
+<p>On Christmas Eve Anne bought a tiny tree and decorated it, but Rogie
+was fretful and squirmed away from it, crying; so that Anne put out the
+candles and did not light them again.</p>
+
+<p>On Christmas morning she and Roger exchanged their presents and
+immediately after the late breakfast Roger began work on a complicated
+case that was to come up right after the New Year.</p>
+
+<p>Just before noon it began to rain again, a thin, icy drizzle that
+soaked all the cheer and hope from life. Anne tried to read or sew, but
+the thin, cold, inexhaustible rain washed away all interest. She could
+not even make up her mind to go to Hilda, although it was Christmas day
+and she had not been for a week. No decision could crystallize in that
+icy drip, never condensing to a real downpour, never ceasing, trickling
+into one's courage until it washed away desire.</p>
+
+<p>They had planned to go to a theater in the evening, but a little after
+five the woman whom Anne had hired to stay with Rogie phoned that she
+could not come, and the tickets were cancelled. Roger had worked all
+afternoon in order to have the evening free, and now that the evening
+was to be his he decided to take a nap. He slept until Anne waked him
+for dinner at half past six.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner he helped Anne with the dishes and they smoked an extra
+cigarette in honor of the day. But he was so plainly anxious to get
+back to the work he had not quite finished that at last Anne's taut
+nerves could no longer stand his generosity and she urged him to finish.</p>
+
+<p>"Otherwise you'll want to sit up all night, and you've been up late for
+days."</p>
+
+<p>"I would like to get it through to-night," he conceded. "But what will
+you do? I'm afraid I've been pretty absorbed all day."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right. I may go 'round to mom's for a little. I haven't
+even phoned and I sent the presents by post."</p>
+
+<p>"Has it stopped raining?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. It doesn't matter." Anne went to the door and the sweet
+dampness of the garden flooded the warm room. "Yes, it's stopped;
+thickened to a heavy mist. I won't be long."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll try and finish by the time you get back."</p>
+
+<p>Almost before the door closed Roger was at the typewriter. As Anne went
+down the stairs she heard it click, click, as fast as Katya's.</p>
+
+<p>She found Hilda and James alone, Hilda crocheting and James reading
+in the silence that always lay over their evenings. For a few moments
+her entrance shattered it, and they came together in interest of her
+news, the health of Rogie, the presents Anne had sent. Then James went
+back to his paper and Hilda rummaged in her disordered work-basket for
+Belle's last letter.</p>
+
+<p>Would she and Roger some day meet like this for a moment on the coming
+of Rogie, a grown man?</p>
+
+<p>Anne scarcely heard the letter Hilda had found, not in the work-basket
+at all, but in the pocket of her kitchen apron. It was only the
+postscript that drew Anne's attention in time to comment intelligently:</p>
+
+<p>"We're leaving Marseilles to-morrow," Belle wrote, "and may go on to
+the Far East."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if that isn't just like Belle's luck," Hilda smiled and folded
+the letter. "Traipsing 'round like a millionaire with nothing to do.
+The lady has her own maid, and Belle only has to see that she takes her
+drops and things and doesn't get too tired. I'll bet Belle has a high
+old time."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda looked like an excited child, prematurely gray-headed, as she
+nodded her assurance of Belle's ability to have a good time in any
+circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't doubt that, but, personally, I can't imagine anything worse
+than trotting about with an invalid, looking after her pills and
+sandwiching all the lovely things in Europe into the spaces between her
+patient's rests."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda laughed. "If I know Belle, by this time she's got that maid
+trained."</p>
+
+<p>"She's tried, anyhow," Anne agreed, and they smiled together in
+appreciation of Belle's "efficiency."</p>
+
+<p>Just as Anne was leaving Charlotte Welles came in, and Anne stayed on
+a few moments. Charlotte Welles was a slight woman with great dark
+eyes under cloudy brown hair, a pale skin, and pale, sweet lips. She
+had a soft voice, but her manner annoyed Anne. Her gentleness was so
+insistent, and although she never mentioned her belief in Christian
+Science, Anne was sure she never forgot it for a moment. She seemed
+always to measure one's remarks up against eternity, to discount any
+opposition as the meanderings of a clouded mind; to be quite sure that,
+in time, one would see Truth. To-night she was particularly annoying,
+although as Anne walked home she could not repeat a single annoying
+thing Mrs. Welles had said.</p>
+
+<p>"She affects me as the sight of a limousine or a fur-lined overcoat
+affects the man with a dinner pail trudging in the street, I suppose.
+She's a kind of spiritual 'capitalist' with an unfair advantage
+over the rest of the world. Because she started with an illogical
+mind she's been able to accumulate this 'peace,' and never earned
+it through a real trouble in her life. I can't imagine what she and
+moms have in common, but she seems to be always dropping in. Perhaps
+she hopes to convert mamma to Science." But at the picture of Hilda
+converted to Science and moving thereafter in calm assurance through
+the perversities of James Mitchell, Anne laughed aloud. "Dear old moms,
+she'd never keep her mind on one thing long enough to demonstrate it
+into existence, even if she could decide what it was she wanted most."</p>
+
+<p>But the calm face of Charlotte Welles continued beside Anne until
+she reached her own door. After all, the "capitalist" did enjoy his
+viciously accumulated millions, and Charlotte Welles' peace was real to
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>The typewriter was covered now, and Roger was reading before the fire.
+As Anne came in he laid his book aside and looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what's the news?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing special. Belle's going on from France to the Far East. She
+seems to be having a wonderful time."</p>
+
+<p>"Trust Belle."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. Belle works hard for her money. You wouldn't like to
+trot a nervous millionaire around the world, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not on your life." Roger was about to add that neither would he like,
+if he were a nervous millionaire, being trotted about the world by
+Belle. But he never, if he could avoid it, referred in any way to the
+Mitchells. He always asked after them when Anne had been there, but he
+never went himself. He felt at times that Anne understood his feeling,
+and he wished he could have been more honest with her about it. But at
+the first hint of criticism Anne flared to their defense; and often,
+when the Mitchells themselves had been far from his intention, Anne had
+interpreted his scorn of intellectual narrowness as direct criticism of
+her people.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of Belle dropped, but Roger did not take his book again. He
+felt Anne beside him, aloof in some interest acquired at the Mitchell
+flat, something she would guard from him if he tried to share it. Roger
+felt a little sentimental and lonely, too, as he searched about among
+the topics of common interest for a meeting ground with Anne. But this
+meeting ground had grown narrower and narrower and what remained had
+dangerous spots, slippery places from which they were sure to slide
+from generalities to personal recrimination—if Anne let it get that
+far. Usually, just as they were about to plunge into an anger that
+Roger often felt would clear the atmosphere, Anne would retreat behind
+the patient calm that closed him from her as effectually as a barred
+door.</p>
+
+<p>The silence grew until Roger felt that he must break it at any price,
+when unexpectedly Anne sighed. She had been wandering through the
+lovely places of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>"Tired?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not very. But this rain is getting on my nerves I think. I can't
+get out much with Rogie, and I feel all cooped up."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't we make some arrangement? Couldn't you get Mrs. Horton to
+come round for so many hours a day? That would leave you free. It's not
+right to drop all your interests, even for His Highness."</p>
+
+<p>His voice was so concerned, his eyes so gentle that Anne forced back
+the statement that His Highness was now the only real interest she had.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we could. But I really don't know what I would do. I thought
+the other day of taking some extension lectures again, afternoon ones.
+I got the prospectus for French literature and history—but I don't
+know. It seems finicky and dilettantish somehow."</p>
+
+<p>French literature, when Roger was always talking about the drama and
+tragedy of life about them! History, when the people round her were
+engaged in making it!</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Roger thought of suggesting that Anne come for a few hours
+a day and help out in the loft. They were deluged in work. Merle was
+getting more and more careless. Some days she never appeared at all.
+She had been away a week now, no one knew where, unless it was Tom, and
+he had offered no explanation. Katya had done Merle's work in addition
+to her own, but even Katya was not so good a stenographer as Anne.
+While he turned the suggestion about, making sure it hid no pitfall of
+antagonism, Anne went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I guess that the real reason is I'm too lazy."</p>
+
+<p>"You're certainly not that. You keep Rogie like a prince and this house
+is a regular jewel-box."</p>
+
+<p>And yet, less than two years ago, he had planned to do high things
+with Anne. One planned, and something, faint as breath, impalpable as
+a mist, crept in, and one did not do those things. The burned log fell
+apart. The rain beat again on the roof as if striving to reach within.
+In the rising wind the acacia lashed at them. Anne came from her
+thoughts with a little shrug.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I will. I don't know. In the meantime, let's go to bed. The
+jewel-box has to be thoroughly overhauled this week and I want to get
+up early to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>In the darkness they listened for a while to the rain. Then gradually
+Roger ceased to hear it. His breath came in long, steady sighs, even
+and assured. Anne rose quietly on her elbow until she could see his
+face faintly in the blackness. He looked very young in his sleep and
+remarkably like Rogie.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_NINETEEN">CHAPTER NINETEEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It was a windy March afternoon when Anne, having secured the services
+of Mrs. Horton's oldest daughter to look after Rogie while she did some
+necessary shopping, came face to face with Merle, a Merle she scarcely
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Going right straight by me," Merle began gayly, but at Anne's
+astonishment Merle quieted to sincerity. "I don't blame you. I scarcely
+know myself," she went on with a whimsical gesture that included her
+own person, from expensive hat and furs to dainty shoes. "I say, Anne,
+come and have tea. If I don't talk to some one, I'll bust."</p>
+
+<p>But even after she had given the order for an elaborate tea at the
+exclusive shop where she was evidently known, Merle did not begin. She
+asked after Rogie and chattered of everything she could think of, until
+Anne said finally:</p>
+
+<p>"I've only got a few minutes, Merle. Betty Horton can't stay with
+Rogie after four. She has to be home when the other children come from
+school."</p>
+
+<p>And then, almost without a break or change of tone, Merle said:</p>
+
+<p>"I've been thinking a lot about you, Anne. I came near 'phoning you
+twice. I've left Tom."</p>
+
+<p>"Left Tom!"</p>
+
+<p>Merle nodded. "Anne, do you know how Tom took it? Did Roger say
+anything? I haven't seen a soul of them for three weeks."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I don't believe Roger knows it. He would have said something."</p>
+
+<p>Merle shrugged. "Perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps Tom hasn't noticed it
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes misted, but she tossed her head with a cynical smile. "Oh,
+well, it doesn't matter. I wouldn't want him to go lallygaggin about it
+to others—even if he did any lallygaggin to himself."</p>
+
+<p>Anne flushed. Merle and Tom together had seemed so ugly, but Merle like
+this was even worse.</p>
+
+<p>"What happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," Merle said in fierce whisper, "nothing and everything.
+Anne, I couldn't stand it another minute. I tried, for the sake of the
+past and everything, but I couldn't." She was like a child begging
+forgiveness and Anne softened.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really want to talk about it, Merle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It won't do any good, but I always did love to talk. I'm a good
+revolutionist, as far as that goes. I can babble and babble with the
+best of them till the cows come home. But where we part is that I
+do something in the end. Oh, I know they all think I'm Merle, the
+bobbed-haired fool, but I'm not such a fool as to sit tight and let
+Life run by, the one and only Life we'll ever get, and make no stab
+at anything in it. Anne, I'm so sick and tired of the Brotherhood of
+Man and the wicked capitalist and the abused proletariat, I could eat
+my hat. I can't live up on those holy heights and I don't want to. I
+always belonged down in the dust, gold dust if I could get it. And
+now—I'm there."</p>
+
+<p>Anne waited in silence, and after a moment Merle went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Katya and the rest will just believe I was tempted—if
+they think at all, but I wasn't. I worked it all out. I even made a
+kind of trial balance—what would happen if I stayed, on one side of
+the sheet—what would happen if I went, on the other. And I went. I'm
+going to keep that paper and some day I'm going to compare the results.
+Anyhow, I'm gone; Merle, the bobbed-haired fool, is no more. Behold
+Mrs. Benjamin Wilson, at least on hotel registers, and in private
+life—if I choose."</p>
+
+<p>Anne did not move. She did not even turn her eyes from the angry violet
+eyes opposite.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do a little 'crushing under the heel of capitalism' myself,
+before my heel gets too old and shriveled and ugly to be hired for the
+job." The bitterness of Merle's voice cut.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, Merle. I mean don't talk like that, please. If—if you have
+left Tom because you want to—don't—don't make it any worse."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Anne, it's true," Merle spoke more quietly now, and quickly, as
+if the things she had to say must be said instantly, once for all. "I
+do want money, because money is the only way to get the things I want,
+to get my kind of Beauty. To Tom it may be beauty to be always dodging
+jail, to live in the kind of rooms we have lived in, to yell himself
+hoarse four nights a week about Russia or India or longshoremen,
+anything that's far enough from him. But it's not to me. When there's a
+play in town I want to see it, and I want decent clothes to go in and
+a fairly decent seat, and I'm not waiting for any old 'adjustment' to
+give it to me. I'm going to take it while it's going. Why, Anne, when I
+first went to Tom, I used to wake in the night, afraid the 'Revolution'
+would hit us before morning, and that's five years ago and we're still
+dashing after its tail. Katya, poor old thing, has been kicking at the
+world for fifteen years, until she couldn't stop if she tried. And when
+they get it all done, how do I know it'll be any better? People will
+only be kicking about something else then. No, I'll take my million
+dollars now and hang on to it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you loved Tom. You can't——"</p>
+
+<p>"Y-e-s—I loved him. And what did I get for it? Not in money. I—I'm
+not that bad, Anne, but Tom doesn't know half the time whether I'm
+alive or not."</p>
+
+<p>"That can't be true, Merle. He's always busy——"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, shucks, Anne, you can't tell me anything about Tom. I know he's
+busy. Doing what? Saving the world; wearing himself to skin and bones
+for millions of people he has never seen. But if all these 'oppressed'
+were there in one single soul he had to see and touch and be with all
+the time and do little loving things for, he'd hate them. Bah! they
+make me sick. They're all the same. They're monomaniacs. It's the
+fighting they like. If they had it all fixed to-night they'd mess it
+up again just for fun, or go insane because they had nothing to do. I
+know. I've been through it. You're only just beginning. Wait and see.
+Roger's the same stuff, floating 'round in the clouds with those blue
+eyes and that square chin. It'll get him too, Anne, if you don't watch
+out."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's lips set tightly. "You're hurt and mad, Merle. You——"</p>
+
+<p>Merle laughed. "All right, call it that. It's been a long time coming,
+but it's come to stay. I'm going to Europe, Anne."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just as soon as Mr. Wilson can arrange his business. I went once
+with Tom—steerage, before the war. Good Lord! I'm going to have a
+stateroom, Anne, and I'm going to tip, God, how I am going to tip. Pay
+human beings, 'lackeys,' 'wage slaves,' to do the most menial things I
+can think of. I hope I'm seasick all the time just to——"</p>
+
+<p>Merle broke off and her eyes invited some one who had just entered the
+door. The next moment a heavy young man whose well-cut clothes and
+expensive tie could not refine the overfed body, came forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, let me present Mr. Wilson. Ben, this is Anne you've heard me
+speak about, Mrs. Roger Barton."</p>
+
+<p>His bold, brown eyes summed up Anne's fair delicacy, and he smiled
+approval of Merle's friend. But Anne felt that as long as Merle wanted
+him he would find no real interest in any other woman. He was shrewd
+and would know when Merle worked him, but it would please him to be
+so worked at his own pleasure. Merle's childish curls and violet eyes
+and scarlet mouth saying bitter, worldly things, had caught his jaded
+interest and filliped it to stinging passion, so far above the torn and
+frayed sample he had bought at extravagant prices, that the man was
+humble and grateful. Perhaps he, too, in his own way, was searching for
+Beauty. Besides, it gave him a pleasant sense of the security of the
+world he helped to make to have taken Merle from Black Tom O'Connell.
+In some way it justified the existence of things as they were, proved
+the tottering foundations of the movements that had begun to give him a
+good deal of trouble with his labor.</p>
+
+<p>He was so plainly in love with Merle, it surprised Anne that his look
+was no grosser than it was, for it was evidently difficult for him
+to sit near and touch her in no way. If Merle were conscious of his
+restraint she did not show it, but after a few moments it got on Anne's
+nerves, and she rose. Merle rose too, insisting that Mr. Wilson stay
+where he was and finish the tea the waitress had just brought.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be back. I'm just going to the door with Anne. You wait here,
+honey."</p>
+
+<p>Merle hurried after Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"When's Tom coming back, do you know?" she whispered. "I saw in the
+papers he is out of town."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. No, I don't know; in a few days I think."</p>
+
+<p>Merle's small, white teeth marked the crimson lip in a faint line.
+Slowly her black brows drew down in a frown. Her hands clenched.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, I would have died for him—I really would have once."</p>
+
+<p>"Merle, don't go on with this. You're doing it in a fit of anger.
+You'll be sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not doing it in a fit of anger. Didn't I tell you I thought it
+out, wrote it out? And do you know what was the last item on the
+balance sheet for Ben? Well, if I stay and marry him, it's a baby,
+a warm, cuddly thing like Rogie. And I'm going to dress him in the
+loveliest clothes, and nobody will kick about the starving Russians or
+the dying Roumanians. I'll feed him out of a gold-monogrammed nursing
+bottle if I take the fancy, and Ben will think it's grand."</p>
+
+<p>At the exaggerated picture Anne smiled. Merle smiled, too, and then her
+eyes darkened again, just for a moment, as if a shadow had crossed them.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, you might let me know if Tom puts over that case he's gone on. I
+used to listen to it till I most went frantic, but it's—well, the last
+thing I'll ever hear of the crowd and I'll feel more finished, neat and
+tidy-like, to know. I'll be here another two weeks, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. I'll let you know."</p>
+
+<p>But Anne did not keep her promise, because two days later she saw in
+the society news that Mr. Benjamin Wilson was leaving unexpectedly for
+Europe. The next day Black Tom came back. He had lost his case.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY">CHAPTER TWENTY</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The days passed. Roger did not mention Merle. He was often at the
+office now in the evening and Anne knew he and Tom were working harder
+than ever. Some Hindoo revolutionists had been arrested and an almost
+hopeless fight to free them was under way. Picturesque men with sad,
+dark eyes came to the cottage to talk to Roger, and Roger made quick
+trips to adjoining towns to see strange men in secret places.</p>
+
+<p>One day, about a month after Anne had met Merle, Roger came home
+earlier than he had come for some time, and very gay. He had succeeded
+in getting an appeal for the Hindoo revolutionists and that was more
+than any one had expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom's like a small boy. I never saw him so excited."</p>
+
+<p>"And Merle, I suppose, is flitting all over the place, trying to talk
+Hindustani?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Merle isn't 'round these days. I haven't seen her for weeks. She's
+been dodging work for some time, coming and going when she liked. Come
+to think of it, I don't believe she's been there at all for ages. Katya
+was saying something about getting another stenographer. Merle's bad
+enough, but she was better than nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Katya'd better go ahead and get one then, because Merle won't come
+back. She's gone away with another man."</p>
+
+<p>The amazement in Roger's eyes struck at Anne's control. Merle was
+right. She had flitted among them and flitted away. Concerned with the
+affairs of distant India, Roger did not even know it. And he had liked
+Merle with her gay slang, her flippant comment.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose that Tom O'Connell has happened to notice she's gone?
+Perhaps you'd better not tell him. He may never find it out at all."</p>
+
+<p>"So—that—was it," Roger said slowly, putting together the pieces of
+a puzzle that had caught his attention the day after Tom's return from
+the South. "Poor Tom—poor old Tom. But it had to come. Merle had gone
+as far as she could—and Tom couldn't stay behind."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not," Anne said quietly, "an Indian woman in Burmah might
+have died."</p>
+
+<p>"What? What about an Indian woman?"</p>
+
+<p>But Anne did not answer. She was afraid she might cry, and after a
+brief pause Roger went back to the thing that had puzzled him.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Tom, the day after he came back, sitting all bowed over his
+desk. It was late in the evening and the others had gone. He was
+expecting me, but he never moved when I came in and I thought he was
+ill. I went over to him and he looked up. I never saw a man so torn.
+His face was ash-gray and those lines he always has down the sides of
+his mouth were deep like scars. And his eyes, they were like a hurt
+dog's, so dumb and crushed and puzzled. He didn't even try to cheer up,
+just said: 'I won't be doing any work to-night; I don't feel well.' I
+said something about getting him a drink, but he shook his head and I
+went. I was rather afraid—he was going to cry."</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't have hurt him if he had," Anne said in a hard whisper.
+"He's killed Merle's soul, and if she goes to the dogs it will be his
+fault."</p>
+
+<p>"Killed Merle's soul? She never had one, at least not much of a one."</p>
+
+<p>"No. There are no individual souls, I suppose; just one great, big
+world soul—though what it's made of if it isn't individual souls, I
+don't know."</p>
+
+<p>Roger moved impatiently, but when he spoke it was with weary acceptance:</p>
+
+<p>"You never liked Tom. You never understood him, the real man, or tried
+to."</p>
+
+<p>"No? I understand what he claims to be, but not what he is."</p>
+
+<p>"What is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"A monomaniac." The word slipped from Anne and frightened her.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you mean, Anne."</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone mad on social injustice, just as mad as any capitalist has
+on accumulating money. He's lost all sense of individual values. He's a
+machine, a machine for fighting for his own theory."</p>
+
+<p>Roger's lips set. It brought the squareness of his chin into terrible
+relief. "Roger's the same stuff, floating around in the clouds with
+those blue eyes and that square chin." Anne's body began to quiver, but
+she kept her eyes steady.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's not talk about it. We don't agree."</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently not. There don't seem to be many things we do agree about
+any more."</p>
+
+<p>Anne tried to speak gayly. Otherwise the tears would come. But she
+sounded like Hilda Mitchell, pecking at a tragedy with her silly giggle.</p>
+
+<p>"Not many," Roger said shortly. "I've got to go back to the office and
+I may be late. Don't wait up for me."</p>
+
+<p>He kissed Anne as usual, and as usual she went as far as the door with
+him. But long after his step had died she stood looking out over the
+city's lights, lonelier than she had ever been in all her life.</p>
+
+<p>She remembered coming home with Roger once, very late, on just such a
+night. They had sat hand in hand, far in the prow of the almost empty
+ferry, and Anne's head had rested on his shoulder. She was tired after
+a happy day, one of the old picnics they had found time to take. She
+had been glad of the lights coming nearer and they had traced the
+row up their own hill. The twinkling lights had beckoned them to the
+warm, human comfort of others. Now they burned on indifferent to her,
+lighting the way for hurrying crowds, the creeping, inimical confusion
+of the world. The twinkling lights lit the ways of men and men were
+cruel.</p>
+
+<p>Anne went in and sat down before the fire, without turning on the lamp.
+It was so still she could hear her own thoughts moving about her.
+Gradually, from the rustling crowd, one emerged:</p>
+
+<p>"I've been through it. You wait and see."</p>
+
+<p>She was not like Merle. Roger was not like Black Tom. And yet——</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was after twelve when Roger came.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Anne!"</p>
+
+<p>Anne lifted her face. Her lips trembled.</p>
+
+<p>Roger came quickly to her in real concern. "You haven't been sitting
+here alone worrying, have you? I didn't mean to be harsh."</p>
+
+<p>Anne clung to him. "Roger," she whispered, "I don't want to grow apart."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither do I." Roger stroked her hair, the old tenderness moving him.
+"And since neither of us do," he said after a moment, with a smile, "I
+guess we won't."</p>
+
+<p>Anne answered his smile weakly. "Roger, I don't believe it is right
+just to sit up here keeping the 'house like a jewel-box' and looking
+after Rogie. I'm going to work."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" Roger had never very clearly heard when Anne looked like that,
+and she had not looked like that for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>"I—am—going—to work," Anne repeated with exaggerated distinctness,
+and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are, are you? Who said you could?"</p>
+
+<p>"Myself. And you—in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I will? That depends. I won't have you drudging in some office."</p>
+
+<p>"No? How about that extra stenographer Katya's looking for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anne!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think I could do it? I don't believe I've lost much speed.
+I——"</p>
+
+<p>But Roger's kiss silenced her and Anne did not try to finish. At last
+he loosed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really want to do this, sweetheart?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne turned her eyes away. "Yes, Rogie's old enough to leave now and I
+believe Mrs. Horton would be glad of the place. I would get a salary, I
+suppose—enough to pay her."</p>
+
+<p>Roger grinned. "You would—most of the time, anyhow. How much would she
+do it for, do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"How much would I get?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eighteen or so."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be plenty—more than she would ask. I'll talk it over with
+her to-morrow. You would really like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anne! There's nothing in the world I would like so much. Why
+I—I—thought lots of times of asking you just that thing."</p>
+
+<p>Remembering his reason for not doing it, Roger, too, looked into the
+fire, his arms still close about Anne.</p>
+
+<p>But Anne did not press for the reason of his silence. Against the long
+evening alone with Merle's words singing in her ears—"Wait and see.
+It'll get him yet"—his hold was strong and full of comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Anne gripped him close and kissed him, as she had kissed on
+the Bluff, her lips seeking fiercely, through his, the thing beyond
+them both.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-ONE">CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The following Monday Anne went to the loft with Roger. Another niche
+was partitioned off for her and she began to take dictation.</p>
+
+<p>Now that she had definitely come among them, joined her interest with
+Roger's, Anne tried to shake off the feeling that had held her in the
+past when she waited for Roger, and to get below the surface of this
+violent enthusiasm. But she could not do it.</p>
+
+<p>So many orders were given during a day, so many plans made, so many
+contingencies prepared for that never arose. It was an exhausting game,
+the enthusiasm created by the players themselves. It was an insane May
+dance, Black Tom in the center holding the ribbons.</p>
+
+<p>And such strange people danced at the end of the strings. Anne had
+never seen so many different nations and kinds of individuals in one
+spot, nor imagined they could so exist. Ministers who had given up the
+Gospel of Christ to preach this gospel of Man; teachers weary of the
+narrow round of instructing; a college professor who had discovered
+that the Social Revolution had really begun with creation, and written
+a pamphlet to prove it. A chemist who had discovered with equal
+suddenness that the social revolution was the newest and perhaps the
+last stage in man's evolution from the lower types.</p>
+
+<p>There were men and women who saw some great change in the conduct
+of world affairs looming in huge, vague mass, but had no clear idea
+as to how this vague mass was to be shaped. Others who saw only the
+small, unimportant details and these groups argued for hours accusing
+each other of wrong methods that delayed progress. There was one
+young man with mild, kind eyes who forgave all bigotry and personal
+misunderstanding and wrote fierce, revolutionary songs, clarion
+calls to these people whom he forgave for not hearing. There was
+one plump little widow, raised in rigid Boston, who for the first
+time in her life had found an opportunity to berate car-conductors
+and minor officials in a loud voice. These she called publicly, in
+piercing tones—"the wage slaves of a rotten system"—and urged them
+to organize. She could always be relied upon at a moment's notice to
+picket, carry banners or distribute leaflets. The "rottenness of the
+system" excused her from contributing to any charity, but, until the
+arrival of the millennium, she invested her income with remarkable
+shrewdness in bonds.</p>
+
+<p>Above this conglomerate of excitement Katya rose like a mountain in
+her belief and patience. Katya never attacked car-conductors nor urged
+telephone girls to strike, or bothered whether the social revolution
+had begun with creation, or whether it was the last stage of progress.
+Katya worked, often far into the night, and rarely spoke to any one but
+Tom or Roger. Anne she ignored, not with definite rudeness but with an
+unfathomable disregard of her existence. In her dark corner Katya was
+like a brown bear that had been taught to work. So incessant was the
+click of her machine that it was noticeable only in its rare intervals
+of silence, as one notices the momentary lull of the sea forever
+breaking on a rocky coast.</p>
+
+<p>At first it was almost impossible for Anne to take Black Tom's
+dictation, to speak to him, or be near him. Merle was always there
+in her brilliant smock. Or the staring, embryonic eyes asking their
+eternal Why?</p>
+
+<p>It was not until July, when a heavy cold forced Katya to stay home and
+Black Tom's personal dictation fell to Anne, that the faith of the man
+at last reached through her repulsion and she reluctantly conceded
+his sincerity. It was impossible to be admitted even so slightly into
+his confidence and not feel his faith. It was stark, like a granite
+headland, unornamented with scholastic theory. Its rough surface bore
+no intricate carving of historical or philosophic research. The man saw
+and believed. As the weeks passed, Anne came to feel that if he ever
+thought of Merle, he thought of her as a victim, neither of himself nor
+of her own nature, but of this colossal social injustice to which he
+referred all the ills of life.</p>
+
+<p>But she never grew to like him, and months after she had come to take
+his dictation with no thought of Merle, any over-emphasized admiration
+of Roger's stripped her feeling back to her original disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"The trouble is that you demand perfection in people you don't like,"
+Roger said to her one day, when her annoyance at one of Black Tom's
+schemes for propaganda had driven her to biting criticism. "You measure
+every quality in them by their highest peak, and when they don't
+measure up to this standard all the way down, you reject them."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather subtle, but not true," Anne said in the voice that always
+reminded Roger of a small, sharp gimlet. "I don't see anything for you
+to take offense at. Tom O'Connell is a monomaniac. Merle was right."</p>
+
+<p>"Any one who believed utterly in an abstract principle would be a
+monomaniac to Merle."</p>
+
+<p>"Any one who believes in only one aspect of a principle is a
+monomaniac."</p>
+
+<p>"Tom does not believe in only one aspect; he is concerned with only one
+application of his principle. And no human being can be interested in
+more. If that's being a monomaniac then Tom's one, with all the other
+people in the world who have ever accomplished anything. You can't
+spatter your interest and energy all over the earth and make it count.
+A scientist is interested in science and an artist in art. Tom's medium
+is the present condition of the world. He doesn't want to win strikes
+for themselves, or stir up disorder, but only that greater order may
+come. His eyes aren't always fixed on the sores and confusions under
+his eyes, but on the perfect body society might be. If Jesus Christ had
+lived to-day and worked in a Pennsylvania coal mine when He was twelve,
+instead of two thousand years ago on the sandy plains of Syria—he
+would have been rather like Tom, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"That's ridiculous, Roger. You're getting to be a monomaniac too."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not ridiculous. And if that's what you call being a monomaniac,
+I'd just as soon be one. In fact, I hope I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't. I've always been sorry for Christ's family. I think He
+must have been dreadfully annoying to live with. Didn't He tell His
+mother to go home and mind her business while He went and lectured to
+men old enough to be His grandfather?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nice, old conservatives, gripping their traditions like crabs hanging
+to their rocks."</p>
+
+<p>"Making their application of their principle."</p>
+
+<p>"No. Not making it at all. Just hanging on to its corpse long after it
+had ceased to have a spark of life. Once the Syrians had needed their
+philosophy, but they were petrifying in a social system that human life
+had really outgrown. They had lived so long in a barren land, fighting
+for their means of living, fighting against their sand wastes and rocks
+and neighboring tribes, that the whole of life had become a kind of
+arena. Their Jehovah was only another brigand of the Syrian hills.
+Those old men you sympathize with were like the militarists of to-day.
+They can't think except in terms of gunpowder. 'War always has been'
+and so it's always going to be. Then Christ happened along and saw that
+Life was wider than the barren wastes of Syria and that they were at
+the wrong end of the solution. Those old Syrian War-lords had applied
+the principle of physical conquest to all kinds of spiritual problems
+and Christ saw that it wasn't getting them anywhere. He was really
+telling them how to get the things they had started out after and lost
+the way of finding. When I was a kid He used to annoy me awfully—an
+anemic young Jew with a silly beard and girl eyes—but I've gotten to
+like Him."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get to like any other monomaniac who's been dead long enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Are we quarreling?" Roger asked impatiently, exasperated by this
+eternal twisting of a general path back to the personal point. "I
+thought we were discussing that measure Tom's going to try and put
+through the convention."</p>
+
+<p>"We are—as far as I am concerned. You dragged in Christ."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't drag Christ in except to try and make you see why Tom
+wants to get this particular measure across. I don't understand you,
+Anne. You say sometimes that you believe the man's sincere and yet
+you're always trying to measure him up with some little yardstick of
+inherited social convention. Tom's like the great central wheel of some
+high-powered machine, and you pick flaws because he's not the spring of
+some jeweled and useless little watch."</p>
+
+<p>Anne shrugged and began to gather up the dinner things. What did it
+matter? If she and Roger talked half the night they would only branch
+from one difference to another. In the exhausting day behind her there
+was not one still spot wherein they could meet in perfect accord.
+To her, the day had been filled with whirling, human particles that
+obstructed her vision and stimulated Roger. All day Anne had felt
+choked by these particles; the mannerisms, the shop-worn jargon, the
+unrestrained enthusiasm, had gotten into her ears and eyes and down her
+throat like sand. She had meant to keep the dinner hour free from this
+sand, but it had filtered in. It always did. Anne was coming to feel
+that these people with whom she passed the day followed her home at
+night.</p>
+
+<p>As Roger watched her moving, slight and graceful, about the room,
+putting it in evening order, he wondered why Anne had ever offered to
+come to the loft. She did the work well, as she had done John Lowell's,
+but with no more personal joy in it. And yet Anne had once felt a
+larger world calling for more than perfection of mechanical detail or
+conscientious accomplishment of the day's stint. At what point in their
+lives had that Anne slipped away into the fog in which he groped now
+without finding her? Behind his book Roger grappled with this problem,
+growing larger week by week.</p>
+
+<p>Two years before they had started from the same point to walk along a
+road together. At no spot had they left the way. No emotional side-path
+had lured Roger from his faithfulness to Anne; no other way of life
+had tempted her. Their hope had been the same—to live beautifully a
+beautiful life. They were not living it beautifully. It was growing
+ugly, full of impatience on his side, suppressions on hers. Sometimes,
+for a few days, even a week, they managed to step from stone to stone
+of personal agreement, and then, on some little hidden rock, they stood
+and grew bitter toward each other.</p>
+
+<p>In the kitchen Anne stacked the dishes for Mrs. Horton's coming in the
+morning, clicked off the light, and came back. She, too, took a book
+and curled up in her favorite spot on the couch to read.</p>
+
+<p>Was she reading? Didn't she feel this fog closing in about them? What
+would happen if he asked her why she had wished to work with him, or
+suggested that she leave it? Would Anne be honest and tell him? Did she
+know herself?</p>
+
+<p>But Roger did not ask. At ten he stopped reading. A few moments later
+Anne finished her chapter. They went to bed. From habit, Anne lay close
+for a little, with his arm about her. Then he kissed her and turned
+over on his side. Once more the harmony of sleep covered the tangled
+knots and broken threads of the day behind.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-TWO">CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>So the weeks passed until one afternoon in early August, when James
+Mitchell was taken suddenly ill and Hilda sent for Anne. She found her
+mother sitting in the kitchen, crying helplessly as if she would never
+stop. Anne knelt beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma. Dear. Don't. You mustn't; you'll get all worn out."</p>
+
+<p>Through the running tears Hilda's frightened eyes clung to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"It—it was terrible. I've never been through such a thing in my life.
+I had such a time to get you. They—brought him home—oh, I wish Belle
+was here."</p>
+
+<p>Anne took the shaking hands in hers and held them firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma, you must stop crying. It won't do any good and I want to know.
+Who said it was a stroke?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Fletcher, the company doctor. Thank goodness the company gives a
+doctor. What would we do, Anne, if they didn't? What we'll do anyhow—I
+don't know. And I never would have dreamed of a stroke. Papa, of all
+people! He isn't the build. He isn't the kind that gets strokes. He——"</p>
+
+<p>"But momsy dear, he has it. Don't, don't go worrying about other
+things. And the company has a doctor. Let's just take one thing at a
+time."</p>
+
+<p>At the calm assurance of Anne, Hilda's sobs lessened. She wiped her
+eyes on the corner of her apron and spoke more quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"I was just ready to go out, down town shopping at that cut-rate
+market—it's beef bargain day—when the phone rang and some one at
+the office said papa wasn't well and would be coming home. Of course
+I thought he had been killed and the girl got so impatient and ugly
+with me. I don't believe now they were at the office at all, because
+in a few moments, I had scarcely time to take off my things, the bell
+rang and they had him in a taxi. Oh—Anne—he was all kind of purplish;
+papa, who's too pale if anything, and his eyes were twisted like,
+but he knew me, and—and—he didn't want me to do anything for him.
+It—it—seemed to make him nervous just to have me near him, and he
+kept trying to say something and I couldn't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't—he—speak?" Anne's lips were dry but she kept her tone level
+for Hilda's comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"He can now—but it's not like it was—although it may come back almost
+as good as ever, in time, the doctor says. But—Anne—he can't—ever
+work again and what shall we do? There's the lodge and perhaps they'll
+take up a little collection in the office—papa seemed always donating
+to collections for families, but then maybe he was only fibbing—and
+there's some small pension scheme they've just put through. But—it's
+so—scrappy and he'll need so many things."</p>
+
+<p>Behind the fact of her father's illness, towering over the misfortune
+of his never again being able to speak quite clearly, or to walk
+unaided, loomed this ghastly reality—never again to work; never to
+draw a monthly salary again. All her childhood this possibility had
+existed in the background of life, as it existed in the background of
+all the lives she knew—the cessation of income, the wage-earner's
+power suddenly cut off. Dependents on unearned money. Life continuing
+with the source of supply not in one's own hands, beyond one's control.
+Now this fact was no longer in the background. It had stalked to the
+very front of life and demanded all their thought. Two aging people,
+dependent on others! Anne shivered away from it.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think about that now, mamma. Perhaps it won't be so bad as the
+doctor says. They're often mistaken. You know how little faith Belle
+has in them."</p>
+
+<p>"If only Belle were here."</p>
+
+<p>"But she isn't, mamma. You'll have to do the best you can with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be sharp with me, Annie. You know I don't mean it that way. I
+don't know what I would do without you. I could scarcely get to the
+phone quick enough to call you. But I wish we knew where Belle was. I
+haven't had a card ever since that one when they were just starting
+for Jerusalem or some other heathenish spot. She—she'll help if she
+can, but she never has anything laid aside. And that was one thing papa
+always did try to impress on you children—to look out for a rainy day.
+I hope you and Roger will never do that, Anne, live right up to the
+last cent, not with Rogie and all. It's a temptation when everything's
+all right, but the minute sickness comes——If only papa hadn't thought
+that miserly little lodge and his life insurance would be enough—if
+anything happened—we might have had a snug bit aside."</p>
+
+<p>"He still has the life insurance, has he? You remember you used to be
+afraid sometimes—he'd try to raise money on it. You——"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh—Anne——" Hilda clutched her in sudden fear. "I—I—suppose so. I
+never dared ask papa things like that. You don't suppose—he couldn't
+have—oh, Anne——"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, dear. I'm sorry I asked. Of course he has. He would surely have
+told you if he hadn't."</p>
+
+<p>"He surely would have done nothing of the sort. It's exactly what he
+would not do. He would have thought he could make it up, get it back or
+something."</p>
+
+<p>Anne rose and began taking off her things. "I'll stay to-night, momsy.
+I'll just go and phone Roger and Mrs. Horton. She can take Rogie for a
+day or two until we see how things are."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda looked so relieved, almost cheerful, that Anne bent and kissed
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be all right, dear. We'll manage."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda clung to her hand. "Annie—you don't really think—he might
+have——"</p>
+
+<p>Anne took a sudden decision. "I'll ask him, mamma." It would be
+difficult enough the next few days without this constant, harping
+anxiety of her mother's.</p>
+
+<p>"Annie! You can't ask him a thing like that. Not now. The doctor said
+he must have absolute rest, not be worried or annoyed in any way. He
+would think we were counting—Anne! It's horrible."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't do it that way, moms. I won't do it at all if it doesn't work
+out. Please trust me."</p>
+
+<p>"I do, Annie. And I would like to know. I sha'n't be able to think of
+anything else until I do. You won't be long phoning, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just a minute. Suppose you make some tea. I'd like a cup."</p>
+
+<p>Happy to do something definite, more, to be told exactly what to do,
+Hilda began to make the tea.</p>
+
+<p>Roger had come in and Anne told him briefly what had happened and that
+she would stay a day or two. He was not to phone as the bell might
+disturb James and the doctor had said he was to have absolute quiet.
+She would phone instead, the following evening.</p>
+
+<p>The tea was made and they drank it, Hilda's spirit reviving in bounds
+at the knowledge she was not to be left alone in her dilemma. Anne
+tried to talk of other things, but again and again Hilda came back to
+the question—had James Mitchell disposed of his insurance? At last
+they heard a sound from the sick room.</p>
+
+<p>"He's waking, Anne. Don't—don't tell him you can't understand what he
+says—it seemed to vex him so. He——"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't vex him." Now that she was about to see her father, changed
+perhaps almost beyond recognition, Anne's voice shook. At this sign of
+weakness Hilda began again to cry. Anne went quickly out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of some one entering, James Mitchell tried to turn his
+head. He was very weak, and his neck seemed twisted and stiff, but his
+eyes moved and when he saw who it was they lit faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Annie," he said in a low, thick tone, but much more clearly than she
+had expected.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down on the bed-edge and took his hand in hers. It was strange
+to be taking her father's hand, offering him any physical demonstration
+of affection. As if the act generated the impulse, a welling pity rose
+in Anne. His fingers closed on hers and he tried to nod.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't try to talk, papa. Just rest. It will do you lots of good."</p>
+
+<p>Anne was not sure whether the faintest smile of scorn touched his lips
+under the ragged gray mustache, or whether they were curved forever
+into that faint bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you've come, Annie. You can stay a while, can you?" It took
+him a long time to say this and Anne felt her nerves tighten between
+the words.</p>
+
+<p>"As long as you need me. But you're not going to need me long. If you
+do as the doctor says, you'll soon be about. These things don't—don't
+mean anything permanent." Anne spoke cheerfully, but the dawning hope
+in her father's eyes shamed her to silence. She longed to turn her eyes
+away from that pitiful hope, but dared not.</p>
+
+<p>"No—Annie—I won't get better." It begged again her assurance.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we'll do what the doctor says anyhow, papa."</p>
+
+<p>"I've—never been sick——" James mumbled, "always—lived
+sensibly—just—my luck——"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry about anything now, papa," Anne said soothingly, and
+disengaged her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"I—want—a drink, Annie."</p>
+
+<p>She brought a glass of fresh, cold water, held it for him to drink and
+then, supporting him with one arm, deftly shook up the pillows and
+placed him comfortably on them.</p>
+
+<p>"That—was fine—don't let mamma—she makes me nervous. She doesn't get
+what I say. Do I talk very thick, Annie?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you do," he mumbled. He held her fingers again and she could
+not draw them away. Nor could she ask him about the insurance while
+he clung like that, so weak, so changed, so suddenly dependent upon
+her. And she had never loved him. She did not love him now. She could
+never love him. The tragedy lay in that—she never could. He might grow
+better. He might grow worse. She might be there a long time, doing
+the horrible, intimate things nurses did for hire, to Anne revolting,
+except for deep love. She would do them to save his nerves from Hilda,
+the woman with whom he had lived for more than thirty years; who did
+not understand his blurred speech, whose every motion disturbed him;
+Hilda, sitting in the kitchen waiting to hear whether he had gambled
+away her only hope of independence when he had gone.</p>
+
+<p>Anne slipped her hand from his, covering its withdrawal by soft little
+taps on the back of his. She must ask him now, while her presence still
+held something of the unusual. In a few days he would have accepted her
+ministering. All the small tyranny of him would have risen in defiance
+of his dependence on them. She must do it now, or not at all. Without
+preamble, Anne asked quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"Papa, things may be a little tight for the present. Do you think we
+might raise a little money on your life insurance? As soon as we can
+reach Belle——"</p>
+
+<p>With sudden strength his fingers clutched her arm, and he gripped it
+until she felt the bones press into her flesh. His eyes were full
+of anger, fear, defiance. With a terrible effort he drew her down,
+motioning with his slightly twisted lips not to let Hilda hear.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't got—it—Annie. I—thought—I had a sure—thing—it was
+sure—and I staked—it's gone," he ended in a squeaking note of fear
+and anger.</p>
+
+<p>Anne patted his shoulder and tried to speak cheerfully, "Never mind,
+papa. Never mind. Don't think about it."</p>
+
+<p>That fearful squeak, like a mouse caught in a trap.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't—tell—her, Annie. She'll fuss me about it and—I meant it
+right. It—was for her—I don't want anything for myself—it was a sure
+thing. Just my luck—any one would have taken—the tip."</p>
+
+<p>And there was nothing Anne could find to say, although she seemed to be
+tearing her brain apart in an effort to find a thought. She could only
+whisper absently, over and over:</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, papa; we'll talk about it later." At last the monotony of
+repetition soothed him, and he freed her to tuck the clothes about him.
+But Anne could not bend to kiss him. With all her strength she tried.
+Her muscles would not obey. She stroked his cheek and, with an extra
+little pat, said good night and left him. Almost before she was out of
+the room he was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Anne went slowly the short distance from the bedroom to the kitchen.
+The door was ajar and she saw Hilda crocheting, a wad of lace in a
+soupbowl by her on the table. Years ago Anne and Belle had rebelled
+against the monstrosity of pineapple edging or star pattern upon their
+underclothes. Still Hilda persisted in "not wasting time." The darkest
+crannies of the Niche were filled with these rolls of crochet; they
+were even tucked away on the pantry shelves.</p>
+
+<p>"One—two—three plain, and four chain," Hilda mumbled.</p>
+
+<p>Anne went in and closed the door. "He did do it. He's lost the
+insurance, bet it away on a sure thing and it's gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh—Anne——"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't cry," Anne went on in the stern tone with which one handles an
+hysterical child. "It won't get it back. And if I were you I wouldn't
+say anything to him. It's done. He can't undo it now and he'll have
+time enough to wish it undone—lying—there—thinking about it."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda forced back the tears. After a moment she heaved a sigh and
+picked up the edging again. Soon she was lost once more in the
+intricacies of one—two—three plain, and four chain.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-THREE">CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The days went by neither slowly nor quickly, but with a terrible fixity
+of sameness. The routine of illness, once established, life adjusted
+itself to nourishment at certain hours, periods of sleep, efforts to
+entertain James. Even waiting to hear from Belle was reduced to a
+law, once in the morning post, once in the afternoon. As soon as they
+received her address they would cable. Till then they had to wait.</p>
+
+<p>With the assumption of all responsibility by Anne, Hilda Mitchell
+ceased to worry about the future. Her old gayety returned. Sometimes
+Anne felt that her mother was really enjoying herself more than she
+had for many years. In this release from the housekeeping cares she
+had borne so long, she was like a child. She insisted on doing all the
+errands, and although it sometimes annoyed Anne, on the whole it filled
+her with tender amusement to find how far Hilda insisted on going for
+some small, needed thing. Prescriptions she always had filled at night
+in a big down-town drug store, although there was a small, reliable but
+very dull little drug store on the corner. She followed food bargains
+about the city, adding carfare until the article cost more than it
+would have in her own block.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the first week Anne brought Rogie to the flat. When James
+was awake he liked to have the baby crawling and laughing about him.
+Sometimes Anne wanted to cry as she watched the numbed form propped in
+the big bed and the laughing, crawling baby dragging his little limbs
+in their awkward newness over the limbs that would never walk again.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the second week she felt that she had lived this way for
+years, that she would never live otherwise. The loft and the world with
+its bickering were far away, behind the present routine. On Tuesdays
+and Sunday evenings two old men took turns in coming to see James. A
+quick, wiry little man came on Tuesday. A slow, fat man on Sunday. They
+came early in the evening, just after their own suppers, and James
+watched all day for their coming. They never had much news and there
+were long pauses between their remarks. The flat was never so still,
+so cut off from the world functioning beyond this silence, as in these
+long intervals between the items of office gossip. Anne could never
+shut the kitchen door and forget the old men, but sat tense, waiting
+for the next buzz from the sick room.</p>
+
+<p>They had imposed upon themselves this task of calling, but she felt
+their relief when, always a few moments before half-past eight, each
+old man rose to go, said something reassuring about soon seeing James
+Mitchell back at work, and with awkward kindliness got himself out
+of the room. Then Anne would go in, straighten her father's pillows,
+make him comfortable for the night, and listen with assumed interest
+while he retailed in his thick, halting speech, their meager news.
+The paucity of it hurt beyond her strength to reply. To have lived
+fifty-five years and have no interests larger than the clickings of a
+machine, functioning far above him; to be bound in the tiny screws and
+cogs of an intricate mechanism, towering into official dimness. The
+old men depressed Anne terribly, almost more than James himself. His
+illness separated him, in his first distinction, from the rest of his
+world. But they were still part of it. Like chained animals they seized
+and gnawed at each tiny happening until they had gnawed it to powder.
+In these clouds of dust they were walking blindly toward the grave.</p>
+
+<p>On the nights when the old men did not come James dropped asleep almost
+immediately after his light supper. Anne put little Roger to bed. Hilda
+found some reason to leave the house, even if it were only "to run
+down to Mrs. Welles' for a minute," and Anne was alone. Sometimes she
+sat in her old room, beside Rogie's basket, and stared out into the
+darkening street. Strange noises emerged into the stillness, tickings
+and creakings in the walls, rustlings and faint tappings.</p>
+
+<p>Anne's thoughts, too vivid to be held within her brain, slipped into
+the darkness and she saw them, pictures in the thick silence; the
+terrible black vacuum of life in which moved the old gray men, her
+father, Hilda, herself, Roger, Tom, the dancing marionettes about
+him; Hilary Wainwright, his keen-eyed partners in great enterprises;
+Merle snatching at beauty, the grimed workers; all groups of whirling
+dervishes, spinning round in useless effort, until they dropped into
+decay and death.</p>
+
+<p>It was in such a mood, one night about three weeks after she had
+come to care for James, that Anne went on the back porch, where the
+sure shining of the stars, the black outline of the unchanging hills,
+sometimes gave her rest. But to=night no peace came. The stars were
+hard and cold, the hills indifferent. Locked in a vault of decay and
+death, she heard the voice of Life, like the undertone of the sea
+wailing forever: This is all there is. I am decay and death, decay and
+death.</p>
+
+<p>So deep was she within the darkness of this realization that when a
+man's quick step sounded on the stairs and she saw Roger smiling up,
+Anne stared back as if he were a stranger from another world. Roger's
+smile vanished and he bounded up the last steps and took her in his
+arms. At his touch the vividness of thought vanished, and she seemed
+to slip down from the high places of a dream into waking. It was good
+to feel his hold again and Anne smiled at him, but he looked at her
+anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Princess, you're awfully pale, and your eyes are as big as saucers."</p>
+
+<p>"Are they? That's good news; they always were too small."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not joking, Anne. You look all in."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel all right, a little tired, but I'm perfectly well. Papa had a
+pretty hard day—sometimes I think he knows he'll never get about again
+and it frightens him. He—doesn't want to be left alone with mamma. She
+fusses him and he gets all nervous and worn out."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't they get some one?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. They couldn't pay any one. The pension isn't straightened yet.
+They're taking up a collection, but a couple of hundred will be a
+miracle, and how long does that last in illness? Besides, mamma is such
+a bad manager."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not responsible for that. And how about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're a wonderful manager."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you ought to learn," Anne tried to tease. "It's really my duty
+to stay away until you do. A great, big, social revolutionist able to
+reorganize the world, needing one small wife to look out for him!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's beastly eating at restaurants, and that hill's the stillest place
+in the world at night. It's like lighting up a tomb to go home and not
+hear you or Rogie."</p>
+
+<p>Anne thought of the old man in the other room, eating his soft,
+childish foods, alone with the empty past and death.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't leave them, Roger, not yet. The doctor says that in a few
+weeks he may be able to get into a wheel-chair, and then he can come
+out here. That will be some change."</p>
+
+<p>But Roger did not hear what Anne was saying; her eyes with their dark
+circles beneath were too big, her cheeks too pale.</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll be ill yourself, and what good will that do them? Anne, Tom
+isn't going to be able to make that Chicago convention; he wants me to
+go instead. Won't you come?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Chicago! Now! I couldn't, Roger. I couldn't go that far away now."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>If the Mitchells had been on the other side of the world they would
+have had to manage without her. "It seems to me you've done as much as
+they can expect."</p>
+
+<p>Anne stiffened. "They don't expect anything. I'm not doing it because
+they expect it. There's nothing else to do. Don't talk like that,
+Roger; I don't like it."</p>
+
+<p>"And I don't like it either, this arrangement, not one bit."</p>
+
+<p>Anne flushed. She felt that Roger was opposing her opposition more than
+entreating her to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's not talk about it. No matter what they expect or don't expect, I
+should be miserable. Besides, it is impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"What would they do if you weren't here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am here."</p>
+
+<p>"But, sweetheart, you say he doesn't need special attention. It
+wouldn't even take the expense of a trained nurse—if your mother has
+to have some one. A woman like Mrs. Horton could do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Who would pay?"</p>
+
+<p>"We will—until you hear from Belle, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked away into the twinkling lights.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," Anne said after a moment, with the prim patience that made
+Roger feel like a greedy child clinging to his toys. "There's no sense
+in talking round and round like that. I couldn't go—even if I felt
+free in other ways."</p>
+
+<p>Deftly Anne had poured the responsibility over him. Roger felt himself
+choking in the patience of Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want to go. Why can't you be honest and say so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't leave them with no one to see after papa." Anne's reiteration
+was an iceberg before the sputtering match of his objections.</p>
+
+<p>"She saw to him for years."</p>
+
+<p>Into that "she" went all Roger's scorn of Hilda Mitchell.</p>
+
+<p>"Then mamma has had her share and I wish to help now."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you say so in the first place? There's no need to beat
+about the bush. When it comes to a show-down between your people and
+me, I go."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's eyes narrowed. Her face flamed its ugly, brick-red, "I might
+just as well have, mightn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly." Roger's voice accepted Anne's decision.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing else to say. Having fought over James Mitchell's
+body, it seemed grotesque to ask after him. Roger turned again to the
+winking lights. Anne moved away to the kitchen and lit the gas.</p>
+
+<p>If he followed—there was nothing to talk about. But he could not
+call "good night" and go off down the back stairs—to Chicago. Roger
+hesitated. Voices sounded below. Two women were coming up the stairs.
+He went slowly into the kitchen. United in the need of pretense, he and
+Anne stood together.</p>
+
+<p>"I can only stay a moment," Charlotte Welles' voice trailed like a soft
+cloud after the crackling sunshine of Hilda's laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Then Roger was being introduced to a small, pale woman with dark
+eyes that seemed to see his annoyance at being bothered with this
+introduction.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as they were settled, he moved toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Going already?" Hilda asked brightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I have a lot to do to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's heart thumped. Perhaps he was going to leave for Chicago
+to-night. He had not said when.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger's going to Chicago," she explained.</p>
+
+<p>"To Chicago! Well, that is a trip! Won't it be roasting? Going on
+business?"</p>
+
+<p>What did she suppose he was going for? "Yes," he answered as pleasantly
+as he could, and knew that Mrs. Welles thought him extremely rude.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not so hot now," she interposed in her sweet, low voice, so
+evidently smoothing a situation she had no right to assume existed,
+that Roger resented her almost more than he did Hilda.</p>
+
+<p>"No. It cools off in September." He moved nearer the door. Anne and
+Hilda followed.</p>
+
+<p>"How long will you be away?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know exactly. Perhaps only two weeks, perhaps longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious!" Hilda trilled, "it doesn't seem worth while going for
+such a little while, does it? Two weeks! Hardly time to get there and
+back."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going for the pleasure of the trip," Roger said stiffly, "and
+the convention won't last more than four days. But I won't have time to
+come up again. I'll say good-by now." It was almost a challenge, but it
+was the best that he could do. Followed by Hilda's stupid injunction
+to have a good time, he preceded Anne into the hall and she shut the
+door. Instantly the heavy breathing of James Mitchell filled the space
+between them. In silence they reached the stair-head and he began the
+long descent.</p>
+
+<p>Would Roger really go like that, without a kind word or apology? Three
+steps below, Roger stopped, and looked back.</p>
+
+<p>He was going away for weeks and Anne could not even come to the door
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't write often. You'll see all the news in the papers and I'll be
+pretty busy."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right. And don't worry if you don't hear from me. There
+won't be any news."</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other.</p>
+
+<p>Anne went slowly down the three stairs and kissed him, a kiss of
+condescending allowance for his bad temper and rudeness. Roger's lips
+brushed her cheek. "Good-bye. Take care of yourself."</p>
+
+<p>He was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Annie! Annie!" It was repeated in a querulous quaver from the sick
+room and Anne went to her father.</p>
+
+<p>"That was Roger, wasn't it? Are you going back home, Annie?" He looked
+up from the burrow of the bed-clothes, so disturbed that Anne laid her
+hand upon his shoulder to reassure him.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I'm not going. Roger has to go to Chicago and he ran up to say
+good-by."</p>
+
+<p>"That's nice. That's nice, Annie." He patted her hand, his eyes were
+already filming with sleep. In a moment he was breathing evenly again.</p>
+
+<p>He had wakened from his sleep to clutch at her, to hold her to his
+need, no matter what her own. True to his own selfishness until the
+end; his claims always hidden under a false consideration, just as his
+pleased "that's nice, that's nice," covered, in its implication of
+affection for her, the hook with which he would draw her to him, hold
+her between the fussy efforts of Hilda and his own exhausted nerves.</p>
+
+<p>Anne went quietly from the room, closing the door except for the narrow
+crack left open always for his call. In her own room, Rogie was asleep.
+If she lit the light he might wake. She could not lie in the dark
+thinking. She would have liked to go and walk far in the night, but
+Hilda would ask questions. There was no spot in the universe hers, hers
+alone, free from some binding chain, some duty to some one.</p>
+
+<p>In the kitchen, Charlotte Welles was talking while Hilda listened, her
+blue eyes wide in a fascinated interest. As Anne came just inside the
+door, Charlotte's eyes included her in what she had been saying and
+Anne's bitterness changed slowly to anger.</p>
+
+<p>"She has lost everything," Charlotte Welles was saying, "husband,
+child, wealth. But she has found peace. Now she knows. She says she was
+never really happy before."</p>
+
+<p>"It's wonderful. It does seem as if there must be something in it."
+Hilda's head wabbled as if over-weighted by the marvel imposed upon her
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't she give away her money," Anne demanded fiercely, "and
+leave her husband and kill her children—whoever she may be—years ago,
+if that's all she needed for her happiness?"</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte Welles looked up with such gentle understanding of her
+bitterness and hurt that Anne wanted to strike her. What right had
+this woman to penetrate one's mood, to be always down there under the
+surface of one's thoughts? It was as if she had entered a room locked
+against her.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Annie!"</p>
+
+<p>Anne ignored Hilda and went on in a rapid, cracking voice.</p>
+
+<p>"How on earth you can believe such rubbish, I don't know. And to call
+it science! If science is anything, it's the seeking of effect from
+cause. Something happens, and you burrow far enough down under the
+surface and find the cause. A woman loses everything in the world she
+cared about and—she sings for joy! She never loved her husband or
+children nor enjoyed her wealth."</p>
+
+<p>"She did—all three. She was a loyal wife, a devoted mother, and I
+never knew any one do as much good with their money, or use it to finer
+purpose."</p>
+
+<p>"Then she's lying," Anne went on, "she's hysterical and unbalanced by
+grief. It's not peace she's found, it's a delusion."</p>
+
+<p>"It is no delusion. It is peace, the peace that comes from
+understanding."</p>
+
+<p>"'The peace that passes understanding.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That passes understanding—until you find it."</p>
+
+<p>"And no sane person ever will find it in—'Science and Health'."</p>
+
+<p>"Annie! Why, what's got into you?" Hilda flushed with shame of Anne's
+rudeness, but Mrs. Welles did not seem to notice it.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose you know much about Science, do you? Have you ever
+read 'Science and Health'?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But would I have to read a book claiming the moon was made of
+green cheese, to know it wasn't?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not. Long ago the moon was proved not to be made of green
+cheese."</p>
+
+<p>"And long ago, farther back than that, it was proved that human
+beings—except a few insane ascetics—are not happy when everything
+worth while in life is snatched from them and they have nothing left to
+make the fight worth while."</p>
+
+<p>"No power in heaven or earth can snatch everything from one. It is
+impossible to be left with nothing. There is no such thing as a
+spiritual vacuum, because Love is everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Like the poor!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, because there are no poor who cannot escape from their poverty if
+they will. They remain poor because they do not understand Love. They
+do not grasp it as a force, a greater force than any so-called natural
+force that material science has ever discovered. Love is the magnet
+that draws worlds together. No star, no earth, no planet can oppose
+it. The poor, the ill, the unhappy remain so because they do not, will
+not Love. They shut themselves off, insulate themselves against the
+power of Love by their small, physical desires. 'Seek ye first the
+Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.' Christ
+understood."</p>
+
+<p>"Without Mary Baker Eddy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anne! If I were Mrs. Welles I wouldn't explain another thing to you."</p>
+
+<p>"She needn't," Anne said wearily, "I'm going to bed."</p>
+
+<p>And she went. They could talk her over if they liked, wonder, excuse
+her, give her absent treatment. Nothing mattered. They were not real,
+her mother and father and Roger were not real. Black Tom with his
+detached love of humanity and his indifference to Merle; Charlotte
+Welles with her disgusting monopoly of Universal Love, her intrusive
+intimacy with God; all snatching at some personal comfort and dressing
+up their little fetish, just as she dressed Rogie's teddy bear and made
+a sailor of him.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing mattered but sleep.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-FOUR">CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>At the end of three weeks, Roger wrote his first real letter. He was
+going on to the Pennsylvania coal fields, then to New York, the West
+Virginia mining country, the southern cotton mills and home. It would
+take him fully a month longer. Anne read it several times, as if
+committing the itinerary to memory, gathered no picture or quickening
+of interest from it, and slowly tore the pages up. Roger might have
+mapped a trip from star to star, so little did it seem to touch her
+life. The only realities were this growing antagonism between herself
+and Roger, and the helplessness of her father and Rogie. Between these
+two points of advancing Death and Life, Anne stood, making mechanical
+motions of getting up, going to bed, caring for Rogie, listening to
+Hilda's chatter, and filling some of the empty hours for her father.</p>
+
+<p>This was the most difficult of all. No book held him, although he
+complained if none were provided for him. His fettered mind exhausted
+itself in the effort to assimilate experience beyond his own. He would
+put away the travels and biographies and fiction, for which Anne spent
+hours searching the library, for the evening paper or the most trivial
+bit of gossip. Sometimes this need to fill the emptiness about him with
+little concrete facts oppressed Anne until her very jaws ached with the
+unuttered words she could not summon, and her brain went dizzily round,
+searching in the vacancy, conscious of its own motion.</p>
+
+<p>Bound in a life of routine, James Mitchell complained if his useless
+medicine was a moment late, his nourishment delayed. He was jealous of
+Hilda's health and upbraided her cheerfulness as indifference; but when
+she was over-zealous for his comfort he grew irritable and asked for
+Anne.</p>
+
+<p>Anne quieted him. The old friction between them was lost in the
+profundity of Anne's indifference to all that happened. It was
+cloaked under her gentle touch, her quiet movements, her quickness in
+understanding his thickened speech, her anticipation of his needs. He
+liked to hold her cool hand after she had straightened his pillows
+for the night, or feel its sure grip guiding his dragging feet to
+the window to investigate some trivial noise in the street below.
+She read to him for hours, never putting the book aside at his first
+lurching into sleep, and so drawing him back to realization of her own
+preference.</p>
+
+<p>She read on until his gray head dropped to his breast and his hands
+relaxed in his lap. Then Anne would lay aside the book and look at
+him impersonally; at the thin hair, the clothes spotted with dropped
+food, the heavy canes propped against the chair arm. This man was her
+father. From this now decaying body, she had drawn life. She had never
+loved him, never been near him, and could never be quite separated
+from him. From the beginning of Time to the end of Time, the chain
+ran, a living link, a dead link, on and on; health no more permanent
+than decay, life as accidental and meaningless as death. She would
+grow old and rot; Rogie would grow old and rot; and his son's sons
+until Time itself dropped in death. Or, somewhere along the line, Time
+would snap suddenly, as purposeless in its ceasing as in its beginning.
+Her longings for a permanent Beauty, Hilda's unconscious clutching
+at happiness, Roger's childish faith in his power to create justice,
+Black Tom's ferocious idealism, all meaningless words scratched on the
+monument to Death. This overwhelming negation was Reality. Only people
+like Charlotte Welles, blind and insensate before their own terror of
+extermination, could juggle away this truth.</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte Welles no longer annoyed Anne. Charlotte was no more deluded
+than any one else. In the confusion of living, she had darted down a
+blind alley, but no more of a blind alley than any other path opened to
+the shufflings of humanity. At least this path hurt no one, as Roger
+hurt her, as Black Tom hurt Merle, as her father and mother hurt each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>Anne had even grown to like Mrs. Welles and look for her coming.
+With quiet cheerfulness she often led James Mitchell away from the
+realization of his heavy canes and numbed feet back into the only
+world he had ever known. Deep within him, the hope lingered that he
+would again be able to go to the office, make endless rows of figures
+and be commended for his faithfulness: that he would draw his salary,
+place his small bets, make his luckless snatches at fortune, become
+again "the head of the house." Without deliberately deceiving him, Mrs.
+Welles deepened this faith, so that, after a visit from her he was
+actually stronger and once managed, unaided except for his canes, to
+stumble across the room.</p>
+
+<p>Anne felt her always standing beside the sick man, throwing the thread
+of her faith about him, trying to draw him back to health. When she did
+not come for a few days, James fretted.</p>
+
+<p>"I really believe you do him good," Anne said to her at the end of an
+afternoon in which Charlotte had kept him cheerful for hours.</p>
+
+<p>"Faith will move mountains. You can never tell." It was the first
+direct reference she had made to her belief since the night of Anne's
+rudeness. But now, the assurance did not anger Anne. She was too weary.</p>
+
+<p>"Faith in what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Faith—in the power of faith. Just believing."</p>
+
+<p>"Believing that you will get what you want just because you want it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly. Believing in the harmony of Life, knowing that what you
+must have, what your soul needs, must come."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know what your soul needs?"</p>
+
+<p>The other paused, thoughtful. "By listening," she said at last. "By
+escaping from the noise of material life. Material life is not Real."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only reality we have, our brains and bodies and senses to
+measure by."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Welles shook her head. "No. Our brains and bodies and senses
+are not the ultimate reality. It is something else, something almost
+impossible to put into words, something you must feel."</p>
+
+<p>"But how can you feel without your body?"</p>
+
+<p>"By leaving your body behind and going into Silence. Then you Know. You
+Feel it, you See it, you Touch it."</p>
+
+<p>On the last words, Hilda came in, fresh and gay from a walk with Rogie.</p>
+
+<p>"Touch what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Peace and reality," Anne said with a faint smile.</p>
+
+<p>Hilda looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"We were talking of faith," Charlotte explained, "and the absolute
+certainty you get in Silence."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," Hilda nodded. "Just getting away from a racket does help.
+Why, I used to feel sometimes when the children were small, and it
+rained so they had to play in the house, that I'd go frantic with them
+tearing round getting in my way, when I had a lot to do. I broke down
+once and the doctor told me to take things easier, so after that I used
+to go into my own room with a novel every day for an hour and lock the
+door. It helped a lot."</p>
+
+<p>Anne caught the twinkle in Charlotte's eyes and returned it.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd forgotten all about it," Hilda went on. "But I shouldn't wonder if
+that wouldn't be a good thing to keep up. Do you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't take the novel, but I try to get quiet some part of every day."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I could do it without a book. There doesn't seem to
+be anything to think about when you just sit down and try to think."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't try to think. Don't try to do anything. Just relax."</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious, I'd have to crochet or something. I'd feel wicked
+sitting like that wasting the time."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the one thing that isn't wasting time. It's getting at the only
+thing in Life worth getting at."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it? Well, I must say if you can keep your house looking the way it
+does and find time to sit round doing nothing, nothing at all, I guess
+there's something in it. I don't know but what I'll try it sometime."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'd understand better if you didn't 'try it' alone."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'd feel so silly relaxing with other people looking at me."</p>
+
+<p>"Other people wouldn't be looking at you. They'd be quiet too. There's
+a terrific force in many people being quiet together."</p>
+
+<p>"'Many-people-being-quiet-together,'" Anne whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Well—if I were sure they weren't paying any attention," Hilda spoke
+with mounting excitement, as if about to venture an intoxicating drink,
+not quite certain of its after-effects.</p>
+
+<p>"You know that any time you care to come with me," Charlotte suggested,
+"I shall be glad. Our meetings always close with a few moments of utter
+stillness."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I will. I'd like to see it."</p>
+
+<p>"Next Sunday we're going to have one of the Boston Board of Lecturers
+out. If you like, I'll call up for you. About half past three?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just the time I never know what to do with myself. I'd like to."</p>
+
+<p>But the following Sunday when Charlotte came, Hilda had not returned
+from an outing with Rogie.</p>
+
+<p>"She must have forgotten all about it," Anne explained. "She did say
+something about taking Rogie to the Park, but I thought she would be
+back in time. She's been talking about Silence all the week."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Welles laughed and turned to go. She was a little late already.
+"Perhaps the outing will do her just as much good. Besides she can come
+some other time. It makes no difference."</p>
+
+<p>In a moment Charlotte would be gone and there would be nothing for Anne
+to do but sit as she had sat for the last hour, staring out into the
+deserted street, listening to the wind and the heavy breathing of her
+father asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you would take me, instead," Anne said in a sudden need to
+escape from this stillness that had no force or peace in it. "Papa will
+be all right and mamma won't be long now."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. Could you be ready in ten minutes? There's sure to be a
+crowd and I like to walk. It gets me in the mood more than riding in a
+crowded car."</p>
+
+<p>Anne went quickly from the room and was back again in five minutes.
+"I'll just leave a note for moms or she'll wonder what's happened."</p>
+
+<p>She scribbled, "Gone with Mrs. Welles," and pinned the paper on the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>They walked quickly in a silence that rested, so that, by the time they
+reached the church, Anne no longer felt the need of this escape and
+wished she had not come. But as she had herself suggested it, she did
+not know how to retreat now and followed Charlotte through the iron
+gate and up the wide graveled path, with reluctant curiosity and a hope
+that the service would not be long.</p>
+
+<p>The church was a low, gray stone building, covered with ivy, standing
+back from the street on a lawn, undisturbed by shrubs or flowers. Its
+leaded casement windows and outer door of heavy oak studded with nails,
+gave a feeling of age and great strength. Silently swinging doors
+led from the wide vestibule into the body of the building, which was
+covered with thick soft carpet that deadened all sound. Across the foot
+of the platform, stretching the width of the room, great branches of
+oak and huckleberry broke the hardness of line and filled the room with
+a faint odor of living greenness. Half-way down the aisle, they stopped
+and then, with no rustle of disturbance, Anne found herself seated in
+the center of the row. Mrs. Welles took a leaflet from the rack before
+her and Anne looked about.</p>
+
+<p>She had had no clear idea of what such a gathering would be like, but
+now, as she studied the faces of those within her range, she marveled
+at their likeness. There were old and young, men and women, but they
+all looked to have gone through a process that had dissolved their
+personal differences. They all sat quietly, their bodies in repose,
+their faces calm. They were neither eager nor indifferent. No doubt
+or uncertainty disturbed them. Anne could conceive of no opposition
+that would sweep them to anger. No power could force from these
+well-dressed, cultured bodies the cry of rage that lashed the audiences
+of Black Tom O'Connell.</p>
+
+<p>Here there were no slovenly clothes, no stunted bodies, no stormy,
+foreign eyes. They had found their Peace and held it with well-bred
+restraint. They were sure, not waiting; positive, not patient. Before
+this sureness, Katya's was the certainty of an elemental force striving
+through obstacles to prove itself in creation. This surety was the
+after-calm, when God, having labored to create a world, stood back
+satisfied and said: "It is good." It was restful in a way but had
+something of the same supreme aloofness.</p>
+
+<p>The side doors of the platform opened. Two men and a woman, dressed in
+white, took the three vacant chairs behind the hedge of green. A hymn
+was announced and the audience rose. Verse after verse they sang of
+gloating peace and furious good-will. Protected by the music, their
+calm at last broke through restraint, and flung itself aloft in an
+abandon their composed bodies never would have allowed. Anne felt the
+peace about her crack like thin ice and disappear.</p>
+
+<p>When the Reader advanced to the rostrum and the reading of the day's
+selections from the Scriptures and from Science and Health began, Anne
+held her patience by an effort. Before the colossal discovery of Mary
+Baker Eddy, the old Hebrew Prophets were little children searching in
+the dark. Again and again, the name of Mary Baker Eddy, uttered in
+unctuous pride of possession, struck at Anne's resolve to give tolerant
+attention, until she felt her own lips forming the words in the
+respectful pause which invariably preceded them. The old woman herself
+might have been peeping from a door, counting these ordered references,
+tabbing them against a possible omission. But the trained Reader never
+forgot, at the appointed places he gave her due, in perfection of
+delivery that set him aside from others, made him the special messenger
+of the exaggerated optimism of Mary Baker Eddy. When he had finished he
+sat down, in quiet withdrawal, and the Boston Lecturer took his place.</p>
+
+<p>With bowed head, the Boston Lecturer stood for a moment, in silence
+receiving the silent applause, spirit greeting spirit. He was a
+middle-aged man, his slim alertness padded to suave courtesy by
+prosperity; not the obtrusive prosperity of Mr. Benjamin Wilson, but an
+unobtrusive prosperity, like a bank-book bound in morocco to stimulate
+a book of poems. He made sweeping statements of incredible facts, in
+a slow careful way that claimed a long process of logical analysis to
+which they had never been subjected. He spoke fluently, as if he had
+said the same things many times, but inserted unexpected pauses, direct
+demands that gave the impression of deep concern for this special
+audience; a willingness to give them personally of his great abundance.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of twenty minutes, he, too, sat down. A faint motion marked
+the loosened tension of his hearers. The meeting was thrown open
+to testimony. Men and women rose to relate, in nauseating detail,
+illnesses from which they had been cured by Divine Truth. Tumors,
+cancers and wasting weaknesses had been alleviated, instantly in some
+cases, by a reading of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures
+by Mary Baker Eddy. The listeners radiated affirmation. If they had
+ever possessed the power to doubt, it had long ago been buried under
+the weight of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures, by Our
+Revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy.</p>
+
+<p>At last those eager to testify grew fewer. The Reader looked over the
+hall to find no one standing. The Boston Lecturer rose again and named
+the solo to be sung by the woman in white. She came forward in her
+turn to the edge of green and Anne sat back, disappointed to the point
+of tears. The woman sang well, but Anne did not hear. After the solo
+would follow the five minutes of Utter Silence. Anne wished that she
+could get up and slip away. Why had she come?</p>
+
+<p>And then, so silently, so swiftly that she long afterwards recalled
+this moment as one in which she must have lost consciousness, Anne
+felt herself swept out upon a Silence, so deep, so profound that
+there was no room within it for doubt or antagonistic withholding.
+Without a break, as if a great curtain had suddenly and noiselessly
+been rolled back, the whole hall moved into stillness. It was not a
+thing that descended upon them. It was a state into which they passed.
+The terrific wave of silence carried Anne with it; caught her on the
+pinnacle of its huge curve and dropped her gently into a peace so
+profound and so real that Anne felt it laving the whole surface of
+her body. Something within slipped beyond the tight hold of her will,
+escaped from the encasing body in which she had gripped it, claimed its
+own and fled into Peace.</p>
+
+<p>The rustle of others brought Anne back. She got up and followed
+Charlotte Welles through the groups smiling and shaking hands and
+agreeing on the wonders of the Boston Lecturer. She was glad that Mrs.
+Welles did not stop but went directly out, and hoped Charlotte would
+not ask her about the meeting. She could not talk of it. And yet these
+unmagnetic, unvital, bewildered people had within themselves this
+tremendous power. Close to Charlotte Welles she walked in silence,
+angry at their possession of it.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually Anne's mood dulled. Exhausted by her own emotion, she felt
+spiritually weak and drained. In her reaction, she could have dropped
+to sleep. She stifled a yawn and knew that Charlotte had seen. But it
+didn't matter. Without mention of the meeting, Anne left Mrs. Welles at
+the door and went upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>At her step, Hilda looked up from the cake she was slicing and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I never did a thing like that before, but do you know, it never
+entered my head. I took Rogie to the Park and was giving him a ride in
+the goat carriage when it struck me, all of a sudden, that I'd promised
+her. It was four then, but I came, right straight back home, although
+I knew it was too late."</p>
+
+<p>"You might just as well have stayed."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I might. Oh, well, we had a lovely time. Rogie was as good
+as gold. How did you like it? Is there anything in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not for me," Anne said wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought as much. Still, I wish I could believe it. I'd like to get
+rid of that sciatica and no liniment touches it."</p>
+
+<p>"But if you are a scientist, momsy, you don't have sciatica; and if you
+have sciatica you're not a scientist. So they get you coming and going."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose they do," Hilda agreed placidly. "Besides, I haven't tried
+that salt and bacon grease the delicatessen woman told me of. I'll do
+that to-night."</p>
+
+<p>But the sciatica was miraculously cured without the bacon grease
+or Science. It disappeared that very evening with a cablegram from
+Belle. She sent a hundred dollars and said she was starting for home.
+At intervals all evening Hilda read the message. By nine o'clock the
+hundred dollars had been stretched to include a dozen things.</p>
+
+<p>"And a wheel-chair for papa," she concluded.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you buy those other things," Anne warned, struggling to keep
+Hilda's imagination within some kind of bounds.</p>
+
+<p>"Are chairs very expensive?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're sure to be. Perhaps you could get a second-hand one."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps we could."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long pause and then Hilda asked: "Annie, do you suppose
+that papa—do you think he will be able—it would be silly to——"</p>
+
+<p>Anne looked quickly away. "I don't know, mamma, let's ask the doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know just how to do it," Hilda whispered. "But really, Annie,
+if he couldn't use it, it would be——"</p>
+
+<p>"A waste," Anne finished.</p>
+
+<p>But it was another week before the doctor found time to include this
+useless visit in his busy round. He came in mid-afternoon, as James
+Mitchell waked from his after-luncheon nap. He stayed chatting for a
+quarter of an hour and wrote a new prescription to make the sick man
+feel that everything possible was being done. As he left, Hilda drew
+him into the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"He seems brighter, doctor, don't you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You're good nurses. His general health is wonderfully good."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda looked at Anne, the unasked question in her eyes, but Anne
+refused to put it. Not until the doctor was drawing on his gloves, did
+Hilda face it.</p>
+
+<p>"How long, doctor—is there—always a second stroke—how——?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Mrs. Mitchell," he said with his professional smile, "please
+ask me something I can tell you. After all, you know, we doctors
+are not prophets. I have known the strokes to follow each other
+within a very short time and sometimes they are years apart. In
+fact, sometimes the patient never has another and dies of some quite
+other—complication. The only thing to do is rest, quiet and diversion."</p>
+
+<p>After he had gone, Hilda said thoughtfully:</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder, if I went straight down town now, whether they could get a
+chair here to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"You might try."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I will."</p>
+
+<p>Just at dusk, they brought it, a comfortable chair on wheels, with a
+little rack for books, a tiny adjustable side tray, and a footrest.
+Hilda lit both gas jets in the bedroom and Anne wheeled herself gayly
+in. This unusual game covered over the presentation long enough to get
+James settled, and then the added comfort and independence hid, for the
+moment, his terrible need.</p>
+
+<p>No one knew that James Mitchell cried that night when the excitement
+was over.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-FIVE">CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Hour after hour, day after day, the train raced on, away from the
+smoke-wrapped slums of great cities, from great stretches of the earth
+torn open for men's greed, from the mills where little children slaved
+to accumulate the wealth of those whom they would never see. On and
+on, over the sun-soaked earth, across black, fat land; clean and empty
+desert; past lonely farms; little towns, isolated from the inimical
+immensity about them by their fenced gardens, their paved streets and
+electric lights. Above the prairie flatness, the gilded domes of their
+courthouses boomed pompously of law and order, and the tapering spires
+of churches pricked the blue sky to attract the attention of God.</p>
+
+<p>Long after the rest of the car was asleep, Roger sat on the observation
+watching the distant lights break through the thick blackness, come
+near, recede, disappear. Something was so desperately wrong. There was
+so much land, so few owners. So much wealth, so many poor. Myriads
+lived and died, that a few might enjoy. That a few might own the earth,
+millions upon millions tore it apart, herded in unclean cities, built
+uncanny machines to speed the process of accumulation.</p>
+
+<p>When at last the train dropped over the snowy crest of the Sierras and
+plunged down, down past clear mountain lakes, forest fringed, down,
+down into the richest land of all, Roger felt as if something had
+hardened and shaped to new purpose within him. Nothing in all the world
+mattered but to help; to slave too, and die trying to even the chances
+a little. When the ferry docked and the hills of the city rose misty in
+the salt fog creeping across their tops, Roger felt older and full of a
+stronger faith than he had ever had.</p>
+
+<p>And he wanted Anne and Rogie. They were so small and helpless and the
+world was so cruel. He had been impatient lately with Anne, but he did
+not feel now that he would ever be impatient again. He wanted them and
+the quiet little house on the hill.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later he rang the Mitchell bell and Anne peered from the
+dim light above.</p>
+
+<p>"It's me," he called gayly and went up the stairs three at a time. But
+before he could take Anne in his arms or kiss her, a warning gesture
+motioned him to quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa's only just gotten to sleep and if he wakes now he'll get all
+fussed up and nervous. It's been a bad day."</p>
+
+<p>She tiptoed past the partly open door of the sick room and Roger felt
+the darkness within reach through and chill his eagerness. He had not
+telegraphed purposely to take Anne unawares. He had pictured holding
+her in his arms and kissing away the memory of their last meeting
+in a new effort at nearness and understanding. Anne led the way to
+the kitchen and closed the door noiselessly. The gas was not lit and
+through the open back door the fog was stealing swiftly from the hills.
+A silent tidal wave, it was sweeping directly upon himself and Anne
+standing together in the dim dusk. In a moment it would break over the
+thick, black silence of the house and engulf them in its chill.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you let me know, Roger? I hadn't the least idea."</p>
+
+<p>What would have been her greeting if he had? Perhaps a wire to tell him
+to be sure and come up the back stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't positive I could make it. Such a lot of delays turned up. I
+expected once to be here last week. How's Rogie? I suppose he's asleep."</p>
+
+<p>"For hours. Shall I wake him?"</p>
+
+<p>"N-o—no, of course not."</p>
+
+<p>Roger moved to the back door and closed it. The fog was so stealthy, so
+uncannily conscious, an inimical spirit released to stifle himself and
+Anne in its silence. As he turned again Anne struck a match to light
+the gas-taper but he stopped her. He could conceal his disappointment
+better in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't light the light, unless you want it. I like it—dark—after the
+last weeks. It was so noisy and glaring and dirty most of the time."</p>
+
+<p>Anne put the taper back on its hook. "I like it this way, too," she
+said in a detached tone that drew Roger's attention sharply. It was the
+voice of some one, not at all concerned with present reality, scarcely
+conscious of its surroundings. It was as lonely and detached as a wisp
+of the fog. He went nearer to her.</p>
+
+<p>"How is your father? Better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He's better on the whole, in some ways at least. But——" Anne
+shivered. "It's terrible, watching some one die; that's what it
+really is. He may live for years like this, good days and then a bad
+day—but—all the time—he is really dying—dying every day—a little
+bit—dropping apart—until—he drops away altogether over the Edge."</p>
+
+<p>She was turned to him, but her eyes strained past to the chasm beyond
+the Edge, and her hands were clenched as if she would hold the old man
+from it.</p>
+
+<p>Roger put his arm about her, but Anne stood stiffly within his hold,
+seeing only the terrible, slow progress of her father to the grave.
+But to Roger, it was not terrible that one old man, criminal in his
+narrowness and stupidity, was slowly dying in the same dull way he
+had lived. There was a magnificent poetic justice in it—the little
+gray mole, creeping blindly through life, now creeping blindly,
+selfishly toward death. Men in their prime poured their strength into
+the fiery pits of the steel mills; the slums of great cities battened
+on the babyhood of thousands; here, in the comfort of his home, one
+uninteresting, unimportant human unit was dying. He had contributed
+nothing to life. He would leave no unfillable space behind him. Even
+his own wife would not sincerely mourn him, nor would the faintest ray
+of beauty be dimmed in any life by his going. Impatience touched Roger,
+although he still held Anne and quietly stroked her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't think about it like that. Your father isn't old, but he
+isn't young, either. He has had the average length of life. We all have
+to die."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" Anne whispered fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>Before the mills debouching their hundreds at set hours, the miles upon
+miles of sordid streets, Roger's eyes saddened.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know—unless it is to make more room."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why not go now—every one, quickly and cleanly—instead of
+rotting into it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Suicide? No. Not until you're sure anyhow that you can't do anything
+to make it better. It can't be the purpose of life, this horrible
+chaos, like the panic at a fire, with the stronger treading down the
+weak."</p>
+
+<p>Anne shivered. "The strong—as you call them—have been treading on
+the weak since the beginning of time and will go on to the end. If it
+would all stop—just for a day, an hour—not a human being on the face
+of the earth—not a sound—just silence. Perhaps we could hear then—if
+there's anything to hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Anne! You're getting morbid. What do you do here all day? How many
+times a week do you get out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whenever I want to. I'm not tied here."</p>
+
+<p>"You might as well be, if you take no more advantage of your freedom
+than you look to have done. You're thinner, Anne, a lot thinner. And I
+don't like it."</p>
+
+<p>The old man in the other room was thinner, too, so thin that Anne could
+feel his shoulder blades when she put her arm round to help him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so. I feel all right anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't possibly—and look the way you do. Haven't you heard from
+Belle yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. She cabled a hundred dollars. We bought papa a wheel-chair."</p>
+
+<p>Across the wheel-chair, Anne felt the thought leap to Roger's brain.
+They should have hired some one to help with James. She should have
+rested and taken walks and kept herself in condition for his coming.
+Like a valuable animal for his master's pleasure. She moved from
+Roger's hold, understanding of his resentment in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He can get out on the back porch now when it's sunny."</p>
+
+<p>"That's nice," Roger said indifferently. "When is Belle coming back?"</p>
+
+<p>"In a few weeks. She cabled from Genoa."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to stay until she comes?"</p>
+
+<p>"No—I don't think so—not unless you're going away again."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going away that I know of."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll be home to-morrow. I can't very well to-night because I made
+mamma go to Pinafore with Mrs. Welles. She won't be back till twelve
+and I can't leave papa and Rogie."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not." There was a short self-conscious pause and then
+Roger said:</p>
+
+<p>"Does His Highness get that 'daddy' any better than he did? I don't
+suppose so, just because I feel I've been away a year."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, he does. He says it quite distinctly. And he makes a weird
+noise that papa insists is 'grandpa'."</p>
+
+<p>They both smiled. For an instant they had met in Rogie. Once more Roger
+tried to reach to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"I often wished that you could have come with me. It was a wonderful
+experience."</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been. Did you have a good trip?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. We swung the convention. But the rest of it—Anne, it's terrible.
+They're so thwarted and driven! Millions of human beings with never a
+real rest, never all they need to eat, and worse than all—no hope, not
+even understanding, so many of them. Down in the social mud they're
+crawling, thousands upon thousands, like lower forms of life, not
+undeveloped, but being pushed back, down the scale of humanity. Human
+beings—going backward!"</p>
+
+<p>But no thrill of anger gripped Anne. What did it matter whether one
+went forward or backward, since, in the end all dropped in death. Roger
+and Black Tom spoke as if this life were the purpose of creation; the
+personal comfort of the individual the apex of creation's effort;
+while all the time, behind this violence of adjustment, Death stood
+indifferent to their misunderstanding. Across the confusion of living,
+Death's shadow lay, penetrating to consciousness in moments of illness;
+in the stillness of dawn; in moments of physical exhaustion, when the
+weary body for an interval ceased its demands and something within
+yearned toward its own without; in rare moments like the massed silence
+that had swept Anne into peace. Death was the Great Silence, the
+everlasting Peace.</p>
+
+<p>"I know," she said absently.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know," Roger broke out passionately. "We have no conception
+of it out here. The land itself is too rich, the mountains and the sun
+and sea are too emotional. We're all drugged with the beauty of the
+land. We have no slums, no poverty as they have it in New York and
+Chicago and Philadelphia. We have graft, oppression, rotten politics,
+indifference, all the symptoms of the disease, but the ghastly, running
+sore itself we do not see. Broiling heat in summer, freezing cold in
+winter, twice every year adjusting the mere physical machinery of
+life to climate—a scramble for coal in the winter; for ice and air
+in summer; thousands of people herded in a single block, hundreds of
+families, packed like sardines in a can; layer on layer of life in
+one rotting building! Two men for every job. Millions of bewildered
+insects crawling over each other to find a little morsel to pick from
+the carcass."</p>
+
+<p>His voice had risen and Anne motioned him hastily to lower it.</p>
+
+<p>"It's terrible, dear, but please don't wake papa. He has to have all
+the sleep he can and if he wakes now he'll have a hard time getting to
+sleep again."</p>
+
+<p>The old man in the next room must not be wakened! He was indeed the
+great, safe, sane, middle-class incarnate. James Mitchell and his
+daughter Anne! With her "It's terrible, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think you'd better go straight home, you're tired out," Anne
+suggested after a short silence.</p>
+
+<p>Roger shrugged. "I'm not tired, not bodily tired. I couldn't sleep if I
+went home."</p>
+
+<p>Remembering the tomb-like stillness of which Roger had complained, Anne
+laid her hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come the first thing in the morning, Roger. Now papa has the
+chair, it helps such a lot. I'll come up two or three afternoons a
+week, but I don't really need to be here steadily."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't come unless you feel you want to," Roger said dully and moved
+to the door. He opened it cautiously, no need to warn him now. They
+tiptoed to the stair-head, kissed perfunctorily, and Anne watched him
+to the door which he closed noiselessly. The next moment the chug of a
+starting motor drew Anne's attention and she hurried to a front window.
+A taxi was just leaving, the driver's head bent to catch Roger's
+instructions.</p>
+
+<p>He had come in a taxi, kept it waiting, and now was going back in it!</p>
+
+<p>"And he thinks he's consistent," Anne whispered with quiet bitterness.
+"Dollars wasted and—'thousands never have enough to eat.'"</p>
+
+<p>She watched the taxi out of sight and went slowly back to the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>She was still sitting there in the dark when Hilda came. At her
+mother's step, Anne jumped up and lit the light, otherwise she would
+have to explain or invent an excuse for sitting in the dark. No one
+understood without words. The smallest act had to be dragged out, cut
+up into speech and put together like an intricate puzzle. And then it
+was not really understood.</p>
+
+<p>Radiantly gay, her curls damp and tight with the fog, Hilda bustled in.</p>
+
+<p>"You just lit the light, didn't you? I thought I saw it go up."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you? How was the show?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, it was too funny for words. I haven't enjoyed a thing so for
+years. You must see it. There's a matinée to-morrow. I'll feel selfish
+if you don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I will, sometime before it goes. It'll be here a week. But I
+can't to-morrow. Roger's home."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda's gayety vanished. "Oh," she said forlornly, "I suppose you'll be
+going, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. To-morrow, I think."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda took off her things and they had some hot cocoa. In its warmth,
+her cheerfulness returned. To-morrow her freedom would be gone. But
+to-morrow was to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Anne, I never laughed so much in my life. That's the funniest
+thing that ever was written."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-SIX">CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The next day Anne went home and the following Monday was back in the
+loft. A long period of stagnant waiting had ended in a new burst of
+hope and the place vibrated with the rush of people going and coming.
+Like the three prongs of a huge fork, Black Tom, Roger and Katya caught
+up on their unflagging faith and indefatigable energy the smaller plans
+and physical limitations of those about them.</p>
+
+<p>Often Anne came from a revery to find that her hands had been idle on
+the keyboard for a long time. There was no safe, quiet spot anywhere
+in life. The surface at every point was heaving, just as the surface
+of the earth had heaved and cracked on the day of the Great Quake,
+torn open by forces within itself. Until then the earth had been the
+most stable thing in the universe. Sun and moon came and went; stars
+gleamed and died away; rain beat upon it and the wind swept over it,
+but, to human sense, the old, old earth was still. And then, in a
+moment, without warning, its patience exhausted, it had risen and like
+an angry giant, struggled to hurl aside the pigmies crawling upon it.
+Anne had never forgotten that feeling, as the earth began to rock, the
+feeling of being grasped and personally shaken by a malignant force
+beyond her power to propitiate, a force growing more and more furious,
+illimitable in its anger. In a moment it might release her or it might
+go on forever until it had annihilated every living thing.</p>
+
+<p>There was no permanence, no sureness, no stability, no stillness
+anywhere. Often Anne closed her machine and slipped away unable to
+endure the noise and confusion. But out upon the streets the noise
+and confusion continued. People hurried everywhere. Cars clanged by
+obeying many desires to go in many directions. Newsboys shrieked their
+announcements of murders, explosions, and terrible deeds of violence.
+Sometimes Anne sought quietness by the sea, but, gripped in the law of
+ebb and flood, the sea roared or moaned or whimpered to its degree of
+strength.</p>
+
+<p>As the weeks passed, the longing for a place of stillness, one little
+spot of silence, grew to a desperate need. She must have it. Somewhere
+it must exist, this small place of peace where she could stop for
+a moment. She thought of the meeting to which she had gone with
+Charlotte, but when she visioned the interval that preceded filled
+with the assertions of false optimism, the hymns of gloating joy, the
+sickening testimony, she could not face them. Then the silence had
+caught her but Anne knew that if she sought it deliberately in these
+surroundings it would escape. Perhaps, somewhere else, in other faiths,
+if she searched she would find it. Anne began to search.</p>
+
+<p>And now, that all her thought was turned to find Silence, she found
+others seeking, too. Some sought silence in costly edifices, beautiful
+with stained glass and priceless paintings. Others in public halls,
+cozily furnished rooms, rickety buildings. In offices that did double
+service, where Business and Silence alternated like opposing armies
+occupying the same fortress successively.</p>
+
+<p>There were Services of Silence conducted by men and services by women.
+Some built a vestibule of music and, in the beautiful vestments of
+ancient orthodoxy, walked slowly through to the treasure room of
+Stillness. Others, in the common garb of everyday, entered without
+prelude. Some plunged from the roar of traffic into Silence as if it
+were a bath; others went through little personal rituals of reading and
+bodily posturing, as if to steal upon it unawares.</p>
+
+<p>Old, old faiths claimed silence as their own, and conceded reluctantly
+to the modern scramble in simple statements of the hour and place they
+offered it. Like a conservative firm reluctant to meet the modern need
+of advertising, they offered this staple so long a specialty of their
+own. New faiths shrieked of Silence as if it were a food to be eaten
+instantly before it cooled.</p>
+
+<p>"A half-hour of Silence, from twelve to twelve-thirty,"—like the
+professional card of a reputable physician; and "Come and be Quiet
+With Us"; "Learn the Power of Silence"; "Be Still and Know"—the paid
+advertisement of a hustling quack.</p>
+
+<p>Anne sought but could not find. The stained glass and wide arches of
+the churches; the few cozily placed chairs of ordinary rooms were as
+glaring in their claims as the thick carpet, the heavy oaken door and
+casement windows of the little gray stone church. The solemn music, the
+sentimental texts upon the walls, as artificial as the modulated voice
+of the Trained Reader and the bowed head of the Boston Lecturer.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Outwardly Anne grew quieter and quieter. Sometimes she saw Katya
+watching her with a mingling of triumph and curiosity that would have
+interested her deeply six months before. Now, nothing interested her.
+Not even the dependence of Rogie held her to the exclusion of this
+growing need to find a place of peace. Once, Rogie had seemed to fill
+every need, but now Anne knew within herself something over and above
+the power of any person or situation quite to fill. It had always been
+so. In her love for her mother and Belle, there had been the empty spot
+of longing for a wider life and deeper interests. Then Roger had come,
+with the wider life and deeper interests, but the tiny empty spot had
+remained, the very core of herself that had never melted into Roger's.
+Now, she and Roger could scarcely see each other across the space of
+separation.</p>
+
+<p>Concerned with the pain of the world, Roger strode on, confusing the
+force of his own effort with the accomplishment of results. When, early
+in spring, he won the case of a Hindoo revolutionist, he was as excited
+as Rogie at a new toy. He came shouting down the loft, and because
+Katya was out, and he had to share this enthusiasm with some one, came
+to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"Singh's been released. They couldn't make their case. We've got them
+on the run." Perched on the railing about Anne's desk, he swung his
+feet like an excited boy. "Of course England will chase him out of
+India again, but he'll get in some deadly licks before she does. Gosh,
+but I'd like to be there to-day. Think of it, that slip of a fellow,
+stirring up that old race, prodding it out of its centuries of sleep."</p>
+
+<p>But Anne did not see that old race rising from its sleep. At most it
+would be only a little turning, as Rogie turned and then settled to
+deeper sleep. She shrugged: "He will prod and then die."</p>
+
+<p>"What of that? It doesn't nullify his accomplishment. Suppose millions
+more still have to do it. Can't you get the romance—if nothing else?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne smiled faintly. "That's just what I do get—millions of
+sleepers—in an ageless sleep." Across the room, Black Tom was the
+center of an excited group, elated at the success of Singh. A messenger
+boy dashed in with a telegram. Two telephones rang wildly. "It's like a
+little child with a horn," she said quietly, "blowing because he likes
+to hear the noise himself."</p>
+
+<p>Roger's hands clenched and he dropped quickly from the railing.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got—just about as much imagination—as a flea."</p>
+
+<p>Anne shrugged. "Since you don't know the extent of a flea's
+imagination, your figure hasn't much force, has it?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger turned away and Anne went on with her work.</p>
+
+<p>At two o'clock she left the office and went to the flat. But even
+here she was not needed as she once had been. On her return, Belle
+had installed a practical nurse three afternoons a week to relieve
+Hilda, and the woman had filled Anne's place completely. Anne went
+on the days she did not come, but she felt her in Hilda's accounts
+of how "she rests papa and manages him to perfection," and in James'
+constant references to things she said or did for him. Now that there
+was no need to fill hours with chatter, Anne missed the need. The empty
+relationship with her father was emptier than before.</p>
+
+<p>In the vacuum of her isolation, Anne began to watch her thoughts, until
+she came to see them as minute machines, installed within her brain by
+some outside power, clicking away independent of her will. A power was
+working out some experiment with her, using her brain as if it were a
+dark room for the development of a film. Without emotion Anne watched
+the negative develop. She grew absorbed in the process. She often
+asked Roger to repeat a statement, and then sat motionless, watching
+its reaction, as if it were a stone he had dropped into the well of
+her intelligence. With judicial exactness she weighed the most trite
+remark, until conversation with Anne became impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Roger escaped it when he could. Night after night, he stayed on at
+the office and Anne ate her dinner alone. Or he returned to work
+immediately after dinner, always courteous and insincere in his excuse.
+Anne saw the insincerity but never resented it. She was glad to have
+Roger go. When he stayed there was nothing real to talk about and the
+effort of making conversation with Roger was more exhausting than the
+lonely evening.</p>
+
+<p>It was on a Sunday afternoon, after several such evenings in
+succession, that Anne sat pretending to read in her favorite place,
+a cushioned settle under the window that gave on the bay and hills
+beyond. It was a still day of little wind, but a dry, high fog hid the
+sun. It was three o'clock, the dreariest, the least personal of any
+hour of the day. The feeling of youth that morning has was gone. The
+positiveness of evening and lighted lamps had not yet come.</p>
+
+<p>Roger had gone to the office in the morning, read for a little after
+lunch and was now asleep in the darkened room beyond, Rogie in the crib
+beside him. But he would not sleep much longer. Rogie would probably
+wake when he did and Roger would play a while with him. Then, unless
+Roger went to a meeting, they would sit, each absorbed or feigning
+absorption in his reading: Roger in some legal or economic work of vast
+pretension, Anne in her novel, a thing so far from life in the maudlin
+sentimentality, spread like soft icing over the relation between the
+man and the woman, that it would better have been frankly a fairytale.
+About them the silence of the dead hour would close and they would sit
+in peace as false as the stillness of the churches and small meeting
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Anne thrust her book aside. If she went out to walk, the Sunday streets
+would echo the tread of others trying to kill the day in the same way.
+At the flat James would be asleep in his chair, Hilda napping in the
+dining-room. Anne leaned forward, her elbows on the sill, her chin
+in her palms. The Bay, flat and gray as if it, too, were exhausted
+from the week's work, stretched to the fog-crowned hills. Under the
+pall, the Sleeping Beauty on Tamalpais had passed to eternal rest. The
+commanded peace of the Seventh Day shut like a cover of lead upon the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Only Charlotte Welles could move beneath such grayness, unconscious
+of its deadening weight. She would be walking now, with her short,
+quick steps, straight to the peace she entered at her will. Anne moved
+uneasily, like a sick person resisting a desired opiate. Perhaps, if
+she went once again, and tried not to hear the hymns or the testimonies
+or the selected readings, if she slipped into the back seat, just
+before the meeting closed, she might yet grasp the secret and have it
+for her own.</p>
+
+<p>In the room beyond, Rogie cried and Roger woke. She heard him lift the
+baby from its crib and in a moment they were laughing together. Then
+the blind went up with a noisy spring, and Roger came out, rested and
+carrying the delighted Rogie in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"There, you little fake." He deposited the baby on the rug before
+the fire, threw a piece of wood which caught instantly in gay little
+tongues of flame, and laughed at Rogie's clumsy efforts to reach them
+through the screen. But Anne did not see them. She was looking at
+Roger's back, at the rumpled hair and slightly creased shirt, with
+faint distaste.</p>
+
+<p>Roger removed his son to safer distance, stretched and crossed to the
+window on the other side of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Beastly day. I wonder how that Kenneally meeting will be."</p>
+
+<p>Roger yawned and, leaning against the window sash, looked into the
+gray stillness for an inspiration. Rogie, finding the pretty flames
+inaccessible and himself deserted, puckered his face for a cry, which
+Anne diverted just in time by cuddling him to her and kissing his bare
+toes.</p>
+
+<p>Roger turned listlessly from the window, took a cigarette from the
+brass box on the mantel shelf, and began to walk up and down.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going? It's at four, isn't it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know—I haven't decided yet. Kenneally isn't much of a
+speaker."</p>
+
+<p>He might not go. The afternoon would shut heavy upon them. She could
+not face it. She carried Rogie into the bedroom and closed the door.
+She dressed first and then dressed Rogie. If Roger did decide to go,
+she did not wish to prevent him by leaving the baby on his hands. A
+few moments later, carrying Rogie, delighted at the prospect of going
+out, but objecting strongly to his bonnet, which he tried to remove by
+vicious tugs, Anne came into the living-room. Roger was in his chair
+now, an open book on his lap. He looked up surprised at Anne, dressed
+to go out.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take him, so you needn't stay in if you want to go to the
+meeting."</p>
+
+<p>"Going up to the house?" He was sure she was because Anne never went
+anywhere else on a Sunday, but he always mentioned her coming and going
+with kindly formality.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I'm going to church."</p>
+
+<p>"To church!"</p>
+
+<p>Anne drew on her gloves and nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"What church?"</p>
+
+<p>"Christian Science."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" Roger barked the word in exasperated astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"The Christian Science Church," Anne said with maddening composure, as
+if she were disciplining a child for its harsh voice.</p>
+
+<p>Roger closed his book and rose. "Are you a Scientist now?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what do you want to go and listen to that drivel, for?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne did not answer and moved to the door. Roger stepped quickly in
+front of her.</p>
+
+<p>"How many times have you been?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne's face flamed with the ugly, brick-red flush. Her body tightened
+and she looked scornfully at Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be late as it is," she said stiffly. "Please let me pass."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't." Roger knew that his anger was carrying him to rudeness,
+but Anne's manner rasped him beyond control. Behind Anne, he saw the
+subtle, low-voiced influence of Charlotte Welles. A Christian Science
+wife, believing in the muddled effusions of a sick old woman; for all
+he knew practicing her ridiculous faith upon him. Lost in a stupid
+philosophy that denied disease and poverty, Anne dared to look in scorn
+at Black Tom, at Katya, at Singh, at himself. With a quick movement,
+Anne passed him and laid her hand on the door-knob.</p>
+
+<p>"You sha'n't go," he cried, white with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go where I please," Anne answered quietly, "I don't interfere
+with you. You can go to your meeting, listen to your own particular
+brand of 'drivel,' pump up the enthusiasm of a few dozen people who
+don't know what else to do with themselves on a Sunday afternoon. At
+least, the few million Scientists, more or less, in the world, haven't
+had their belief manufactured and forced down their throats."</p>
+
+<p>Roger's anger died. He reached for Rogie, and before Anne knew what had
+happened, holding the baby firmly, Roger stood aside.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right. You don't interfere with me. But Rogie doesn't go."</p>
+
+<p>It was Anne now who flamed to anger. Standing upon her tiptoes she
+snatched for the baby, who, thinking it was a new kind of game, wound
+his hands in his father's thick hair and kicked with joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Give him to me," she commanded in a cracked whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Roger stepped back, for between himself and Anne clutching for their
+child, the old Anne stood upon her tiptoes defying John Lowell.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Rogie does not go." He turned and went silently back to the fire
+and sat down, Rogie clinging to his neck. For a moment Anne stood
+motionless in an anger that seemed to have frozen her to the bone.
+Then, with a sob that was a cry of hate, she opened the door and went
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Until it was dark, Anne walked up one street and down another. She
+passed mean houses where families sat at dinner behind partly-drawn
+blinds, and stately homes, the intimacy of family life decorously
+concealed behind thick curtains. She did not know when the high fog
+parted and the stars came out, but when the sky was all a-glitter and
+a soft little wind ruffled the bay, she found herself sitting on a
+pile of lumber at the farthest jetty of Fisherman's Wharf. The lighted
+ferries lumbered cheerfully, the fishing boats grated softly on the
+piles. A few yards behind, in the new warehouse of Giuseppe Morelli, a
+group of fishermen laughed and chattered while they mended their nets
+against the turn of the tide.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the wharf, on the rocky crest of a hill, she could just glimpse
+the cottage light. She looked at it for a long time without emotion.
+She was cold and calm. Nothing could ever again stir her to anger or
+feeling of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>The wind freshened. The men began climbing down into their boats. With
+much calling back and forth, the boats pushed off.</p>
+
+<p>Anne left the wharf and went slowly up the steep, silent streets. At
+the foot of her own stairs she stopped and looked at her watch. It was
+five minutes after eleven.</p>
+
+<p>The light in the cottage was out, the fire lay a handful of smoldering
+embers. The room was rather cold but she was not conscious of its
+chill although she stood for some time listening to the even breathing
+of Roger asleep in the next room. Then she crept into the bedroom,
+undressed and got noiselessly into bed. At its warmth, she shivered as
+if touched by something unclean. But in a few minutes she was asleep,
+worn by her long walk and the storm of anger and despair.</p>
+
+<p>In the dawn, Roger woke, and, turning slightly, looked at Anne. She was
+sleeping as always, on her side, her cheek pillowed on one arm; small,
+exquisitely fair and utterly unmoving. Roger looked at her, almost with
+surprise that she should be there. And then aversion to Anne's body
+gripped him. He did not want to touch her or be near her. Never again
+of his own impulse would he wish to hold her in his arms or kiss her.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-SEVEN">CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Winter came, a dry winter of cool mornings and nights, and days of
+clear sunshine. Against this sparkling background, Anne and Roger moved
+side by side in almost total silence. Anne still went to the loft but
+not regularly. Roger never asked why she stayed away or what she did
+with her time. He worked now far into the night, often even after Katya
+had gone with a comforting, indifferent "good night." Sometimes they
+left together and Roger walked as far as her car with her, talking of
+their plans, never of personal things. If she noticed that Anne no
+longer came regularly to the loft, she never mentioned it, nor did she
+make any comment when Anne ceased coming at all.</p>
+
+<p>It was in February that Rogie had an attack of croup and Anne stayed
+away for two weeks. When he was well she did not return. On the first
+night of his illness she had moved his crib into the wing of the
+living-room they called a library and this arrangement was maintained.
+She bought a screen of silk and lacquer and converted the wing into a
+comfortable bedroom. Roger made no comment. For a few days their eyes
+held consciousness of the change and then they spoke indifferently of
+"your room" and "my room."</p>
+
+<p>On the evenings when Roger was home, Anne usually retired first. Behind
+the impregnable wall of silk and lacquer, Roger heard the soft swish
+of her garments as she dropped them, then the even breathing of her
+sleep. For a little while, after their forced nearness in the illness
+of Rogie, Roger would sometimes close his book, and, with tightening
+muscles, glare at this thing of silk, or stare before him, trying to
+find a clew through the present to the past.</p>
+
+<p>When had it all begun?</p>
+
+<p>Farther back than the day that Anne had snatched at Rogie. Much farther
+back than that. Perhaps, back at the very beginning, when Anne had been
+afraid to tell her people. But when Roger visioned again the Indian
+graveyard, the weeks by the lake, the Basque herder playing his flute
+in the sunny meadow, the clinging of Anne's lips that last night, and
+moments in their first months, the clew vanished in hurt wonder.</p>
+
+<p>If moments like those were not real, what was? If a certainty as real
+as the certainty that had come to him in the sweeping wind on the Bluff
+was false, what was true?</p>
+
+<p>Had their nearness even then held within itself the germ of discord?
+Had this erosion of difference, that had at last eaten its way down to
+their physical relationship, always existed between himself and Anne?
+Did it exist between all men and women, and was that marvelous nearness
+only a cloak over the stark skeleton of sex? The hunger once appeased,
+was the purpose satisfied, and did the soul demand this separateness
+for its own development? Was marriage only the lowering of an ideal
+beyond the average man and woman to reach?</p>
+
+<p>At farther and farther intervals, the puzzle held him. Then, wonder
+settled to acceptance. Roger no longer heard the swish of Anne's
+garments or her breathing behind the screen. He came from the office
+pleasantly tired and was content with the wide coolness of the big bed
+and freedom.</p>
+
+<p>But his mouth grew firmer and his eyes lit less often. Like a copy done
+in fainter wash, his eyes at times had the loneliness of Black Tom's.
+Katya watched and found it harder and harder not to go to him on the
+nights they worked alone. Often after they had separated, and Katya sat
+in the ugly hall bedroom that had been her home for years, she would
+clench her fists and pound the washstand as if it were a rostrum and
+she were addressing a crowd:</p>
+
+<p>"It had to come, with that little fool. She couldn't hold him back. He
+will grow now."</p>
+
+<p>But when, stealing a glance toward Roger, she saw him staring out
+across the loft with lonely eyes, she would have had him happy at any
+price. To have his enthusiasm bubble over in gayety as it used to do,
+to feel him warmly happy, Katya would have freely given the years that
+remained. Standing at that terrible spot of middle ground, the future
+clear in the light of the past and perfect knowledge of self, looking
+back down the lonely years indifferently, through the future lonelier
+still, nothing mattered but to have Roger happy.</p>
+
+<p>At last, one night in early April, a warm night of many stars, Katya
+rose from her machine and went to Roger sitting motionless at Black
+Tom's desk. It was late and the others had all gone long ago. As Katya
+took a seat on the window sill, Roger looked up, not concerned at all
+with this action of Katya's but with the confusion of his own thought.
+He had gone home to dinner that night, stirred by the soft spring
+warmth, to make an effort at some kind of adjustment with Anne. They
+had slipped so far now, to almost quarreling over the most trivial
+things. To-night Anne had objected to the way he sat at the table and
+asked with plaintive primness if the world would be saved any more
+quickly if every one slouched over his plate like a plow-hand. And he,
+in blind rage to smash that primness to bits, had deliberately done
+things to annoy her, until he felt the disgust in Anne's eyes flick him
+like whips. The remainder of the meal had been eaten in hasty silence
+and he had left immediately after.</p>
+
+<p>What a thing to quarrel over!</p>
+
+<p>Katya smoked through her cigarette and then said slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you go on?"</p>
+
+<p>So perfectly did it fit with Roger's thought, that he answered with no
+wonder at her understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>There was a short silence before Katya added: "You ought never to have
+married her."</p>
+
+<p>"I—suppose not. But it seemed——" Roger broke off, disturbed at
+discussing Anne with another. He shrugged and made a motion as if to
+go on with his work. But he felt Katya's look on him, and, after a
+moment, met it. Her concern was too deep for insincerity and he said
+thoughtfully:</p>
+
+<p>"Love is a queer thing. One thinks it is going to last forever and bear
+any weight. Perhaps the very weight of the years themselves must break
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Katya made a strange noise deep in her throat, as if the words were
+cracking their way through some obstruction.</p>
+
+<p>"Love does bear any weight—love, but nothing else. Only there is so
+little love and so few find it. What the world calls love is a flash
+of desire—a Catherine wheel of emotion, Life's urge to continue
+tricked out in finery, like an old woman dressed in silk. Fools. They
+understand nothing. They are afraid of truth, everywhere. To excuse
+the suffering in the world, the human cruelty of man to man, they have
+invented the patient, anemic Christ. The fact of sex they have hung
+over with the ornaments of matrimony. And of Love they know nothing,
+nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>Katya had turned while she spoke and was looking out now through
+the open window to the light-strewn city. Seen so, in profile, the
+thickness of feature was thinned to hardness. It seemed to Roger, for a
+moment, that Katya had never been born, would never die. She was like
+her own steppes, stretching away beyond the weariness of human sight,
+unhurt by the rage of men. She was eternal truth and courage.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps. But if you're not one of the rare few? We have been as happy
+as most people."</p>
+
+<p>"And now you are content to be as miserable as most people. To go on
+year after year, dragging at each other, quarreling, making up, hating,
+despising, driven sometimes, by a force beyond you—to—to—mocking
+Love."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't," Roger whispered. "Don't. You're exaggerating. One adjusts to
+anything in time."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And then there is no strength left for anything else—and
+spiritually—you die. You will die. You are weaker than she is, because
+there is no force so unbreakable as the rigidity of self-righteous
+mediocrity. You will die—in this 'adjustment,' slowly perhaps,
+as thousands of others have died, sometimes men, sometimes women,
+whichever has the finer soul. 'It is easier for a camel to pass through
+the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of
+Heaven.' But a camel goes easier through the eye of a needle than a
+high purpose breathes with a smaller fastened upon it. Adjust and die."</p>
+
+<p>Katya threw the stub of her cigarette violently out the window and then
+leaned from it to watch the tiny red spark expiring on the black tarred
+roof below.</p>
+
+<p>"What—can—I do?"</p>
+
+<p>Katya's brain despised the question and her arms ached for Roger.</p>
+
+<p>"Do? Leave. Demand your own life."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave Anne!"</p>
+
+<p>Katya shrugged. Why did she love this boy looking at her like a
+frightened baby?</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to go on like this forever?"</p>
+
+<p>The future opened before Roger, all the years to the end faced by the
+lacquer screen, the almost silent meals, the never-ceasing need for
+watchfulness, artificial and unfree.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said slowly. "No."</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't."</p>
+
+<p>"There's—Rogie."</p>
+
+<p>With a broken laugh, Katya got down from the window sill.</p>
+
+<p>"And, in a few years, there will probably be others. Then your 'duty'
+will be still clearer."</p>
+
+<p>She clumped away and a moment later Roger heard her heavy step going
+down the stairs. He stayed for another hour, staring out into the
+night.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-EIGHT">CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Now that he had worded aloud the idea of leaving Anne, the thought was
+always with him.</p>
+
+<p>Spiritual freedom. He wished for no other. The man in the street might
+talk as if sex were a devouring hunger, a ravening wolf ready to spring
+upon one unexpectedly at any moment. But sex without companionship
+nauseated him to visualize. There might be moments—these he would deal
+with when they arose. Now, the wind of spiritual freedom carried no
+taint of lesser, fiercer need.</p>
+
+<p>How did Anne feel? Perhaps she, too, would welcome freedom. He had
+visioned restrictions binding him alone. Perhaps Anne, too, was bound.</p>
+
+<p>The need to know consumed Roger's thought and his impatience with
+smaller issues. As one forgives trivial failings in the face of a great
+crisis, Roger grew strangely gentle and forbearing. He rarely left home
+in the evenings now, and Anne often felt his eyes on her questioningly,
+as she sat sewing under the lamp. For she rarely read; she so often
+forgot to turn the pages.</p>
+
+<p>It was one evening, about three weeks after he had talked with Katya,
+that Roger looked up to see Anne almost immersed under a billow of
+white material. Usually Anne's work was something small and compact,
+and more than once he had traced fanciful analogies between the short,
+swift movements of Anne's needle, mending a jagged hole in a sock, and
+the mental methods of the world of Mitchells. It was with such little
+stabs that they attempted to draw together the holes of life, patch it
+for what?—a few more wearings at best. But to-night, as if in keeping
+with the wonder of Anne's attitude to freedom, she was engaged on
+larger work.</p>
+
+<p>He laid his book aside and asked with real interest:</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne started. They scarcely ever broke in on each other's occupations
+any more.</p>
+
+<p>"A sheet."</p>
+
+<p>"A sheet? Do you make sheets? I thought you bought them all ready."</p>
+
+<p>"You do, if you want to throw away every one that gets a hole in it.
+But you can cut them in two—they usually wear in the center—and sew
+them up again and they're as good as new except for the seam."</p>
+
+<p>Roger was disappointed. No doubt it was an excellent method, but it
+annoyed him. It was so vehemently sensible and frugal.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me that's mending—in extremis. If we need new sheets I
+wish you'd buy them."</p>
+
+<p>"We don't need new sheets. These are for mamma. Hers are almost all
+gone."</p>
+
+<p>Roger felt as if he were being quietly suffocated in an ocean of mended
+sheets. He sat looking at Anne until his eyes disturbed her beyond her
+power to pretend indifference. She glanced up, but before she could ask
+him why he was so interested in her sewing, Roger spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne," he said slowly, "why aren't things the same as they used to be
+between us?"</p>
+
+<p>At last it had come, the thing that had been moving toward her for
+weeks. It had taken possession of her. The matter was no longer in her
+control.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither do I, when I try to put it into words."</p>
+
+<p>Anne threaded her needle in the silence that followed and bent again
+over the hem. Bent so, with the light gilding to the cool fairness of
+her, Roger's clear-cut decision of the last few weeks clouded. Surely
+nothing so physically exquisite as Anne could be empty of beauty within.</p>
+
+<p>"If—neither—of us knows," he went on, "it—can't be terribly
+serious—can it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then why are we talking about it?" Anne asked stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"But what is it? We—we both feel it and yet you say you don't know
+either. But you feel it, as well as I. Something we used to have is
+gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I feel it. We haven't really anything at all," she added, as if
+facing a fact Roger had avoided.</p>
+
+<p>"I tried to keep it," he said bitterly. "I tried desperately for a long
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I did. But one can't do those things alone." This was not
+what he had meant to say, but Anne was looking at him with such cool
+composure, so safe from all touch of blame in her small assurance of
+having done all in her power.</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not. One can't do all the understanding—alone."</p>
+
+<p>Roger felt his anger rising, and stood up, as if by so standing he
+could reach the calm escaping him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose you think I tried at all."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say you didn't try. You asked me if I felt it and I said I
+did."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, have you any suggestion to make?" He might have been asking an
+accused witness to submit proof of his innocence.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I haven't any. Have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can't go on like this. We claim to be reasonable human beings and
+we might as well recognize the truth. We—" but the words were so
+final; like bullets to say—"we can separate"—that Roger temporized.
+"We must find what it's all about and try to straighten it out or——"
+Roger shrugged and turned away. "I have tried to find out what it's all
+about."</p>
+
+<p>"So have I." Anne went calmly on to the end of the seam, although
+afterwards she had to rip out every stitch, for not one of them had
+caught through. At the end of the hem, she looked up, fastened her
+needle in the material, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Then there is no real alternative."</p>
+
+<p>At the decision of Anne's tone, Roger started.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"What you didn't quite like to say—we can separate."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you do."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever you do," Anne said after a thoughtful pause. "In a situation
+like this, the wish of one must be the wish of both."</p>
+
+<p>The cold patience of her explanation was maddening.</p>
+
+<p>"That's unfair—to put it up to me like that."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not. You put it up to me in the first place. You say we can't go
+on like this and the only thing to do is separate."</p>
+
+<p>"You said separate."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't quibble." The first impatience pricked Anne's calm. "This isn't
+a witness stand. You said we had to find the trouble or—you didn't
+quite have the courage to say separate, but you meant it."</p>
+
+<p>"If you know so well what I mean," Roger said a little sadly, "why
+haven't you applied that knowledge more frequently? It's only when—oh,
+what's the use?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne waited but he did not go on. "None, unless you'll speak plainly. I
+don't know what you're referring to."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't suppose you do. You can only interpret my unspoken
+thoughts against me. Never the other way round."</p>
+
+<p>"Are we quarreling?" she asked with frigid politeness, as she might
+have asked a detail of social behavior by which to regulate her action.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Roger shouted in a need to break through that icy calm, "we're
+not quarreling because there's nothing to quarrel about. There's
+nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>"That's where we began," Anne rose and carefully folded the sheet which
+she felt now was the shroud of all dead hopes. "There's really nothing
+more to be said, is there?"</p>
+
+<p>She was actually waiting for him to confirm this fact, put a neat,
+rhetorical period to this immense finality. He did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to discuss this again. There's really no need." She put
+her thimble and cotton back in the work-basket and closed the lid.
+"We've reached the decision. Haven't we?"</p>
+
+<p>After all, why try to change Anne? She would force the decision upon
+him. She was right. It was quibbling to evade it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I guess we have."</p>
+
+<p>They stood for a moment looking at each other quietly. Then, to stifle
+the scream Anne felt rising beyond her control, she yawned.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night. There's no need to keep on talking about it, is there?"</p>
+
+<p>"None at all. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>She turned out the light over the sewing table and went behind the
+screen. Her garments dropped with the soft swish. Roger heard her open
+the windows and get into bed.</p>
+
+<p>He stood leaning his elbows on the mantelshelf, his face in his hands,
+for what seemed to Anne an entire lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>In reality it was not half an hour. This was the situation he had been
+reluctant to face, had wasted weeks of thought upon. Anne seized the
+first suggestion, yawned in his face and went to bed. It was almost
+funny.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-NINE">CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The next morning Roger went before Anne awoke. In the afternoon a
+messenger brought a note asking to have his things sent to the office.
+At dusk the express came and Anne watched Roger's trunk down the stairs
+and the truck clang away over the grass-grown cobbles. When the last
+sound had died she went in, fed Rogie and let him kick for a while
+naked before the fire. When he crumpled in sleep upon the rug, Anne
+carried him to bed, to the crib back now beside the wide bed, hers
+alone. A little later she was asleep beside him.</p>
+
+<p>The hours heaped themselves to days, the days dropped under their
+weight to nights. Each day was the same as another. Anne neither cried,
+regretted, nor rebelled. She did not even think. She seemed to be
+moving in a clear, white light that illuminated every cranny of the
+past, so that the shadows which had been her thoughts and reactions to
+Roger and the world, were now obliterated in this dazzling lucidity, a
+light so vivid and intense that nothing but itself existed, a wordless
+understanding and acceptance. Anne could not have said what it was she
+so clearly understood, but she moved in a petrifaction of calm. Her
+exhausted nerves were dead.</p>
+
+<p>On the tenth day, Anne received a short note enclosing two-thirds of
+Roger's salary, with the receipt for the rent and the electric bill and
+asking her to make some arrangement for his seeing Rogie. On the third
+reading, the meaning penetrated and Anne faced the future.</p>
+
+<p>The clear white light was gone. It was unclear and confused, filled
+with sudden, new needs and readjustments. Roger could not go on sending
+her so much of his salary. Nor did she wish to be dependent on him. If
+she gave nothing, she would take nothing for herself.</p>
+
+<p>She would go back to work. She would have to sell her brain and
+obedience again to the highest bidder, give of her best, suit her
+hours to the order of another, give to the limit of her power, always
+conscious of others waiting to snatch this privilege from her.
+Outwardly her life would be the life before she met Roger. Inwardly it
+could never be that again. Rogie made it impossible. Neither girl nor
+wife, Anne faced the years. Only motherhood was left.</p>
+
+<p>Hour after hour, Anne sat, tense and still, staring out across the
+garden, moving only to the need of Rogie. Unsuspected threads crossed
+and tangled her clearest purposes. She would go back again into the
+prison cell of some law office. She would begin again the deadening
+round that had once so disturbed Roger. Now it would not disturb him.
+From depths within, anger rose at the world, at life, at Roger. Into
+the pit of his belief he could throw all his own energy and hope, even
+the first loneliness,—if he felt any,—for past material comfort and
+little Rogie. She had no such pit. She would walk through the days,
+physically weary, empty of purpose except for Rogie. And he was so
+little, his demands for food and sleep and cleanliness, any kind woman
+could meet.</p>
+
+<p>Anne sat until dawn, the darkness within as dense as the night without.
+Not until the first faint streaks of silver broke in the east did Anne
+see the thread of a path before her. She could not move on blindly into
+the future—a future like Hilda's Niche. To the limit of her power,
+she would straighten it, begin her new life with no thread running to
+the past. She would get a legal divorce, stipulate a small amount for
+Rogie's maintenance and fixed times and ways for Roger to see him.</p>
+
+<p>Late that morning Anne went to a lawyer. As she moved across the outer
+office to the door marked private it gave her an extraordinary feeling
+of being two people, in two different spots at the same time—Anne
+Mitchell, private secretary, going to take dictation, and Anne Barton,
+wife of Roger Barton, mother of Roger Mitchell Barton, going to seek a
+divorce.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer Anne had selected because she had once written him a letter
+in a case John Lowell was handling, was an elderly man with sagging
+cheeks, passion-weary eyes, and a fastidious nicety of dress. Within
+the casque of his manner and clothes, the soul of man was rotted. His
+surprise at Anne's blond youth flashed for a second in his eyes, and
+then with lowered head, he listened with professional interest while
+she stated her wish briefly. When she had finished he looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah—incompatible, you say, quite incompatible. A great pity. Are
+you sure you've given the matter every possible consideration, Mrs.
+Barton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every possible consideration," Anne said sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Incompatible," he repeated, and his eyes stripped from the word
+every meaning but the connotation of physical repulsion. Anne's hands
+clenched and she wanted to run. But where? The world would give this
+same interpretation; under all the large vague terms with which people
+might cover them, this would be their thought. She turned her eyes
+quickly from the eyes moving with pretense of deep consideration over
+her flaming face and neck and body.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose you don't do anything definite for a time, Mrs. Barton. Nearly
+all young couples—ah—after the first two or three years—reach
+this point. It seems as if the first passion almost invariably
+runs its course in that time then—after a period of physical
+indifference—aversion often—if you have intellectual interests——"</p>
+
+<p>Anne rose. "If you do not wish to take the case, please say so. I am
+not doing this hastily. I have thought it over very carefully."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah—then there is perhaps nothing else to do," he said with a sudden
+change of tone. He was like a well-trained dog, refusing a bone until
+his master's permission allows him to snatch it. "You wish to institute
+proceedings directly, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I would like you to act right away."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. After all, Mrs. Barton, that is the brave thing to
+do—think, decide and act." His smile admitted Anne to the regions of
+masculine logic, uncluttered by the usual feminine sentimentality.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later, Anne was down again on the street. Dazed as if she
+had emerged into a strange world, she walked unseeing in the hurrying
+stream. She had done the one clear thing to do and yet she could not
+shake off the feeling that this act, instead of ending a situation, had
+created it. It had not existed until she had risen and spoken sharply
+to that vile old man. Until then she had been alone. Now she had
+admitted strangers. Before, her inner life had been her own; now, every
+one who heard of the Barton divorce would share it. They would surmise,
+and discuss, and nibble at her privacy.</p>
+
+<p>Anne walked slowly along in the hot noon sunshine, up the hill to
+the cottage. This was changed, too. It was like a house, clean and
+straightened after a funeral, the flowers gone, the extra chairs
+removed. This was divorce of which one spoke so carelessly, this great
+emptiness to be filled with unglimpsed future. No one to consider now
+but herself. Every experience to be her own, unshared, unadjusted
+to another. It was like the clearness of a cold north wind that
+obliterates all softness, sharpens every outline. Clear, cold, stark,
+the future lay before her.</p>
+
+<p>The next Thursday afternoon, as usual, a little before three, Anne let
+herself into the flat. At this hour, James was usually awake and Hilda
+busy warming the broth or malted milk he always took in the afternoon.
+But to-day, as Anne went up the stairs, she felt a thick silence
+envelop her, and before she had reached the top, she knew that they
+knew. For a moment she thought of slipping away. Then she went quietly
+on. They would have had to know soon. It did not matter.</p>
+
+<p>In the kitchen, James Mitchell sat in his chair, the daily paper spread
+open on the reading rack. Hilda stood beside him. They might have been
+victims of Pompeii, stricken at their tasks. As Anne came quietly into
+the room and stood inside the door, Hilda turned frightened eyes upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it," she whispered piteously, "what is it, Annie? It isn't
+true?"</p>
+
+<p>She pointed to the paper and Anne knew how they knew. The lawyer had
+indeed lost no time. Anne moved to the chair and took the paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne vs. Roger Barton, incompatibility."</p>
+
+<p>She laid the paper back on the rack. "Yes, it's true. Roger and I have
+separated."</p>
+
+<p>The old man took the paper and tried to tear it, but it only rustled in
+his futile striving. He pulled at it and shook his head and then, with
+a supreme effort, tore it and rising a few inches in his chair, waved
+the torn pieces uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"I—won't—have—it—do you—hear—you sha'n't—do—this." His thick
+muttering choked him and Hilda began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, papa, don't. It isn't good for you. Annie will explain."</p>
+
+<p>The old man cried with her, at first helplessly like a child, then more
+violently. Anne took the torn paper from him and laid her hand on his
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet, papa."</p>
+
+<p>He shook her hold from him and again tried to speak. The contortion
+was terrible. Hilda put her arms about him, the effort strangled in a
+sob and Hilda held him close.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there," she murmured, "don't cry, papa."</p>
+
+<p>As she held him the sobs lessened. Anne stood looking at them, this
+extraordinary sight of her mother comforting her father, both of them
+locked together beyond her, opposing her; with every scrap of their
+strength clutching their own peace.</p>
+
+<p>"Please," she began wearily, "stop this fuss. If you want to talk, I'll
+talk, but there's nothing to say. Roger and I don't agree. That's all.
+We'll both be freer to be ourselves, apart. That's all, really."</p>
+
+<p>"Rub—bish," Hilda sputtered between her lessening sobs, but a little
+cheered at the familiar garb of a situation in words. Silence terrified
+Hilda. "Nonsense, Anne. Freer to be yourselves! Nobody expects to be
+free when they're married."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody—listens—to—me——" James began muttering again.
+"I—told—you—socialist—anarchist—nobody—in my own—house—I——"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, papa, don't get all stirred up again," Hilda patted his head
+soothingly. "You're getting along so nice and the doctor said——"</p>
+
+<p>"To—hell—doctor," he spluttered, stopped for a moment, took a
+deep breath, and said in a quick, almost unintelligible rush,
+"I—won't—have it—disgrace—everybody—in—office—know——" his
+breath exhausted, he leaned back panting, and glared at Anne.</p>
+
+<p>She returned his look quietly. In his rage and weakness he was not
+pitiful, only disgusting. Thin and gray and unshaven, he was like a
+mangy old dog, clinging to the dry bone of his respectability. Icy
+nausea swept Anne. The room began to move, to gyrate in mockery about
+her. She gripped the wall with her fingers, and the smooth coldness
+gave her strength.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, please, and then I don't want to talk about it any more." She
+knew that her words were audible because they were both looking at her,
+but her whole effort was concentrated in uttering them and she felt
+herself forming each syllable separately and throwing it at the two
+bewildered people before her. "We don't agree, and neither of us wishes
+to live like that; to hold each other, for what? I am economically
+independent. I can work. I don't have to stay for support. Roger
+will help with Rogie and we will go our own ways. We have grown apart
+spiritually——"</p>
+
+<p>But the last word was too heavy a burden for Hilda's credulity. She
+went swiftly to Anne and would have put her arms about her, if Anne had
+not eluded.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, mamma. Please don't talk or ask me any questions. I am telling
+you exactly what it is."</p>
+
+<p>"Anne Mitchell! Do you expect me to believe that? Grow apart
+spiritually! Anne—is there—don't be ashamed—to tell us—is there
+another woman?"</p>
+
+<p>James Mitchell leaned avidly forward: "Old—sick—but—no
+man—deserts—my—daughter——"</p>
+
+<p>Under cover of the hissing whisper, Hilda murmured rapidly, "Don't act
+hastily, Anne. All men——"</p>
+
+<p>The muttering ceased, and Hilda broke off. But a faint shrug and
+an almost imperceptible nod toward the chair, spread before Anne's
+sickened sense, some long concealed, almost forgotten infidelity of the
+decaying old man in the chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop. Both of you," she cried sharply. "There is no other woman. Roger
+has done nothing disgraceful. If you can't understand, I can't make
+you. We no longer love each other. Marriage is a free contract. It
+fitted one condition. It doesn't fit another. We've dissolved it."</p>
+
+<p>The old man blinked and then turned piteously to Hilda. She went
+quickly to him. With her arms again about him, she flared at Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"Anne Mitchell, you're doing a silly and wicked thing.
+You're—making—papa—miserable. You've no—right—in our old—age——"</p>
+
+<p>James' fingers closed about hers.
+"Don't—cry—Hildy—children—ungrateful——"</p>
+
+<p>And then, the walls began to dance about her, the two angry faces
+oscillated like grotesque masks, the floor was sinking under her. A
+great, peaceful darkness was coming towards her. At last she could let
+go, sink down into this soothing blackness. Anne swayed, clutched at
+the wall, and slid along its smoothness to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Twice she came to partial consciousness of a great bustle; some one
+was calling, footsteps rushed about, some one stepped over her and ran
+somewhere. Then she was being lifted and carried, and some one, not
+Hilda—it sounded like a faint, far echo of Charlotte Welles—said:</p>
+
+<p>"There, she'll be all right now. Don't disturb her. Let her sleep as
+long as she can."</p>
+
+<p>So dim that it was not clearly a thought at all, Anne was grateful for
+this suggestion. She heard the door to whatever place she was in close
+softly and footsteps recede.</p>
+
+<p>When she woke she was in her own little room, the stars were shining
+and Belle was standing beside the bed. Anne tried to return the
+cheerful smile, but the effort did not get further than a slight motion
+of her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You poor little kid. Here, drink this." Belle held a glass to Anne's
+lips and supported her while she obeyed. "And then we'll talk. I
+wouldn't disturb you, but I have to get back on my case and we'll just
+settle one or two things first. No, I'm not going to talk about it. I
+don't want to know anything. But you're going away."</p>
+
+<p>Anne gazed at her without interest.</p>
+
+<p>"If you try to stick round here listening to moms' buzzing you'll
+have brain fever. But they'll buzz themselves out in a week and—"
+she was going to add, "be glad of it," but caught herself in time and
+said—"see the thing straight. Now, the only thing I want to know is
+whether you have any place you'd like to go. Several old patients have
+places here and there, inaccessible ranches and things, and I could fix
+up something. They're always inviting me but I'm not keen on solitude
+as you know." She chattered along, watching Anne with soft, loving
+eyes. The authority of her tone comforted Anne and she felt a little
+cheered.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I'm not suggesting a high-class resort but somewhere you
+have never been, that's quiet."</p>
+
+<p>Anne drew a deep sigh. Some new place where it was still!</p>
+
+<p>"There are two places I can arrange for quickly and you can have your
+choice. One's down in Monterey County, on the coast, a ranch that hangs
+on a mountain side rising right out of the sea. It——"</p>
+
+<p>Anne sat up. "No. No. Belle, not the sea." She looked past Belle,
+through the fog of the Bluff to the bar where the sea moaned its
+everlasting complaint. "I can't stand the sea, always moving and
+crying—never, never still. Oh," Anne shivered and Belle laid a large,
+cool hand on the hot little one gripping the comforter.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, sisterkin. I get you. The sea is rather a fussy old party.
+Exit the sea."</p>
+
+<p>Anne tried to smile. "It's—like the Social Revolution. It's been
+moaning away for centuries and it's just where it started."</p>
+
+<p>A look of understanding crossed Belle's eyes and was gone before Anne
+looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the other's the thing you want. It's away up in the high Sierras.
+There's only an old couple as caretakers. You won't have to see much of
+them, but the old man—I saw him once—is as still as a tree. I should
+go crazy in two days but you'll love it."</p>
+
+<p>High up in the mountains, higher and stiller even than the lake. And
+the old man like a tree. Anne's eyes filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's the cottage—all the things—I can't——"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll fix that. I'll write to Roger; he'll have to know you're not
+there anyhow, and let him struggle with storage if he wants to."</p>
+
+<p>"But—I can't stay away very long. I'm not going to take money from
+Roger—I'm going to work, I——"</p>
+
+<p>Belle put both hands very gently on Anne's shoulder and forced her back
+on the pillows from which she had risen in nervous need to manage the
+details of her going.</p>
+
+<p>"Sisterkin, you've passed out of your own authority now; you're in
+mine. You're going, and you're going to-morrow and you'll stay until
+you're well."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sick."</p>
+
+<p>"No? All right. But you will be if you don't do as you're told. Listen,
+kiddie. Is there any real reason why you can't go and go to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne shook her head. There was no reason beyond her own desire. There
+never would be any more. Anne tried to smile. She did not want to cry,
+not even before Belle.</p>
+
+<p>"How long are you going to make me stay, nurse?"</p>
+
+<p>"There, that's the way to behave. Stay? Until you want to come back.
+Until—you want noise, jangling cars and people rushing round and the
+whole silly mess."</p>
+
+<p>"Then—I'll—never—come."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't then." She smoothed the pillows, stroked back the hair from
+Anne's troubled eyes and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"You're—awfully—good to me, Belle."</p>
+
+<p>"A perfect angel," Belle agreed, but her own eyes were not quite clear.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have Rogie with me, Belle. Don't—try to manage me out of that."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll settle everything in the morning. I'm not going to insist on
+anything against your will, kiddie. Don't worry. Only you must go to
+sleep now and do not think of a thing. You'll be all right after a good
+night's rest."</p>
+
+<p>The peace of yielding settled upon Anne. Not to think of anything—to
+go to sleep—and to-morrow—the high, still mountains—and the old
+man—like—a—tree. Anne's eyes closed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do—anything—you—say."</p>
+
+<p>She was asleep before Belle had quite finished opening the window and
+arranging the blind so that it would not rattle if the wind came up.</p>
+
+<p>Back beside the bed, Belle stood looking down at Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little kid," she whispered, "poor little kid, she's rather like
+the sea herself—crying forever for something out of reach." She
+smoothed a fold in the sheet and added:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old Roger—he isn't half bad either."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_THIRTY">CHAPTER THIRTY</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Roger received Belle's note telling him that Anne had left town and
+asking him to make some arrangement about the cottage in the same mail
+that he received the legal notice of Anne's action. Both letters were
+on his desk when he came back to the loft after dinner to work as he
+had done every night since that sudden, quiet ending of everything
+between himself and Anne.</p>
+
+<p>He opened Belle's first and read it slowly, surprise changing rapidly
+to anger.</p>
+
+<p>Anne had gone away. Where, for how long, why, alone or with Rogie?
+Belle did not say. The few lines breathed possession of Anne, pushed
+him aside from all interest or concern in her movements.</p>
+
+<p>Anne had left the cottage and gone away. He was to do what he liked
+with the place. Evidently the past with its memory was too distasteful
+to Anne. She was going to begin somewhere else. For a moment Roger felt
+a touch of the old anxiety, the need to look after Anne, manage and
+arrange for her; the feeling that she was too frail and fair to look
+out for herself, the feeling that had amused Anne so in the days of
+their engagement when, if she were a little late in meeting him, he was
+always afraid that something terrible had happened.</p>
+
+<p>It passed and was gone, blotted in his clear understanding of how
+perfectly well Anne was able to look out for herself. That frail
+fairness, that delicate sensitiveness behind which she tripped with
+such deep assurance of herself, was almost a masque in the completeness
+with which it hid the real Anne. Life would present no problem that
+would trouble or perplex her. With the scalpel of her assurance she
+would delicately remove all emotion, all passion, all hot, human
+weakness, wrap it neatly in her own conceit, label it and forever after
+know exactly where she had put it.</p>
+
+<p>Roger drew a sheet of paper to him and began writing to Belle. At
+least she had no right to withhold information of his son. But when
+he had written two angry pages he read them and tore them up. Finally
+in words, as blunt and straightforward as Belle, he demanded to know
+Rogie's whereabouts. When this was sealed and addressed, he pushed it
+aside to mail when he went out, and picked up the other letter.</p>
+
+<p>He read it only this once and then it fluttered between his knees and
+lay upon the floor. His chin dropped to his breast, his lips closed in
+a hard line. Now that Anne had done this thing, his own surprise in not
+having thought of the possibility was lost in his understanding of how
+perfectly this action expressed Anne.</p>
+
+<p>When two people loved, they came together in legal sanction.</p>
+
+<p>When they no longer loved, they separated legally.</p>
+
+<p>Anne would no more live apart without the ceremony of divorce than she
+would have lived with him without the ceremony of marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Anne had tidied the situation.</p>
+
+<p>She had instituted her action for divorce and gone away. She had put
+the little period of her standard to the past, blotted the paper and
+ordered it sent to him. It was almost like sending him a receipt for
+the old love, the months of bickering strain, itemized and receipted in
+full.</p>
+
+<p>Roger made a strange little noise, a kind of choking grunt of
+amusement, anger and hurt. Across the loft Katya looked up. The
+clicking of her machine stopped suddenly. Over it she gazed at Roger
+with passionate longing, pain and anger and tenderness in her small
+brown eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Roger was in trouble. He never sat so, his head bowed, his hands
+clenched like that. For days Katya had felt something in him that
+eluded her; something strange had entered their relationship, the
+old frankness was gone. It had gone from the night she counseled his
+leaving Anne, but they had not mentioned the subject again, and since
+then Katya had moved in an uncertainty of his motive that had been like
+a stone wall about her. At every move she had touched it and it had
+sent strange hopes and fears through her.</p>
+
+<p>Now, she leaned across her machine, her lips parted. Something was
+forming from these days of uncertainty, coming toward her. Katya held
+her place before her machine by an effort that at last forced from
+her a low cry. At the sound, Roger turned slowly toward her, his own
+problem in his eyes. They looked so for a moment at each other, then
+Katya's hands trembled and she rose. His muscles had answered, but his
+real concern was far away. Her lips quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she demanded angrily. "Why are you staring at me like
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice drew Roger's consciousness. He shook his head as if
+physically throwing aside something that held him in its grip and said
+with pitiful assumption of his usual cheerfulness:</p>
+
+<p>"Was I staring at you unpleasantly, Katya? I beg your pardon. I didn't
+mean to."</p>
+
+<p>Katya came toward him. If she did not reach physical proximity, in a
+moment the old camaraderie would rise and shut off this thing Katya
+felt forming for the first time clearly between them. Coming to the
+window ledge, the same ledge on which she had counseled his leaving
+Anne, Katya lit a cigarette and said with forced calm:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? Can I help?"</p>
+
+<p>"N-o—nothing's the matter. I——" Roger broke off.</p>
+
+<p>"You're lying," Katya replied calmly. "Something has happened.
+Something—very—big to you."</p>
+
+<p>For a second Roger stiffened in resentment of her assurance. It was
+like the first time he had ever seen her, when her certainty had
+annoyed him. Then the memory of all the past months of friendship and
+understanding, shamed the insincerity of denial. He picked the lawyer's
+letter from the floor and handed it to her. Katya read it and without
+the least change of expression returned it, but her whole squat body
+trembled violently and only by drawing deeply on the cigarette could
+she maintain an outward semblance of poise.</p>
+
+<p>Roger sat fingering the letter. Now that he was sharing this with
+Katya, emotion was rapidly chilling to intellectual speculation.
+What would have happened between him and Anne if they had not done
+this thing? Would they really have adjusted in time? Would they have
+bickered to weariness and dropped at last from spiritual exhaustion to
+any compromise that held outward peace? Would he have fallen to the
+revolting relationship suggested by Katya?</p>
+
+<p>Why had Katya said that? From her knowledge of him or from her own
+experience? She had spoken so earnestly, as if her certainty were a
+concrete thing she was thrusting into his keeping. It was no general
+warning gathered from vague reflection of life or observation. Katya
+knew—either herself or him to the deepest recesses.</p>
+
+<p>What was the source of Katya's knowledge?</p>
+
+<p>She was so wise and still and dark, like the night. Gazing at her
+now, Roger felt as if he were gazing into the well of human impulse,
+weakness and strength. In it lay understanding of the death of love
+between himself and Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she demanded turning suddenly from the night outside.</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking of something you said to me and wondering why you said
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. What was it I said?"</p>
+
+<p>"You said that if I did not separate from Anne I would stay and——"
+It was difficult to say even to Katya and he stumbled, annoyed at the
+touch of scorn that came to Katya's eyes. It was like the first look
+she had ever given him,—the nice small boy who had called a silly
+meeting. "That there would be other children," he flung at her, "and
+that I would then see my duty clearer to stay. Did you mean that I was
+so bound in physical ties that I could not break them. Is that what you
+meant?"</p>
+
+<p>Katya nodded. "If you hadn't separated, what else? If you had gone
+on living with her, you would have gone on 'loving.' Nothing else is
+possible. And because you are an idealist and must have harmony, you
+would have tied together the soul and body, because only so would you
+not have been ashamed before yourself. You would have done what many
+millions have done and will do till Time ends. You would have come
+to deny the existence of Love. You would have talked of the death of
+physical passion and the survival of something else, in the large vague
+words that dead souls use, like you talked of 'adjusting.' You would
+have stifled the body because you could not make it one with the soul.
+Or—you would have stifled the soul. With you I do not know—which it
+would have been I am not sure. But now your soul has a chance. Perhaps,
+some day, you will find another woman and then——"</p>
+
+<p>"Never," Roger began vehemently, and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>After all, who could say? He had not meant to marry until years later
+than he did. He had meant to go to many countries and do many things
+alone. He had not even thought of Anne in that way, half an hour before
+they stood alone among the dunes, and his need had shaped itself from
+the wind and fog.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," Katya said slowly, "it will be never. I am not sure. Perhaps
+you will never love. I do not know."</p>
+
+<p>She was looking at him with faint bitterness and his interest in her
+certainty hardened to impatience. "Perhaps I won't," he said shortly,
+"since, according to you, so few people even know what it is. Why
+should I expect to be one of the chosen few?"</p>
+
+<p>Katya looked away. "I don't know—perhaps because you need it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Need what?" This was almost as tenuous as some of Anne's involved
+reactions. First Katya wanted him to be free for his soul, then she
+wanted this same soul meshed and tangled in an absorbing passion. Roger
+looked at her impatiently now, turned from him, again gazing out across
+the roofs. Then his impatience vanished as suddenly as it had come.</p>
+
+<p>Katya looked tired to-night. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had not
+slept. Her thick lips held the cigarette uncertainly. Swarthy, squat
+and blunt, Katya's body conveyed a feeling of unsureness, as if she
+were trembling just beneath the surface. He had no right to intrude on
+her sympathy, but it was so easy to monopolize Katya's understanding.
+He laid his hand on her knee and started to feel the vibration of her
+body. She must be holding it in check by her supreme will.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Katya, let's not probe too deeply to-night."</p>
+
+<p>But he knew that Katya did not hear. She was reading in places hidden
+from him, the answer to his own question.</p>
+
+<p>"You need to love," she said slowly, as if she were translating from
+a foreign tongue, "because there is a chance that you are worth it.
+If you love you may be truly great. If you never love—you will go no
+higher than now—and—it will be all wasted," she ended in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Roger felt that Katya was actually drawing a curtain back before him, a
+thick, black curtain that hid strange things he did not wish to see.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let's hope that whatever ought not to be wasted, won't be," he
+said with forced lightness.</p>
+
+<p>"You—will—be afraid," Katya whispered and leaned so close that
+involuntarily Roger stepped back. At his motion, she laughed in scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is what you will do when you see it coming. You will step
+back. You will run away. You will be afraid of love."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, I won't. Why should I be afraid?" With an uncertain smile
+Roger tried to turn the tide creeping from the pit that Katya had
+opened.</p>
+
+<p>"Because it hurts." Katya shuddered so violently that Roger saw the
+heavy muscles of her shoulders and neck quiver. "It hurts more than any
+pain in all the world. It burns out everything in the world, in you,
+but itself. It takes your brain and your body and makes white ashes of
+them. It takes you, the individual, and melts you into the world. It is
+the volcano through which the highest force of spirit finds expression.
+There are not many volcanoes in the world or the earth would melt in
+flames. There are not many who can love or the race too would melt
+away. Through all the ages a few mountains above the level, flat earth.
+A few who can love, only a few. That is love. Would you run away?"</p>
+
+<p>In spite of her body trembling as with cold, little beads of moisture
+stood on Katya's face. It was too fierce, too elemental, too naked.
+Roger looked away. A choking noise from Katya drew his eyes again.
+She was gazing at him now with anguish and hatred in her eyes. Roger
+stepped back. The blood flamed into his brain, then rushed away,
+leaving him cold and sick at the stark nakedness of Katya's revelation.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't," he whispered, "don't."</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the spark in Katya's eyes faded. She gazed at him blankly with
+the dead eyes of a statue. Then, with a quick shudder she came back to
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," she said in her husky whisper. "It isn't your fault."</p>
+
+<p>"I—I never—dreamed—it isn't possible—you can't——"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, keep quiet. What does it matter? I don't mind your knowing. I
+didn't choose to love you. I don't respect you a great deal or admire
+you in many ways. You're so young, so undeveloped, like a baby. Stop
+staring like a frightened child. It doesn't matter, I tell you. It
+doesn't matter."</p>
+
+<p>And, in spite of himself, Roger felt that it did not really matter so
+very much. Katya, the Russian Jewess, with her squat body, her strange
+foreign past, was a being of another world, as she stood there talking
+of volcanoes and white ashes and souls that melted in their own fire.</p>
+
+<p>If she had been of his own race, his own age—but no woman of his age
+and race would have said those things, would have thought them, would
+have felt them. Disgust rose against his will, disgust seated deep in
+the past of his people, disgust of flagrant confession like this.</p>
+
+<p>Katya smiled, a twisted smile of pity for the feeling in him. His lips
+moved to deny it, but against the penetration of Katya's knowledge, the
+falsehood died.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," he said quietly, and knew that it sounded like Anne
+regretting the pain and sorrow of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't be. I'm not. Can't you stop staring and trying to pretend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Roger snapped, angry now with her and with himself, "when you
+stop pretending too. You talk of melting fire and volcanoes and yet you
+say it doesn't matter. It must matter. It——"</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter—as you mean. You understand nothing at all. Will
+you please go away?"</p>
+
+<p>Roger's head dropped and he turned from her.</p>
+
+<p>Her whisper followed. "Please forget. You can if you try because it
+really doesn't matter—to you." The last words were so low and Roger
+already so far across the loft that he did not hear them. He went
+without looking back.</p>
+
+<p>But as he walked slowly home, he knew that something within himself had
+gone forever. Never again would he be absolutely certain of any human
+being. Katya, the indefatigable worker, the passionless comrade, the
+clear thinker; Katya the unconfused, had tangled life and the threads
+that bound one to another beyond his power of ever straightening. Never
+again would he be able to say of any human being "I am sure of this. I
+am positive of that."</p>
+
+<p>It was a warm night but Roger was cold and lit a fire. Before it he sat
+till dawn, moving only to reach for wood in the basket on the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>Was Katya right? Would he run from love if it ever came to him,
+devastating burning passion in a body other than Katya's? Before such a
+love as this his love for Anne was the flickering of a tiny flame, as
+small, as pale as Anne's feeling for a world beyond the narrow limits
+of her own individual safety.</p>
+
+<p>And Anne?</p>
+
+<p>Again Roger lived that first hour on the Bluff, his own surprise and
+tenderness at Anne's kiss. The night on the lake when her lips had
+clung as hotly as his own.</p>
+
+<p>What was he himself?</p>
+
+<p>What was Anne?</p>
+
+<p>To-night, in this whirlwind that was Katya, he felt strangely near to
+Anne. When at last he groped in the wood basket and found it empty,
+he rose and went to bed. The east was lighting. The bed was wide and
+chill, as if the little ghost of Anne were there beside him.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_THIRTY-ONE">CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Day after day Anne sat at rest in the vast silence. Far back in space
+and time she had waved a last good-bye up the black funnel of the
+staircase to Hilda, holding Rogie, for, in the end, Belle had prevailed
+and Anne had come alone. Trains and stages and the creaking wagon of
+old Timothy Potter had brought her from the world below and laid her
+in the heart of this little grassy meadow. Ringed by mountain peaks it
+lay, small and still, at the top of the world.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the sun rose with sudden gladness, not with the slow
+reluctance of the lowlands, but as if forced by its own energy and
+desire from the blackness of night. All day it poured its warmth into
+the meadow and when it went, yielding to night in a blaze of color; it
+called good-by in brilliant purple and crimson and went as gladly as it
+had come. In the afternoons a busy little wind came down from the snowy
+peaks, went its round of inspection over the lush green grass of the
+meadow, chatted with the little brook, whispered to the trees, saw all
+was well and slipped back again into the granite gorges. The stars came
+out, not with furious twinkling and effort to reach through to men so
+far below, but, with still gold, they moved forward into night.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Anne that she made no definite motion of her own volition.
+The day came, lifted her into the perfect rhythm of its rotation,
+carried her through the clear warm morning, the still gold-filled
+afternoon, deposited her gently in the deep black peace of night.</p>
+
+<p>This was the silence she had sought, the perfect peace. No artificial
+formula summoned it. No bodily posture propitiated it. It was there,
+deep, all pervading, everlasting, to one's need.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, in incalculable space, other worlds were being made and
+destroyed. But this world was finished. In the marvelous perfection of
+its completion, the beginning was impossible to visualize, an ending
+inconceivable. No force could ever move again those granite peaks,
+melt the glacial ice, upheave the profound permanence of that tiny
+grassy meadow. It was done; perfectly done and left in peace.</p>
+
+<p>Even old Timothy Potter and his wife were part of this profundity
+of accomplishment. They could never have been other than they were.
+Through the years of close companionship they had grown to look alike.
+It was impossible to imagine them ever having been younger, slimmer,
+more agile than they were. They must always have been together since
+the beginning of time, stout and quiet, with their understanding smile,
+their white hair, the little wrinkles of happiness about their kindly
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>As a separate human unit, apart from the spirit of the universe, she
+no longer existed. She was alone with old Timothy and Mary, his wife,
+at the very center of the all-living; so deep within the heart of Life
+that words were not needed. They communicated in silence like the earth
+and grass and trees. They were not bodies, opposed in their humanity to
+an exterior spirit without. They were part of the whole, as grass, the
+gnarled cedars growing in the clefts of the granite mountains, and the
+brook bubbling through the little meadow, were parts. Sitting in utter
+stillness Anne felt this engulfing Unity, drawing her gently down into
+the single purpose that ran through the granite mountains, the dancing
+brook, the rustling leaves, through her own body, and linked them all,
+each to the other.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a poem of Wordsworth that she had thought silly and sentimental in
+the days of college extension, came back to her with new meaning, and
+often, sitting on the porch after the early supper, watching the day's
+gorgeous farewell to the granite peaks, Anne whispered slowly:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">To her fair works did Nature link</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The human soul that through me ran;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And much it grieved my heart to think</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">What Man has made of Man.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The rest of the stanzas she had forgotten, except the three final lines
+of all:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">If such be Nature's Holy plan,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Have I not reason to Lament</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">What Man has made of Man?</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Far off beyond distant Dana, rising in ice-capped majesty above the
+last range of mountains, hate and discord and confusion were positive
+qualities. Men struggled against each other, ideals clashed, faiths
+oppressed. Even love fought for its place and in the end surrendered.
+There was nothing sure, nothing positive, nothing motionless like this
+in its own perfection. It was all distorted, ugly and forever battling.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting on the porch, after an early supper, watching the day's
+farewell to the granite peaks, Anne's eyes filled with tears. If only
+she had Rogie with her she would never leave this peace. The world
+beyond could fight its futile battles. If only Rogie were with her,
+nothing would be lacking. Undisturbed by the world's confusion, they
+would live out their lives, and sink, at last into the stillness of the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>What did it matter if they made no place for themselves among men;
+if no one ever heard of them; the ambitions of men were such pitiful
+things?</p>
+
+<p>In the arrogance of his conceit, man had appropriated to himself the
+pinnacle of creation. In his fury of effort he rushed about over the
+surface of the great, still earth, erecting his little cities and
+civilizations, setting up his little philosophies for the guidance
+of others. His ideals, his religions, his pretentious systems of
+thought, so futilely abstruse and complicated, were like the rules and
+regulations for the guiding of traffic in public places: "Keep to the
+right"; "turn here"; "cross there"; vast in their pretension of public
+usefulness; needed because of the confusion created by himself. In the
+peace of the mountains his efforts had less cohesion, less purpose
+than the movements of the ants, running here and there, making long
+circuits about some tiny obstacle. So man made circuits through his own
+philosophies in a stupendous effort to reach the truth which he had
+lost in the involved processes of his own journey to it. Anne could
+almost see these myriads of tiny individuals rushing about over the
+surface of life, jostling, shouting, getting in each other's way, going
+down, being trampled, struggling to rise, each shouting his own foolish
+solution of the problem of life.</p>
+
+<p>When Anne had been a month in the mountains she wrote to Belle asking
+her to find some way of sending Rogie. Belle wrote back promising to
+do so, even to bring him herself, if no other way opened, but the days
+slipped again to weeks and Rogie did not come.</p>
+
+<p>Anne grew restless. The peace was disturbed now by this need. At the
+end of the second month she wrote more insistingly, but this time Belle
+did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>The leaves began to fall. In the mornings the grass of the meadow was
+white with frost. The nights were clear, black and cold now with a kind
+of thrill in the coldness, as if the air were tingling with hidden
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Anne's restlessness increased. Something was creeping upon the world
+from the places hidden beyond all puny human knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>She no longer sat for hours on the porch, absorbed in the peaceful
+stillness, but moved about the house or went for long walks. In the
+evenings she sat with Mary and Timothy, and, although she rarely
+listened to the words, she liked to hear Timothy read from one of their
+few books. He read slowly with long pauses instead of comment. These
+pauses were like caves into which the old people went silently, hand
+in hand, to look for the deeper truths hidden in words. At the end of
+these pauses they smiled quietly at each other and the reading began
+again.</p>
+
+<p>It was one evening in mid-September that a nervous motion of Anne's
+disturbed the reading and Timothy looked over the steel rim of his
+spectacles with kindly interest:</p>
+
+<p>"You're worried."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," Anne apologized. "I didn't mean to interrupt. I was
+thinking about something else."</p>
+
+<p>Mary Potter leaned across the red-checked cloth and laid her hand on
+Anne's.</p>
+
+<p>"You were thinking about the baby. Isn't your sister going to send him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I can't make it out and I feel so helpless. You won't be
+going down to Milton again for mail for weeks, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hadn't thought of going again this year," Timothy took off his
+glasses now and laid them on the closed book. "I don't usually go after
+the middle of September. Soon the road'll be closed even to Milton."</p>
+
+<p>"Closed!"</p>
+
+<p>"In a few weeks now the snow'll begin."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody can get in after the snow begins," the old woman explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing can get through!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing gets through after the snow begins. Pretty soon it'll come and
+we'll be shut in tight till Spring."</p>
+
+<p>Anne rose quickly. "Shut—in—tight till Spring!"</p>
+
+<p>Timothy nodded and his eyes lit as if in welcome of the snow.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's wonderful then," he said softly. "You think it's quiet and
+peaceful now, but it ain't nothing to what it is then—between the
+storms. You'll love it, white and so still you can almost hear God
+movin' round. And then the storms." He rose, the first restless motion
+Anne had ever seen him make. "They're wonderful. Trees that have stood
+for centuries go crashing down. Mountain sides slip away." His eyes
+blazed as if he were watching the Creator at work. "When Spring comes,
+it's a new world. Me and Mary go round like children, don't we, mother,
+looking up things to see if they're there yet. Last Spring that little
+creek down there came a~bubbling up to look at us, just like a new
+baby, laughing and smiling through the snow. It weren't there the year
+before. A storm cut the channel and there it was dancing and laughing
+as if it had just been waiting to surprise us. Wasn't it, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>The old woman nodded. "And do you remember that spruce we used to call
+'The Hunchback?'" She turned to Anne. "It was so old and twisted and
+it never seemed happy, like other spruces; they're always so glad and
+straight. We used to wish a storm would take him, for his own sake, and
+one winter that gorge yonder opened and when Spring came, he was gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Gone!" Under cover of the snow, cliffs slid away, gorges opened,
+century-old trees disappeared!</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Winter makes great changes up here in the mountains. Down in
+the cities you think winter is a time when everything stops and rests
+and nothing moves. But up here we see it moving. It's like watching
+God fix things up, cut out a bit here and there, tinker round making
+improvements. Nothing ain't ever fixed to stay forever. It stands to
+reason it can't be. There wouldn't be any life to things that's fixed
+like that. Things keep moving and changing. Why, that doesn't frighten
+you, does it?" he asked curiously at the look in Anne's eyes. "There
+ain't nothing to be afraid of, Mrs. Barton."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm—not afraid," Anne whispered. "Only I—don't want it to change. I
+want it to stay like this—perfect always, quiet and still."</p>
+
+<p>Timothy shook his head and smiled gently. "Oh, no, it wouldn't be good
+that way. You wait and see. You'll love it. Why, me and mother's often
+spoke about it—when we go, we'd like to be out in a big storm and just
+be swept down. Not be sick and helpless for a long time, just have
+God throw us in along of some change He's making and use us again in
+another way, wouldn't we, ma?"</p>
+
+<p>The old woman nodded. "It would be a grand way to go. I suppose we'd
+get there in the end just the same, even if we was buried in one of
+them tight little city cemeteries under a marble slab like people put
+over the dead as if they wanted to keep them shut up in their little
+boxes forever; or even if we was burned like some people hold with,
+we'd get back into the earth somehow. But folks have their preference,
+and me and pa'd like to go, as he says, in some storm that'd sweep us
+out clean and sudden into the midst of things."</p>
+
+<p>Into the midst of things!</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments Anne stood motionless, her hands gripping the back
+of the chair, staring at the old people, who, lost in the coming of
+the snow, seemed already to have slipped away together—into the midst
+of things. Then, without a word, she went quickly out of the room and
+upstairs to her own.</p>
+
+<p>It was very cold but she threw the window wide and leaned far out into
+the night.</p>
+
+<p>In the full moonlight, the peak of Dana rose, the burnished helmet of
+a giant warrior leading the mountains into the coming battle. In the
+black secrecy of the granite gorges the courier wind ran swiftly with
+its orders. The trees took counsel together. Everything was whispering,
+moving, preparing. Nothing was motionless any longer in the security
+of its own permanence. Everything was awaiting now the fulfillment of
+the law beyond its power to anticipate, change, or deviate from its own
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>In a few weeks now the snow would come. Mountain sides would slip away.
+Giant trees go crashing down. New rivers open. God would tinker with
+the world! Make his changes, form it to his further plan.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was completed beyond change. Nothing was still. From rocks
+to man, the force moved, making, changing, destroying, recreating,
+fashioning to—what? Chaos or perfection.</p>
+
+<p>There was no permanent silence and peace apart from motion, from the
+ever-changing march of the universe on—to what? A purpose hidden from
+finite sense. A scale so vast that its first note was lost in the birth
+of time, its last in infinity.</p>
+
+<p>And she, deaf to this tremendous harmony, had stood scornful of all but
+the small, thin note of her own personal security! The chord of the
+world's pain, so clear to Roger and Black Tom, she had not heard. Of
+the perfect scale so clear to Charlotte Welles, she had not grasped a
+note. The joy of life that thrust through her mother's muddled thinking
+was a far sweeter note than her own blind assurance of superiority.
+Even the sensuous longing of Merle for physical beauty was a finer
+understanding of the purpose of life than her own.</p>
+
+<p>The moon had moved on across the world, the little meadow lay in
+darkness, when Anne closed the window at last and went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>A week later, the first snow fell. It came in the night and Anne waked
+to a white world so white and still that the very stillness throbbed
+with its own intensity. Anne stood for hours staring out at the
+snow-filled hollows. Under that thick white, perhaps change was already
+beginning, a little opening here, a little closing here, the small
+first notes of the great orchestra tuning for the vast symphony.</p>
+
+<p>In the night the snow fell again, thicker, whiter, heavier.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning Anne sought Mary Potter.</p>
+
+<p>"I can get through, can't I? If I go at once?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But there won't be many days longer. The snow's going to be heavy
+this year. It's going to be a wild winter. Did you hear that crash last
+night? It was that cedar you say looks like an old woman with a basket.
+It snapped clear off like——"</p>
+
+<p>"If I pack to-day, can Mr. Potter get me down to Miller's? The stage
+will take me to Raymond."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman was making bread, her arms deep in the clinging dough.
+But as Anne spoke, she scraped the dough from them and came quietly
+round the table.</p>
+
+<p>"You're going back and, do you know, I'm glad. We'll miss you. When we
+heard you was coming we were kind of upset only there didn't seem to be
+any good reason why you shouldn't. But now, we'll miss you. You fit in.
+I guess me and pa got to think we were the only people that like it
+quiet and I suppose there's lots—even down there." She always spoke
+so of the world beyond the mountains, "down there," with a nod and a
+little gesture out and downward.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I think that they want quiet down there more than they want
+anything in the whole world. They look and look for it and—some find
+it. The world is getting noisier and faster, and yet there are more
+and more people looking for—Stillness." She smiled. "Churches even
+advertise it in the papers—half hours and quarter hours of Silence."</p>
+
+<p>"Well! Down there they'd make a business out of most anything, wouldn't
+they? Advertising silence! Why, it's about the only thing everybody can
+have."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes—but we don't find that out. We're all making such a noise looking
+for it."</p>
+
+<p>Mary Potter wiped one hand on her apron and laid it on Anne's shoulder.
+"I guess you won't make much noise looking for it now, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No—I don't—think I will. I'll try not to, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to have seen the baby. His picture's awful cute."</p>
+
+<p>"He is cute. And as good as gold."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you'll want to come back in the Spring and can bring him with
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne's lip trembled. "I'm never coming back again, Mrs. Potter,
+unless—I don't have to come."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman did not answer for a moment and then she nodded. "I
+know. Well, I don't think, my dear, you'll ever have to come again.
+You—don't—lose it—once you really get it up here."</p>
+
+<p>She patted Anne's shoulder, but Anne suddenly threw her arms round the
+other and kissed her. The old woman's eyes lit with pleasure. She said
+nothing. She rarely did when she understood.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_THIRTY-TWO">CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>As she stepped from the train into the roar of the city, Anne
+straightened her shoulders and smiled:</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I'll get to love the racket as much as Belle does."</p>
+
+<p>She let herself into the flat and went noiselessly up the stairs to the
+hall. In the front room her father was talking to Rogie. She could not
+catch the words but she heard the baby's crow of delight and gripped
+the balustrade to keep from surprising the old man too suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen was empty but Hilda was on the porch picking dead leaves
+from a geranium. The kettle was boiling and a bottle of malted milk
+stood beside the inevitable wad of crochet on the table. Very softly
+Anne closed the door and waited. In another moment the kettle boiled
+over and Hilda turned. At the sight of Anne, she stepped back, stared,
+and then came with a little rush and took Anne in her arms. When she
+stood away at last, her eyes were full of happy tears, but she said
+gayly:</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you just love to startle people nearly out of their skins.
+Well, you certainly did give me a turn. I suppose it was the dog that
+howled all night, but when I saw you there—for a minute—I almost
+thought——"</p>
+
+<p>"It was my ghost. Moms Mitchell! You are superstitious."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not. Not a bit. I never held with those old sayings but it did
+give me a start." She still held Anne's hand and stroked it, reluctant
+to relinquish the comfort of reality.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I look like a ghost?"</p>
+
+<p>"You certainly do not. My, but you're a different girl altogether. Papa
+will be surprised."</p>
+
+<p>Anne laughed. "If my appearance has the same effect on him as it had on
+you, you'd better prepare him. Did he hear the dog too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go on with you. I don't believe those things. No, I don't think he
+did. Papa sleeps fine now. He's better a lot too. He got down onto the
+landing yesterday and sat in the sun for an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Papa! Got down those stairs to the landing! He must be improved."</p>
+
+<p>"He is," Hilda said with subdued pride. "Papa's changed in the last two
+months, Annie. He's different—in a great many ways. He's more like he
+was—at first—before you children were born. You won't know papa in
+some ways."</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly, if he's like he was before I was born. Perhaps we'll have to
+be introduced."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda smiled, but Anne saw under the amusement a kind of glad
+possession and knew that a new link had been forged between her father
+and mother. For an instant, loneliness touched her and she wondered
+what these months had done to Roger. She had changed. Her mother and
+father had changed. Had Roger changed too?</p>
+
+<p>"I'm dying to see Rogie. Shall I go in or do you want to tell papa
+first?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll just give him a hint. You wait here. He always has his milk in
+the kitchen and I usually have tea with him. Good gracious, I forgot
+all about the tea."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make it. You run along and hint. If I don't see Rogie in a minute
+I'll be howling like that dog myself."</p>
+
+<p>As she made the tea Anne's hands shook with excitement. It was all so
+strange, filled with a vibrant livingness it had never had before. In
+a few moments, she heard them coming along the hall, the tap of her
+father's canes, his shuffling step, Hilda's gleeful laugh, as they
+stopped just outside the kitchen door.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not joking, papa, we've got company to tea. I can't help it if
+you didn't hear them come. No, it's not Charlotte and I'm not going to
+tell you who it is."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't fool me. When your eyes shine like that it's something good.
+Do you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see Annie come in most any day."</p>
+
+<p>"Now—how—on earth—did you——"</p>
+
+<p>James laughed. "We've been married more than thirty years and you never
+put one over on me yet."</p>
+
+<p>He turned the knob and came shuffling into the kitchen. Hilda followed
+with Rogie. Anne had a passing flash of her father, thin and gray, but
+with a happy twinkle in his eyes; Hilda smiling behind him and Rogie
+clinging tightly to her neck, before her eyes filled with tears and
+they all blurred together.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning unsteadily on one cane, James Mitchell put his arm round her.</p>
+
+<p>"She tried to fool me, Annie, but I smelled the rat. I knew you'd get
+lonely and come running back when we didn't expect you."</p>
+
+<p>Anne tried to smile. "But you did expect me. You're not surprised a
+bit." Over his shoulder she was watching Rogie in hungry fear that he
+was not going to recognize her. If Rogie cried and shrank away——But
+he didn't. He was only making quite sure before he gave a gurgle of
+delight and began wriggling in Hilda's grasp. James Mitchell's arm
+dropped and Anne was beside Hilda with Rogie tight in her hold.</p>
+
+<p>"Grown some, hasn't he?" James demanded as he stumbled to the chair
+beside the stove. "Not bad nurses, the old folks, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's grown an inch," Anne declared, hugging him to her. "And my
+gracious, he's heavy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Weighs a ton when he's been on the same spot in your lap ten minutes.
+Only he don't often stay ten minutes in the same spot. He's a lively
+youngster, Anne. Got a lot more pep than you ever had at his age. He
+must take after——" James broke off and looked at Hilda.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he's more like Roger," Anne finished. There was no reason to
+avoid Roger's name.</p>
+
+<p>There was a short silence, filled by her father sipping the malted milk
+and her mother pouring out the tea. Then Anne said:</p>
+
+<p>"Has Roger seen him often?"</p>
+
+<p>Hilda and James looked at each other in a new habit of consultation.</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear. Belle thought it would be just as well to wait until you
+could arrange things as you wanted."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry. There's no reason he shouldn't see him. I never intended
+keeping him all to myself. He's Roger's, too."</p>
+
+<p>Again Hilda and James consulted on a problem they had evidently
+discussed often. Their glances reached a decision and James said:</p>
+
+<p>"Annie, do you suppose that things between you and Roger could
+be patched up? Me and mother have talked about it quite a lot. I
+don't hold with Roger—I never did," there was a touch of the old
+intolerance which a look from Hilda softened and James went on. "But
+he's young and there's this to be said for him—the rubbish he believes
+in is in the air. It's like an epidemic. But there's no reason he
+shouldn't outgrow it. You can do a lot."</p>
+
+<p>Anne sat holding Rogie and fingering her teaspoon absently.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want him to outgrow it, papa. I don't want him to be anything
+but himself."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course you don't," Hilda broke in with the familiar manner
+of smoothing a family difference that had once annoyed Anne. But now
+it did not annoy her. She would have to face, once at least, this
+discussion of herself and Roger and she might as well do it now.
+Besides, it clarified her own thought to talk patiently in this way.</p>
+
+<p>"Roger was one kind of person," she went on, "and I was another. Roger
+saw things—in—in sweeps while I saw them in spots."</p>
+
+<p>The definition was exact to Anne but her father and mother looked
+bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that we really both want the same thing, only we wanted to get
+it differently. I think—it's harder for two people to agree in their
+methods—than in their aims. If Roger had been a Jew and I had been a
+Catholic——"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Anne!" Hilda was so horrified, that amusement touched Anne's very
+earnest wish to get this thing perfectly straight to them.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm only supposing, moms, making the wildest example I can think of."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's certainly wild enough."</p>
+
+<p>"But, if we had been, it might have been easier than it was. I mean
+that—in some ways we would have been so very far apart that it would
+have been useless to try and meet in those ways at all. But Roger and
+I weren't far apart. We both wanted the same thing—a beautiful world,
+but we tried to find this beauty in different places and there are no
+different places. There's only one Beauty everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"What in the name of Heavens ARE you talking about, Annie?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne began to feel a little helpless but persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that nearly all the fuss and noise in the world comes from
+people quarreling about the way to get things, because, nearly
+everybody wants the same thing really when you get right down to
+it. They only quarrel about their own pet way of getting it. Roger
+thinks that if he can make the whole world happy in a lump, then every
+individual will be happy. And I thought that if every individual was
+happy then the whole world would be happy. We——"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you're trying to get at, Annie, and I don't believe
+you do yourself," her father interrupted, but so kindly that Anne
+forgave his not understanding. After all, she had not understood
+herself, before the mountains, and it was not clear in detail yet. "I
+suppose it's something very modern and educated. But common sense is a
+lot older than education and these up-to-date folderols. When a man and
+a woman's married they can't expect to agree about everything. Me and
+mamma never had scarce an idea in common, did we, ma?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. We never agreed about things. I never knew any married folks that
+did. But it doesn't make much difference if you don't talk about them.
+As long as you keep still, things go pretty smooth. I guess our home
+was as comfortable as most homes."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want it to be as comfortable as most homes. Most homes are
+terrible places and I want a real home or none at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must say, I think there's something to be said for Roger,"
+Hilda conceded. "Do you think a home all by yourself is going to be a
+'real home'?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne's throat tightened and she could not answer.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all rubbish, Anne. Nothing we could say would have kept you
+from marrying him and I guess he was just the same as he is now.
+Besides, you'll find it's a different thing working now you've got
+Rogie than it was before when you were a girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's not talk about it, mamma. I wouldn't live with Roger just to be
+supported, not if I had a dozen children."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to heaven you had, Anne; nothing else will ever get a mite of
+real common sense into your head. Oh, well, it's no good talking, I
+suppose. You can't put old heads on young shoulders."</p>
+
+<p>Anne nibbled at her lip and said nothing. She and Hilda finished their
+tea and James his malted milk. When he had put aside the cup he turned
+to her again.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll stay with us for a while, Annie?"</p>
+
+<p>"No—I don't think I will, not more than a few days anyhow. I'm going
+to begin looking for a job to-morrow and I'm sure to find one within a
+day or two. Then I'll take rooms where Rogie can be looked after and
+moms will get a rest. It made an awful lot of extra work having him
+here all that time. He——"</p>
+
+<p>"Now see here, Anne, you needn't use Rogie as an excuse. I don't
+need a rest and he hasn't been a bit of extra work. You always were
+an independent thing." Hilda's impatience ended in a laugh and James
+smiled with her.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, we'll let it go at that. Anyhow, to-morrow morning at eight
+o'clock, off I go job-hunting."</p>
+
+<p>Anne joined the laugh a little uncertainly. The new life was so very
+near.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_THIRTY-THREE">CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>On the following Monday Anne found a position with a fruit commission
+house on Front Street. The salary was not quite what she had hoped, but
+the surroundings were so different from the office of Lowell &amp; Morrison
+that she was glad to take it.</p>
+
+<p>Here there were no soft rugs, no quietly closing doors, or smoothly
+running elevators; no suave and courtly men. Great drays rumbled
+through the street outside; loud-voiced men called orders in strange,
+foreign tongues. For the first hours of the morning the warehouse shook
+with the thud of huge crates being thrown from trucks, trundled through
+the cool darkness of the shed and piled high to the shadow of the roof.
+In the afternoon the rumble of the drays loading and unloading ceased;
+many of the men went home; the place was quiet. Anne could hear the
+whistle of the boats at the wharves, and on foggy days the wail of the
+fog sirens very near.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday afternoon the office closed at one o'clock and Anne spent
+until six looking for an apartment. At dusk she found what she thought
+would do. It was the upper floor of an old house on the edge of Russian
+Hill. The house was run down and rather dismal, but the rear windows
+looked out on a small garden, and from Anne's floor, a little triangle
+of the Bay was visible.</p>
+
+<p>The landlady was a childless widow, a thin, saddened woman with soft
+brown eyes that had almost lost the trick of brightening. But when
+she heard about Rogie they lit gently and she suggested a sand-pile
+in one corner of the garden and a crib for his morning and afternoon
+nap in her own bedroom. Anne's first feeling, that there it would be
+almost impossible to forget the past, lessened, and she closed the
+arrangement, grateful for the garden, the glimpse of the Bay, and Mrs.
+Jeffries' pleasure in Rogie.</p>
+
+<p>On Sunday there was a family dinner at the flat and afterwards Anne
+and Rogie and Belle came to the new home. Mrs. Jeffries had put some
+flowers on the ugly center table and covered the gas globe with orange
+crêpe paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," Anne gasped when she saw it, "I wish she hadn't done that."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind. Let it stay up for a day or two and then it can catch fire
+or destroy itself somehow," Belle advised.</p>
+
+<p>Anne shook her head. "It doesn't matter really—and she might be hurt."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Anne, don't start in that way. You know it won't work. If this
+furnishing is her taste and she begins to 'take an interest' in you and
+tries 'to make you comfortable' you'll only blow up in the end. Take
+those orange shades down and tell her in the morning that you don't
+want anything added to your rooms. You needn't be sharp about it, but
+you can be firm."</p>
+
+<p>Anne smiled with a wistfulness that escaped Belle, touring the room in
+inspection of the ugly steel engravings hung exactly in the center of
+each wall. The first hour in her new home, and already she knew that
+there would be many nights when she would be grateful for even the
+terrible green glass vase that held the flowers, if it meant any one's
+caring for her comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry, Belle. When this wall paper gets too much for my nerves
+I'll go down and sit awhile in 'the parlor.' You should see that."</p>
+
+<p>"Worse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three horsehair chairs with red velvet trimmings; one rocker to match.
+An onyx and brass stand with a pink silk drape. A floor lamp with a
+red shade and a white marble mantel, over a grate that has never had a
+fire. Oh, yes—a 'good body-Brussels' rug, and the floor-border painted
+cherry!"</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens! Well, you'll never have to sit in it. And that back room
+you're going to use for a sitting-room can be made cheerful in time
+with just a few softening things round. Besides, there's the fireplace.
+I've a good mind to light a fire, Anne, just to see how it looks. I
+believe I'd feel better about leaving you alone with this wall paper
+and that what-not if I got the effect of a fire."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not afraid of the what-not—wouldn't those ghastly statuettes in
+the Niche fit perfectly?—but I would rather like a fire. I wonder if
+Mrs. Jeffries could let us have a little wood."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll ask her." In a moment Belle was back and while Anne undressed
+Rogie, lit a fire in the back room. When Anne heard the cheerful
+crackle, her eyes filled with tears but she brushed them angrily away.</p>
+
+<p>"Now see here," she whispered brusquely to herself, "you're not going
+to get weepy, every time you look at the Bay or hear a fog-whistle or
+light an open fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you coming, Anne? This kindling won't last forever." Belle had not
+lit the gas and the kindly darkness hid the brown and red wall paper
+and stiff chairs.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not going to be bad, Belle. It's really wonderfully still, almost
+as still as the mountains. When the fog-whistles don't go, there'll be
+hardly a sound outside."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor inside either. Does that women ever laugh, do you suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Mary Potter never really laughed outright. I think,
+perhaps, Mrs. Jeffries has only forgotten how."</p>
+
+<p>Belle shrugged. "Well, I hope she'll remember again soon. If she
+doesn't, Rogie will forget too."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Belle, can you honestly imagine Rogie a solemn baby?"</p>
+
+<p>"It does take some stretching of the imagination. But—when I look at
+this wall paper and those chairs I can imagine almost anything. I can
+even imagine Roger losing faith in——"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes? Go on, Belle, don't be silly; as if Roger's name mustn't be
+mentioned. I—I don't feel that way at all. Besides, even if I did, I
+couldn't avoid Roger—because of Rogie. He has just as much right to
+him as I, and as soon as I feel a little more settled, I'm going to
+make some regular arrangement for his seeing him, having—him—part—of
+the time if he wants to."</p>
+
+<p>Belle looked down at the small figure gazing earnestly into the fire
+and her hand moved toward her sister's shoulder, then drew back without
+touching.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course, he ought to see him if he wants to," she said in her
+brusque, impersonal way as if she were agreeing in some physician's
+instruction concerning a patient.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," Anne went on, "that Roger had been seeing him right along.
+I really don't understand, Belle, why you didn't let him. He must
+think it was my wish that he shouldn't and believe that I was being
+deliberately mean about it. He must think I am awfully narrow and
+ungenerous and—and vindictive and——'</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why he should think that. Naturally he would suppose that
+Rogie was with you. Besides, how did a poor blunderbuss like myself
+know what mood you would come back in? If I had let Roger make his
+own arrangements for seeing him I might have set up a precedent you
+wouldn't have wanted to keep. Then there was moms and papa. You've
+grown so calm and sure in the mountains, Anne, you don't realize that
+the rest of us are pretty jumpy yet. Moms ranted along for days after
+you'd gone. I don't know but what she might have refused to let Roger
+look at him even if he had come. Under the circumstances I did what
+seemed best. You know the family channels aren't the easiest to steer
+in safely."</p>
+
+<p>Anne smiled. "No, I know they're not. And I didn't mean to be unfair,
+Belle. You've all been terribly dear to me. I don't believe I ever
+understood any of you—or—any one—else—before I went away."</p>
+
+<p>Again Belle looked at her sharply, changed her mind about speaking,
+and put the last piece of kindling on the fire. Together they stood
+silently watching it flare, then crumble, char and drop to gray ash.</p>
+
+<p>When the last faint glow had died from the embers, Anne brought Belle's
+things from the room where Rogie was now fast asleep. But even after
+they were on, Belle lingered as if reluctant to go.</p>
+
+<p>"If there's anything you want, you'll let me know, won't you, kiddie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'll let you know, but there won't be anything, I'm sure. The
+hours at the office aren't bad at all and I believe Mrs. Jeffries will
+take wonderful care of Rogie. It's—a little strange now—but I'll get
+it homied up in time. I've got a few ideas about this room already."</p>
+
+<p>"You can have anything of mine out of storage that you want. Do you
+remember that heavy tapestry stuff I had a mania for once? It didn't
+go in a small modern apartment, but it would be great with these high
+ceilings. You'll ask me, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I promise. But for the present I'll just go on like this till I
+get the feel of the place."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go on too long or you'll get to feel like the place. I know you,
+Anne, better than you know yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Anne laughed. "You make me feel like a fly at the end of a microscope."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a fly," Belle said with a pretense of serious consideration,
+"no, not a fly. A little moth with gold dust all over it, one of the
+shimmery kind that looks as if it were going to fall apart if you
+touched it."</p>
+
+<p>"And never does, but crawls right alone even after it's burnt off its
+wings."</p>
+
+<p>Anne realized the possible interpretation and flushed, but if Belle had
+caught this meaning, she said nothing, and a few minutes later went.</p>
+
+<p>As Anne closed the door behind Belle, and came back again up the stairs
+alone, a little of the courage that she had sincerely felt her own
+while she and Belle stood before the fire died away. Again before the
+tiny heap of gray ashes, Anne forced down the tears with an effort.
+Was her new-found peace to be so easily disturbed? She had been back
+in the city only a little over a week, and already this going of Belle
+made her feel so terribly alone. Anne went to the window and opened it
+wide. Perhaps the touch of night would bring that throbbing, silent
+assurance of companionship. With her elbows on the sill Anne gazed to
+the triangle of twinkling lights at the base of the dark hills across
+the bay. Faintly the murmur of the city came to her, but her hands
+clenched and it took all her strength to keep back the tears.</p>
+
+<p>She was a part of it. But such a little part.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't be lonely," she whispered fiercely. "I won't. I WON'T."</p>
+
+<p>But the resolution flitted away into the blackness and left Anne tense
+with her own vehemence. She closed the window quickly and went into the
+other room. Between the cool sheets she tried to relax, to immerse her
+body in the vast, eternal unity of all-living, but she was conscious
+only of the effort and after a while she gave up trying to relax and
+let her thought go where it would.</p>
+
+<p>It went straight to Roger. What had these months done to Roger? They
+had done so much to her, it seemed impossible that Roger could be
+just the same. And yet, she hoped he was. The old Roger she felt now
+she understood. A new Roger might be very strange. At first the new
+relationship that had to be between them would be difficult, and, with
+another Roger, perhaps impossible.</p>
+
+<p>No, Roger must be just the same, have the same sweeping enthusiasm, the
+same impatience, the same intolerance of prejudice not his own. Until
+she had gripped more firmly her own peace, she could risk no change in
+Roger. At last the tightness in her muscles eased and Anne fell asleep
+a little comforted in her decision to write to Roger before the end of
+the week.</p>
+
+<p>But the end of the week came and went and Anne had not written.
+Every evening she had tried and in the morning destroyed the letter.
+Some were tinged with memory, the others almost belligerent in their
+indifferent brevity. The second week she did not even try but convinced
+herself that the mood would descend upon her suddenly and she would
+tell Roger of her return and suggest his coming to see Rogie with
+exactly the right degree of friendly interest.</p>
+
+<p>But the mood did not come, although Anne waited for it, in the same
+bodily relaxation in which Charlotte Welles entered The Silence. By the
+beginning of the fourth week after her return, this need to communicate
+with Roger and the impossibility of doing it, was destroying her
+peace and absorbing every waking thought. That she managed to do her
+work well, was only because the old power of mechanical attention had
+returned. Often Anne read through the transcriptions of her employer's
+dictation and wondered at this subconscious power that permitted her to
+quote correctly prices and invoices, write intelligently of fruits and
+vegetables, while her whole consciousness was concerned in forming a
+letter to Roger.</p>
+
+<p>Once she thought she saw Roger on the street, and, although she would
+have grasped eagerly this solution if it had occurred to her before,
+now she turned and went rapidly in the other direction. But no sooner
+had she lost the possibility—if it had been really Roger—than she
+wished with her whole heart that she had faced certainty. She began
+looking for him everywhere, hoping and then dreading to meet him. From
+walking in places where the possibility of meeting might occur, she
+swung to going and coming by circuitous ways, angry with herself for
+her own indecision, touched sometimes even to anger at Roger.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, at the beginning of the fifth week, in exhaustion of her
+own irresolution, Anne wrote and without rereading or waiting for
+morning counsel, went out and dropped the note in the letter box.
+And then began a period of waiting that made the weeks preceding
+seem full of calm certainty. Now Anne was so sharply conscious of two
+selves within her, that, at times, she could almost visibly see them
+both. One went to and from work, wrote letters, cared for her rooms,
+attended to Rogie, talked quietly with Mrs. Jeffries. The other did
+nothing, nothing at all, except wait. This self emerged to control at
+the postman's coming in the morning; when she opened the door in the
+evening and looked first to the hat-stand to see if there was a letter;
+and at night when she lay in bed trying to find a reason for Roger's
+silence. For Roger did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>The days filled to a week, two, three.</p>
+
+<p>When, a few days before Christmas, Anne came home one night to find
+Mrs. Jeffries crying in the kitchen, her first reaction was almost
+relief that something had happened that would call upon her for some
+quality besides the petrifying patience of waiting in which she felt
+her brain rapidly numbing to a living death.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? What has happened?"</p>
+
+<p>In the comfort of companionship, Mrs. Jeffries looked up from the table
+where she had been sitting in the dark, her head buried in her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"My sister's dead. Little Lucy——"</p>
+
+<p>Anne knelt and put her arm about the heaving shoulders. The older woman
+clung in a renewed passion of sobs and Anne held her quietly until they
+eased. At last Mrs. Jeffries looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"There are three children, the youngest only five and John doesn't know
+what to do."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to go to them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes—I must go. John and Lucy adored each other—they were like lovers
+always. Poor—John—he's so lost—he doesn't seem able to grasp it. He
+says——" She reached to the letter lying as she had dropped it two
+hours before.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't—don't, please, really, I'd rather not." Anne took the letter
+from her quickly and laid it back on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jeffries shuddered. "They loved each other so. Why did she have
+to be taken? He and the children need her so. And she was so strong,
+stronger than I have ever been. Nobody needs me. But Lucy—one moment
+well and laughing—the next——"</p>
+
+<p>In the cold darkness of the unlit kitchen Anne saw old Mary and
+Timothy smiling at each other as they pictured "going out sudden into
+the midst of things." She held the quivering form again until it
+quieted. Mrs. Jeffries wiped her eyes at last and tried to consider
+Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"How will you manage? Can you get some one to look after Rogie? I may
+be away some time. I may bring the children back with me. I don't know.
+I feel as if everything has changed so; I'm bewildered."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think of me, I'll manage. Perhaps I can get Mrs. Horton, the
+woman I used to have, to come up until we see what we're going to do.
+But you mustn't think about me, or consider me at all. Promise that you
+won't. I wish I could do something."</p>
+
+<p>"You are doing something. You always have ever since you came. You
+don't know what it's meant to have you and Rogie round though I haven't
+seen much of you. I believe I was freezing up clear through—until he
+came."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you've liked having us. It's meant a great deal to me to know
+some one was looking after Rogie as you have done."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jeffries put the letter away and rose wearily. Without having
+taken off her things, Anne went out again. In an hour she had arranged
+with Mrs. Horton.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_THIRTY-FOUR">CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Roger was in Los Angeles on a speaking trip when Anne's letter was
+forwarded to him from the office. He found it when he came back from
+one of the most successful meetings he had ever held. He had held his
+audience in his hands, moved them at his will. Enthusiasm had run high.
+He had thrilled with his own power, and then, depression had followed.
+It was so easy to move men with words. It was almost a trick, emphasis
+here, appeal to emotion there, a climax of enthusiasm malleable to his
+will.</p>
+
+<p>After such a gathering men and women insisted on meeting him
+personally. He often left the halls with groups violently discussing
+his words. And so little resulted from this enthusiasm. An inclination
+strengthened here and there, a few teetering on the edge of belief
+converted. Sometimes a successful meeting such as this had been
+exhausted Roger more than any antagonistic opposition could have done.</p>
+
+<p>To-night he was very tired. The ideal for which a few strove seemed so
+far away, so beyond those for whom he searched for it. He had left the
+hall instantly, escaping, as he rarely permitted himself to do, the
+urgent wish of strangers to meet him. Safe in his hotel room at last
+he had given the order not to be disturbed by any visitor or telephone
+call, and had begun indifferently looking over the forwarded mail, when
+he came unexpectedly on Anne's letter.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at it for a moment curiously, as if it were something not
+intended for him. He turned it over and over, until a sudden eagerness
+to know of Anne and Rogie seized him and he tore the envelope open with
+quivering fingers. The note was brief, and, although Anne had intended
+it to be friendly, it seemed to Roger stiff and formal. He read it only
+once and then tore it across and dropped the pieces in the waste-basket
+with a touch of disappointment he refused to recognize. There was no
+reason Anne should write to him in another tone, and, after all, the
+important thing was that he could see Rogie. He had longed for this and
+resented Anne's monopoly of the boy, but now he knew that seeing Rogie
+rested alone with him he forgave Anne the bitterness he had felt. He
+sat down to answer instantly, but he, as Anne, found it difficult to
+write. Three drafts of a simple note he destroyed, and then suddenly
+pushed the pad from him. He would go. There was a train in an hour. He
+would be in the city in the morning, Sunday morning. He had another
+meeting on the following Monday to complete the itinerary, but when
+Roger visioned the empty Sunday between, he could not face it.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later he had paid his bill and left the hotel. As the
+train pulled out of the station it began to rain sharp, slanting rain
+that lashed at the windows of his berth. But Roger, exhausted from the
+meeting and his own reaction to Anne's letter, slept almost instantly.
+Nor did he wake until the train clanged into the station. It was still
+raining, but less violently now. The sharp lashing had quieted to a
+steady fall. Roger had breakfast, went to the loft to see if there was
+an urgent matter for him, telephoned to Tom to send another speaker to
+Los Angeles in time for the Monday night meeting, and then went to the
+cottage.</p>
+
+<p>It was still and clean and empty as he had left it. He made a fire,
+and, to persuade himself that he was in no haste, sat before it.</p>
+
+<p>By night he would have seen Anne and Rogie. Whatever was to be the
+future relation between them would have been fixed. What did he want
+this relation to be? He felt no anger with Anne. She had been true to
+herself as he had been to himself. He felt no emotional eagerness to
+meet Anne, nor reluctance. His sharpest feeling was toward Rogie.</p>
+
+<p>In the past Rogie had been a baby, the child of himself and Anne, not
+in any way distinct from them. But now that the convention of a home
+had been taken from Rogie—now that the accepted standard of father,
+mother, child under one roof had been taken from him, somehow Rogie
+had become a distinct personality. It was as if, in some strange way,
+the responsibility of being an individual, a separate social unit, had
+somehow descended upon the baby; so that now he was almost an adult
+in the separateness of his personality. Roger could not shake off a
+ridiculous feeling that he would almost meet Rogie as man to man.</p>
+
+<p>It was after six before Roger climbed the hill, and, closing the
+old-fashioned garden gate quietly behind him, rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of the bell pealing through the still house, Anne
+started, and then certainty gripped her beyond motion. Again the bell
+rang, this time less fiercely, as if eagerness in the ringer were
+passing. Anne hurried from the room, but at the foot of the stairs
+she paused, staring at the door, her heart thumping until she could
+scarcely breathe. It sounded again, this time a sad little clang of
+disappointment. Anne went slowly to the door and opened it. The cold
+wind and rain rushed in and then Roger was close to her in the hall;
+the door shut, and the smell of his damp clothes sharp in the air.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you must have left town," she said calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been away. I only just got back."</p>
+
+<p>In the closing of the umbrella and the hanging up of his hat and
+overcoat they escaped a more intimate greeting. But now that the hat
+and coat were hung and the dripping umbrella safe in the stand, Anne
+faced the need to take Roger upstairs or into the gloomy parlor to the
+right. She hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>Roger had come. In a moment, she would bring Rogie to him. The future
+would hold whatever was possible of friendship for them, or else she
+would be outside the union of Rogie and his father. Until she knew, she
+must keep her lonely rooms upstairs as a retreat untouched by Roger's
+presence. If the future was to hold nothing she did not want memory
+there. She led the way to the parlor and lit the light.</p>
+
+<p>"I was just getting Rogie ready for bed, but he didn't want to go a
+bit. He's wide awake."</p>
+
+<p>Roger felt the dismal chill of the room shutting down upon him and
+struggled against it in the first remark that came to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose he will remember me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I think he will. I was afraid he wouldn't know me when I came
+back from the mountains, he took so long to size me up. But he did."</p>
+
+<p>She pulled down the shades and moved to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll just dress him again; it won't take but a few minutes."</p>
+
+<p>She had not taken Rogie with her then. He had been in the city all the
+time, guarded by the Mitchells. Roger frowned and began walking up and
+down the rather long room. At the farther end a narrow glass door,
+draped with an ugly curtain of monk's cloth, hid the garden beyond.
+When he reached it, Roger pulled the curtain aside and looked out
+into the dripping bushes. It was a neglected garden, not riotous with
+overgrown plants as the cottage garden, but a lank, weed-grown strip,
+long and narrow. Roger dropped the curtain quickly and, lighting a
+cigarette, began walking again.</p>
+
+<p>As the ugliness of the room penetrated in detail, the red shaded lamp,
+the horsehair furniture, the onyx stand, gradually his anger at the
+Mitchells faded in wonder of Anne. Why had Anne come to live here;
+Anne, who hated ugly surroundings with physical passion? Was Anne so
+poor that she could find no better place, or had she changed? Did
+things like this no longer trouble Anne?</p>
+
+<p>A door upstairs closed. Then the silence continued unbroken. Roger's
+nerves tightened. Why didn't Anne take him up to what was evidently
+her part of the house? He lit a cigarette and pulled deeply on it.
+The smell of the smoke drifted up to Anne. Her throat swelled and she
+braced her shoulders as she buttoned Rogie's rompers with trembling
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Roger heard her coming and ground out the cigarette on the white
+mantelshelf. Anne was in the doorway, Rogie in her arms. Just as he
+had done with Anne, so now Rogie leaned away, frowning, before, with a
+plunge of delight, he almost threw himself from Anne's arms. Roger took
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, old chap, who is it? So you knew me, did you?"</p>
+
+<p>Over the baby's head Roger smiled proudly at Anne, and Anne smiled
+back; for Rogie's hands were already clutching his father's hair as if,
+in this favorite game, he was making assurance doubly sure.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, he did remember," Anne came nearer. "He really has a
+wonderful memory."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe many his age would have remembered, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't believe they would."</p>
+
+<p>They laughed together. Then the memory of their intimacy, incarnate
+forever in Rogie, swept Anne, and she turned hastily away and sat down
+on the sofa. Still holding the child, Roger took the rocker.</p>
+
+<p>Silence came between them. Each searched nervously for some spot in the
+present on which to meet. But the strangeness of seeing Anne and Rogie
+in these surroundings, his ignorance of all that had happened to them
+in the last months, wrapped Roger like a fog, through which he felt
+Anne receding from him.</p>
+
+<p>But, for the first time, the room was not hideous to Anne. The damp
+smell of Roger's clothes, the lingering cigarette smoke, filled it with
+a throbbing vitality it had never had. She felt Roger's masculinity in
+the very air and it made the few small remarks she managed to catch
+from the whirling mass of feeling seem thin and artificial.</p>
+
+<p>Roger tried to fill the silence with remarks to Rogie; by tickling him
+and riding him on his foot. For a while it succeeded. Then Rogie grew
+tired. His eyes filmed; he leaned more heavily on his father's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Roger tried to keep him awake, but Rogie objected with impatient jerks,
+and Roger looked to Anne. In a few moments he would be asleep. Then he
+and Anne would be faced by the need to fill the silence or he would
+have to go.</p>
+
+<p>"He's just about asleep. Perhaps I'd better carry him to bed. He must
+be awfully heavy for you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll take him. That's something no one seems to do just right.
+He wakes even if Mrs. Jeffries tries to carry him at this stage, and
+usually he's as good with her as with me."</p>
+
+<p>She took Rogie from him and Roger watched her go, so small and fair
+herself. He heard her go slowly up the stairs, for Rogie was indeed a
+heavy weight for her slight arms.</p>
+
+<p>Again it was still.</p>
+
+<p>Anne put Rogie down, stayed a moment to make sure he would not wake,
+turned out the light and opened the window. Again the smell of smoke
+drifted to her and now she heard Roger's step walking up and down as he
+had used to walk in anger at Hilary Wainwright.</p>
+
+<p>Up and down the long, narrow room Roger walked, trying to force the
+chaos of thought to ordered sequence by the rhythm of his step. He
+could not go back to the cottage which Anne had made beautiful and
+leave her and Rogie in this dismal place. No matter whether Anne had
+grown indifferent to her surroundings or not, he hated to think of his
+boy, even as a baby, absorbing impressions of that horsehair furniture
+and onyx stand. And in imagination he saw sharply Mrs. Jeffries, whom
+they represented, a dull, thin woman like the aunt who had brought
+him up. Anne hated to face new situations, and, if she had indeed
+persuaded herself that this was not so bad, she would go on living here
+year after year. Roger shuddered. What Anne chose to do was no longer
+his concern, although the old need to protect rose in him, untinged by
+any personal emotion, almost against his will. He wanted Anne to be
+happy and have the things she liked. But Rogie was very definitely his
+concern; not only his duty, but with the feel of the fat little body as
+vivid in his arms as when he had held him, Rogie was the deepest motive
+of his life.</p>
+
+<p>He was just turning again at the far end of the room when Anne
+returned. He looked up quickly, still frowning over the problem, but
+said, with a strange, new hesitancy and unsureness:</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, I don't like to think of you and Rogie living in this place. You
+ought to have the cottage. I only moved back because there seemed no
+reason not to."</p>
+
+<p>Anne leaned against the onyx stand; she could get no farther, but her
+voice was steady and she even smiled slightly and looked in forced
+amusement about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"It is pretty bad, isn't it? But I don't come in here often."</p>
+
+<p>"Are your own any better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly—in the furnishing, but the sitting-room looks over a
+garden and there's a little triangle of bay."</p>
+
+<p>Roger locked about, trying to get clearer the location of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Darn little bay from any part of this house. Anne, won't you take the
+cottage? I have to be away a great deal now. It doesn't matter much
+where I live in between times."</p>
+
+<p>"I—don't—see how I can quite—not yet, anyhow." By speaking so,
+very slowly in assumed consideration of this as a proposition, Anne
+succeeded in keeping her voice even. "I may get a raise after New
+Year's, although it's rather soon to expect one, but at present I
+couldn't pay the cottage rent and have Mrs. Horton too. This is
+ridiculously cheap and when Mrs. Jeffries is here she takes such care
+of Rogie."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't she here all the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at present. She had to go to a brother-in-law. Her sister died and
+left several children. She may bring them back with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you go on just the same then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. We didn't have time to discuss that. I suppose I can."</p>
+
+<p>Again Roger walked the length of the room, past Anne, and back. When he
+came to the other end, as if only from this spot could he explain, he
+said sharply:</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, I don't want it. I don't want any woman, no matter how kind she
+is, bringing Rogie up. Mrs. Horton didn't matter so much when he was
+quite little, but he's getting a regular boy now and—I don't want it."</p>
+
+<p>This consideration was all for Rogie, but Anne felt as if some one very
+strong had picked her up and was carrying her easily.</p>
+
+<p>"I would rather be with him all the time, too, but that's impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it isn't. Anne, I don't want you to work. It isn't necessary.
+No, don't interrupt, please. Listen. I can do it very well. I've
+been writing some on the side lately and I've got to be quite a
+speech-maker. You'd be surprised. Speech-making doesn't pay a great
+deal, but it's something. Please believe me, I can do it very well."</p>
+
+<p>The floor swayed beneath Anne, but she held tight to the cold onyx and
+answered quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have to have time to think about it, Roger. I—can't—decide
+right away now."</p>
+
+<p>Roger shrugged impatiently. "You can if you try. What is there to
+prevent? I—" he hesitated—"I won't trouble you in any way. You
+will be exactly as free as you are now. Anne, if you won't do it for
+yourself, won't you do it for Rogie?"</p>
+
+<p>"I—don't—know," Anne whispered, her strength almost gone.</p>
+
+<p>Roger turned away. Again he felt himself tilting against the soft,
+unbendable obstinacy of one of Anne's principles.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said at length, "will you agree to this? Will you move back
+to the cottage and let me pay the rent? Will you?" he repeated more
+gently when Anne did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>To be back in the cottage in her three white-painted rooms with all the
+Bay and the hills and the sweet garden. Anne felt herself sinking down
+into a peace so thick and deep that she could scarcely bear to break it
+even by an answer. She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"When will you come? To-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-night!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? It's early. Have you much to pack?"</p>
+
+<p>"No—only my clothes and Rogie's."</p>
+
+<p>"You could do it, couldn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes—I—could—do it. There's Mrs. Jeffries though——"</p>
+
+<p>Roger felt as if Anne were opposing tiny twigs to this sweeping need of
+his to get them both out of that horrible house.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you owe her any rent?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I just sent her a check for the coming month."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there's no reason you can't. Besides, from what you say, she's
+not sure of her own plans. Perhaps she won't come back herself."</p>
+
+<p>"I think she will. But she may not."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's settled, is it? I can get a taxi while you pack?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right." The words quivered and dropped from Anne in a low whisper
+as if her last resistance had died. She hurried from the room and Roger
+went out to find a telephone and get the taxi.</p>
+
+<p>Anne could never remember how she packed her trunk or dressed Rogie
+or when she turned to find Roger beside her telling her the taxi was
+waiting. She seemed to be escaping from some terrible catastrophe,
+her whole consciousness taken in the effort to get away. It was only
+when they were all together in the close intimacy of the cab that Anne
+realized what she had done.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments she and Roger and Rogie would be again in the cottage.
+Beyond that Anne could not think. Nor did her mind clear to any detail,
+even as she followed Roger, carrying Rogie up the long, familiar flight
+and into the living-room. He put Rogie on the couch, paid the driver
+and closed the door. Anne was shaking so she could scarcely stand.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make a fire. Everything is just the same, except the crib.
+I—I'll get that. It's in the attic."</p>
+
+<p>Roger went into the kitchen and Anne heard him light the candle-lantern
+they had always kept for searching things stowed in the tiny loft they
+called the attic. Then he brought the step ladder and, taking out the
+small square of ceiling that made the attic entrance, clambered up.
+Anne's hands were stiff with cold. It seemed impossible that Roger
+should be doing these things exactly as he had done them ages upon
+ages ago in the past. Life was so different now that no motion in it
+could be quite the same. But it was exactly the same, even to Roger's
+throwing the unwanted things out of his way as he always did, because
+he was a bad packer and never knew exactly where he had put anything.
+At last he found it, and threw the mattress out through the opening,
+scrambling down with the framework. When he had put away the ladder and
+lantern and dusted his clothes, he brought the crib in.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I put it up in the bedroom?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne was bent now above the opened trunk searching Rogie's night things
+which she had thrust hastily in among her own clothes in the rush of
+packing.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she whispered, without looking up, feigning this need not to
+wake Rogie, already restless from the unusual confusion about him.</p>
+
+<p>When she had found the things she carried Rogie to the fire, undressed
+him, slipped on the tiny pajamas, and, holding him close, listened with
+every nerve to Roger moving about in the next room. In a few moments
+now Rogie would be in his own crib, in the old room. What would Roger
+do?</p>
+
+<p>At last Roger came from the bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>"I've put it up but I didn't make it—I don't know just how you do it.
+The blankets and things are all on the bed—I'm sure they're all there."</p>
+
+<p>Anne rose and moved to lay Rogie on the couch while she made up the
+crib, but Roger held out his arms and Anne laid the baby in them. Very
+gently Roger sat down in Anne's place and she went in to make the
+crib. But the blood beat so behind her eyes and her hands trembled so
+violently that she scarcely knew what she did.</p>
+
+<p>Roger stared across his son's head into the flames, conscious of the
+new disorder of the room, the opened trunk, Rogie's tiny garments lying
+on the hearthrug, Anne in the next room.</p>
+
+<p>The past, the present, the future tangled before him, a mass of paths
+leading in all directions; quagmires of misunderstanding, blind alleys
+of separate interests, smooth, pleasant spots of memories long past.
+Here a path to the night by the lake when Anne's lips had clung as
+eagerly as his own; there the blank wall of the lacquer screen and the
+desert spots of Anne's carping criticism. Here the path of his deepest
+faith and belief broke short above the chasm of Anne's indifference.
+The world was indifferent too. But the world's indifference he could
+escape in the comradeship of others who believed with him; in solitary
+hours when, physically rested, his own faith always rose again clear
+and strong. With the narrowness and indifference of strangers he did
+not have to rise up and lie down, eat, sleep and be patient.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly the past and present divided, and in the space between
+Roger saw a future, the future Katya had pictured—a devastating
+passion that would destroy him—or remake life. Roger felt as if a
+fiery wind were suddenly blowing upon him, and his hold on Rogie
+tightened. He did not want life broken or remade. He wanted to work on
+as he was working, accomplish more and more, mold Rogie to the ideal he
+had once shaped for himself, but which he sometimes felt now was very
+high and far away. He would get only a little way to it and die. But
+Rogie might reach and pass it.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened and Anne came in. Quietly Roger handed the baby to
+her, and she went back again into the bedroom. Roger got up and stood
+leaning against the mantelshelf.</p>
+
+<p>Had Anne really changed?</p>
+
+<p>Had he?</p>
+
+<p>From the maze of separate interests and ideals could they find one
+tiny path back to the old dreams? Could they cut a new one to a shared
+future? Would his arms ever again seek Anne hungrily of their own will?
+Would hers close about him and hold him fiercely as they had held him
+by the lake? Was need like this ever reborn?</p>
+
+<p>What was Anne doing in the other room? Why didn't she come back?</p>
+
+<p>She came at last, softly closing the door behind her. At the other end
+of the hearth she too stood leaning against the mantelshelf, staring
+down into the fire, as conscious of the familiar room and Roger leaning
+so close beside her as Roger of her.</p>
+
+<p>What was Roger going to do? What did he expect of her? In a moment
+would he take his things and go, as many guests had gone after a
+pleasant evening in those far gone days? Would she lock the door and
+put out the lights after Roger, as Roger had done after those other
+guests whose going had meant nothing at all?</p>
+
+<p>Why did Roger stand there staring into the fire? Was he waiting for her
+to speak?</p>
+
+<p>Without changing her position Anne looked to him. He seemed suddenly,
+in her absence with Rogie, to have grown strangely weary. His face,
+turned in profile, looked thinner, sharper, and a little drawn about
+the corners of the eyes and lips. His shoulders sagged as they only
+did when he was very tired. When he had grown suddenly tired like
+this it had always rested him to lie on the couch and have her stroke
+his head quietly in one long, sweeping gesture from forehead to neck.
+Anne felt the outline of his head now beneath her hand, and the dry
+crispness of his hair as if it were actually beneath her touch. She
+looked quickly back into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>The rain began again and Roger threw another log on the fire. The
+acacia lashed its long, thin arms and the rising wind cried over the
+hill. Anne felt Roger's look on her and very slowly her own rose to
+meet it.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we try again, Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>"Y-e-s," Anne whispered, and her eyes filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p>Roger drew her gently to him. There was no passion of possession in his
+hold, but deep tenderness and protection,</p>
+
+<p>"I think it will be all right this time, Princess."</p>
+
+<p>Anne stood close.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you quite sure, Roger, that you want it so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. For myself I am quite sure. And you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm—sure—too."</p>
+
+<p>They stood so for a moment, then Roger drew her gently nearer.</p>
+
+<p>Would they ever find it now, that everlasting, undestroyable love that
+they had missed? Over Anne's fair head, Roger gazed wistfully into the
+fire.
+</p>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75113 ***</div>
+</body>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75113 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75113)