.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 53289
   :PG.Title: The Restless Sex
   :PG.Released: 2016-10-15
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Robert \W. Chambers
   :MARCREL.ill: \W. \D. Stevens
   :DC.Title: The Restless Sex
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1918
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE RESTLESS SEX
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   .. _`She nodded listlessly, kneeling beside his chair. (Page 135)`:

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      :alt: She nodded listlessly, kneeling beside his chair. (Page 135)

      She nodded listlessly, kneeling beside his chair. (Page `135`_)

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      The
      Restless Sex

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      By ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

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      AUTHOR OF
      "Barbarians," "The Dark Star," "The Girl Philippa,"
      "Who Goes There," Etc.

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      With Frontispiece
      By W. D. STEVENS

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      A. L. BURT COMPANY
      Publishers New York

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      Published by arrangement with D. APPLETON & COMPANY

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      Copyright, 1918, by

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      ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
      Copyright, 1917, 1918, by The International Magazine Company

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      Printed in the United States of America

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      To
      MILDRED SISSON

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.. _`PREFACE`:

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   THE RESTLESS SEX

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   PREFACE

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Created complete, equipped for sporadic
multiplication and later for auto-fertilization, the
restless sex, intensely bored by the process of
procreation, presently invented an auxiliary and
labeled him [male symbol].

A fool proceeding, for the inherited mania for
invention obsessed him and he began to invent gods.  The
only kind of gods that his imagination could conceive
were various varieties of supermen, stronger, more
cruel, craftier than he.  And with these he continued
to derive satisfaction by scaring himself.

But the restless sex remained restless; the invention
of the sign of Mars ([Mars symbol]), far from bringing
content, merely increased the capacity of the sex for
fidgeting.  And its insatiate curiosity concerning its own
handiwork increased.

This handiwork, however, fulfilled rather casually the
purpose of its inventor, and devoted the most of its
time to the invention of gods, endowing the most
powerful of them with all its own cowardice, vanity,
intolerance and ferocity.

"He made us," they explained with a modesty attributable
only to forgetfulness.

"Believe in him or he'll damn you.  And if he doesn't,
we will!" they shouted to one another.  And appointed
representatives of various denominations to deal
exclusively in damnation.

Cede Deo!  And so, in conformity with the edict of
this man-created creator, about a decade before the
Great Administration began, a little girl was born.

She should not have been born, because she was not
wanted, being merely the by-product of an itinerant
actor—Harry Quest, juveniles—stimulated to casual
procreation by idleness, whiskey, and phthisis.

The other partner in this shiftless affair was an
uneducated and very young girl named Conway, who
tinted photographs for a Utica photographer while
daylight lasted, and doubled her small salary by doing
fancy skating at a local "Ice Palace" in the evenings.
So it is very plain that the by-product of this
partnership hadn't much chance in the world which awaited
her; for, being neither expected nor desired, and,
moreover, being already a prenatal heiress to obscure,
unknown traits scarcely as yet even developed in the pair
responsible for her advent on earth, what she might
turn into must remain a problem to be solved by time
alone.

Harry Quest, the father of this unborn baby, was
an actor.  Without marked talent and totally without
morals, but well educated and of agreeable manners,
he was a natural born swindler, not only of others but
of himself.  In other words, an optimist.

His father, the Reverend Anthony Quest, retired, was
celebrated for his wealth, his library, and his amazing
and heartless parsimony.  And his morals.  No wonder
he had grimly kicked out his only son who had none.

The parents of the mother of this little child not
yet born, lived in Utica, over a stationery and toy
shop which they kept.  Patrick Conway was the man's
name.  He had a pension for being injured on the
railway, and sat in a peculiarly constructed wheeled
chair, moving himself about by pushing the rubber-tired
wheels with both hands and steering with his
remaining foot.

He had married a woman rather older than himself,
named Jessie Grismer, a school teacher living in
Herkimer.

To Utica drifted young Quest, equipped only with
the remains of one lung, and out of a job as usual.  At
the local rink he picked up Laura Conway, after a
mindless flirtation, and ultimately went to board with
her family over the stationery shop.

So the affair in question was a case of propinquity
as much as anything, and was consummated with all
the detached irresponsibility of two sparrows.

However, Quest, willing now to be supported,
married the girl without protest.  She continued to tint
photographs and skate as long as she was able to be
about; he loafed in front of theatres and hotels, with
a quarter in change in his pockets, but always came
back to meals.  On sunny afternoons, when he felt well,
he strolled about the residence section or reposed in
his room waiting, probably, for Opportunity to knock
and enter.

But nothing came except the baby.

About that time, too, both lungs being in bad
condition, young Quest began those various and exhaustive
experiments in narcotics, which sooner or later interest
such men.  And he finally discovered heroin.  Finding
it an agreeable road to hell, the symptomatic
characteristics of an addict presently began to develop in him,
and he induced his young wife to share the pleasures of
his pharmaceutical discovery.

They and their baby continued to encumber the
apartment for a year or two before the old people
died—of weariness perhaps, perhaps of old age—or
grief—or some similar disease so fatal to the aged.

Anyway, they died, and there remained nothing in
the estate not subject to creditors.  And, as tinted
photographs had gone out of fashion even in Utica, and
as the advent of moving pictures was beginning to kill
vaudeville everywhere except in New York, the
ever-provincial, thither the Quest family drifted.  And
there, through the next few years, they sifted downward
through stratum after stratum of the metropolitan
purlieus, always toward some darker substratum—always
a little lower.

The childishly attractive mother, in blue velvet and
white cat's fur, still did fancy skating at rink and
Hippodrome.  The father sometimes sat dazed and
coughing in the chilly waiting rooms of theatrical
agencies.  Fortified by drugs and by a shabby fur
overcoat, he sometimes managed to make the rounds in
pleasant weather; and continued to die rather slowly,
considering his physical condition.

But his father, who had so long ago disowned
him—the Reverend Anthony Quest—being in perfect moral
condition, caught a slight cold in his large, warm
library, and died of pneumonia in forty-eight hours—a
frightful example of earthly injustice, doubtless made
all right in Heaven.

Young Quest, forbidden the presence for years, came
skulking around after a while with a Jew lawyer, only
to find that his one living relative, a predatory aunt,
had assimilated everything and was perfectly qualified
to keep it under the terms of his father's will.

Her attorneys made short work of the shyster.  She
herself, many times a victim to her nephew's deceit in
former years, and once having stood between him and
prison concerning the matter of a signature for
thousands of dollars—the said signature not being hers but
by her recognised for the miserable young man's sake—this
formidable and acidulous old lady wrote to her
nephew in reply to a letter of his:

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You always were a liar.  I do not believe you are married.
I do not believe you have a baby.  I send you—not a
cheque, because you'd probably raise it—but enough money
to start you properly.

Keep away from me.  You are what you are partly
through your father's failure to do his duty by you.  An
optimist taken at birth and patiently trained can be saved.
Nobody saved you; you were merely punished.  And you,
naturally, became a swindler.

But I can't help that now.  It's too late.  I can only send
you money.  And if it's true you have a child, for God's
sake take her in time or she'll turn into what you are.

And *that* is why I send you any money at all—on the
remote chance that you are not lying.  Keep away from me,
Harry.

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ROSALINDA QUEST.

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So he did not trouble her, he knew her of old; and
besides he was too ill, too dazed with drugs to bother
with such things.

He lost every penny of the money in Quint's
gambling house within a month.

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So the Quest family, father, mother and little
daughter sifted through the wide, coarse meshes of the
very last social stratum that same winter, and landed
on the ultimate mundane dump heap.

Quest now lay all day across a broken iron bed,
sometimes stupefied, sometimes violent; his wife,
dismissed from the Hippodrome for flagrant cause, now
picked up an intermittent living and other things in an
east-side rink.  The child still remained about,
somewhere, anywhere—a dirty, ragged, bruised, furtive little
thing, long accustomed to extremes of maudlin demonstration
and drug-crazed cruelty, frightened witness of
dreadful altercations and of more dreadful reconciliations,
yet still more stunned than awakened, more undeveloped
than precocious, as though the steady accumulation
of domestic horrors had checked mental growth
rather than sharpened her wits with cynicism and
undesirable knowledge.

Not yet had her environment distorted and tainted
her speech, for her father had been an educated man,
and what was left of him still employed grammatical
English, often correcting the nasal, up-state vocabulary
of the mother—the beginning of many a terrible
quarrel.

So the child skulked about, alternately ignored or
whined over, cursed or caressed, petted or beaten,
sometimes into insensibility.

Otherwise she followed them about instinctively, like
a crippled kitten.

Then there came one stifling night in that earthly
hell called a New York tenement, when little Stephanie
Quest, tortured by prickly heat, gasping for the relief
which the western lightning promised, crept out to the
fire escape and lay there gasping like a minnow.

Fate, lurking in the reeking room behind her, where
her drugged parents lay in merciful stupor, unloosed a
sudden breeze from the thunderous west, which blew the
door shut with a crash.  It did not awaken the man.
But, among other things, it did jar loose a worn-out
gas jet....  That was the verdict, anyway.

Pluris est oculatus testis unus quam auriti decem.

But, as always, the Most High remained silent,
offering no testimony to the contrary.

This episode in the career of Stephanie Quest
happened in the days of the Great Administration, an
administration not great in the sense of material
national prosperity, great only in spirit and in things of
the mind and soul.

Even the carpenter, Albrecht Schmidt, across the
hallway in the tenement, rose to the level of some
unexplored spiritual stratum, for he had a wife and five
children and only his wages, and he did not work every
week.

"Nein," he said, when approached for contributions
toward the funeral, "I haff no money for dead people.
I don't giff, I don't lend.  Vat it iss dot Shakespeare
says?  Don't neffer borrow und don't neffer lend
noddings....  But I tell you what I do!  I take dot leedle
child!"

The slim, emaciated child, frightened white, had
flattened herself against the dirty wall of the hallway
to let the policemen and ambulance surgeon pass.

The trampling, staring inmates of the tenement
crowded the stairs, a stench of cabbage and of gas
possessed the place.

The carpenter's wife, a string around her shapeless
middle, and looking as though she might add to her
progeny at any minute, came to the door of her
two-room kennel.

"Poor little Stephanie," she said, "you come right in
and make you'self at home along of us!"

And, as the child did not stir, seemingly frozen there
against the stained and battered wall, the carpenter
said:

"*Du*!  Stephanie!  Hey you, Steve!  Come home
und get you some breakfast right away quick!"

"Is that their kid?" inquired a policeman coming out
of the place of death and wiping the sweat from his
face.

"Sure.  I take her in."

"Well, you'll have to fix that matter later——"

"I fix it now.  I take dot little Steve for mine——"

The policeman yawned over the note book in which
he was writing.

"It ain't done that way, I'm tellin' you!  Well, all
*right*!  You can keep her until the thing is fixed
up——"  He went on writing.

The carpenter strode over to the child; his blond
hair bristled, his beard was fearsome and like an ogre's.
But his voice trembled with Teuton sentiment.

"You got a new mamma, Steve!" he rumbled.  "Now,
you run in und cry mit her so much as you like."  He
pulled the little girl gently toward his rooms; the
morbid crowd murmured on the stairs at the sight of the
child of suicides.

"Mamma, here iss our little Steve alretty!" growled
Schmidt.  "Now, py Gott!  I got to go to my job!  A
hellofa business iss it!  Schade—immer—schade!
Another mouth to feed, py Gott!"





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.. _`FOREWORD`:

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   FOREWORD

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On the Christmas-tide train which carried
homeward those Saint James schoolboys who
resided in or near New York, Cleland Junior sat
chattering with his comrades in a drawing-room car
entirely devoted to the Saint James boys, and resounding
with the racket of their interminable gossip and
laughter.

The last number of their school paper had come out
on the morning of their departure for Christmas
holidays at home; every boy had a copy and was trying
to read it aloud to his neighbour; shrieks of mirth
resounded, high, shrill arguments, hot disputes, shouts
of approval or of protest.

"Read this!  Say, did you get this!" cried a tall
boy named Grismer.  "Jim Cleland wrote it!  What do
you know about our own pet novelist——"

"*Shut* up!" retorted Cleland Junior, blushing and
abashed by accusation of authorship.

"He wrote it all right!" repeated Grismer exultantly.
"Oh, girls!  Just listen to this mush about the
birds and the bees and the bright blue sky——"

"Jim, you're all right!  That's the stuff!" shouted
another.  "The girl in the story's a peach, and the
battle scene is great!"

"Say, Jim, where do you get your battle stuff?"
inquired another lad respectfully.

"Out of the papers, of course," replied Cleland
Junior.  "All you have to do is to read 'em, and you
can think out the way it really looks."

The only master in the car, a young Harvard graduate,
got up from his revolving chair and came over
to Cleland Junior.

The boy rose immediately, standing slender and handsome
in the dark suit of mourning which he still wore
after two years.

"Sit down, Jim," said Grayson, the master, seating
himself on the arm of the boy's chair.  And, as the boy
diffidently resumed his seat: "Nice little story of yours,
this.  Just finished it.  Co you still think of making
writing your profession?"

"I'd like to, sir."

"Many are called, you know," remarked the master
with a smile.

"I know, sir.  I shall have to take my chance."

Phil Grayson, baseball idol of the Saint James boys,
and himself guilty of several delicate verses in the
Century and Scribner's, sat on the padded arm of the
revolving chair and touched his slight moustache
thoughtfully.

"One's profession, Jim, ought to be one's ruling
passion.  To choose a profession, choose what you most
care to do in your leisure moments.  That should be
your business in life."

The boy said:

"I like about everything, Mr. Grayson, but I think
I had rather write than anything else."

John Belter, a rotund youth, listening and drawing
caricatures on the back of the school paper, suggested
that perhaps Cleland Junior was destined to write the
Great American Novel.

Grayson said pleasantly:

"It was the great American ass who first made
inquiries concerning the Great American Novel."

"Oh, what a knock!" shouted Oswald Grismer, delighted.

But young Belter joined in the roars of laughter,
undisturbed, saying very coolly:

"Do you mean, sir, that the Great American Novel
will never be written, or that it has already been written
several times, or that there isn't any such thing?"

"I mean all three, Jack," explained Grayson, smiling.
"Let me see that caricature you have been so busy
over."

"It's—it's *you*, sir."

"What of it?" retorted the young master.  "Do
you think I can't laugh at myself?"

He took the paper so reluctantly tendered:

"Jack, you *are* a terror!  You young rascal, you've
made me look like a wax-faced clothing dummy!"

"Tribute to your faultless apparel, sir, and equally
faultless features——"

A shriek of laughter from the boys who had crowded
around to see; Grayson himself laughing unfeignedly
and long; then the babel of eager, boyish voices again,
loud, emphatic, merciless in discussion of the theme of
the moment.

Into the swaying car and down the aisle came a
negro in spotless white, repeating invitingly:

"First call for luncheon, gentlemen!  Luncheon
served in the dining car forward!"

His agreeable voice was drowned in the cheering of
three dozen famished boys, stampeding.

Cleland Junior came last with the master.

"I hope you'll have a happy holiday, Jim," said
Grayson, with quiet cordiality.

"I'm crazy to see father," said the boy.  "I'm sure
I'll have a good time."

At the vestibule he stepped aside, but the master bade
him precede him.

And as the fair, slender boy passed out into the
forward car, the breeze ruffling his blond hair, and his
brown eyes still smiling with the anticipation of home
coming, he passed Fate, Chance, and Destiny, whispering
together in the corner of the platform.  But the
boy could not see them; could not know that they
were discussing him.





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.. _`CHAPTER I`:

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   CHAPTER I

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An average New York house on a side street in
winter is a dark affair; daylight comes
reluctantly and late into the city; the south side
of a street catches the first winter sun rays when
there are any; the north side remains shadowy and
chilly.

Cleland Senior's old-fashioned house stood on the
north side of 80th Street; and on the last morning of
Cleland Junior's Christmas vacation, while the first bars
of sunshine fell across the brown stone façades on the
opposite side of the street, the Clelands' breakfast room
still remained dim, bathed in the silvery gray dusk of
morning.

Father and son had finished breakfast, but Cleland
Senior, whose other names were John and William, had
not yet lighted the cigar which he held between thumb
and forefinger and contemplated in portentous silence.
Nor had he opened the morning paper to read paragraphs
of interest to Cleland Junior, comment upon
them, and encourage discussion, as was his wont when
his son happened to be home from school.

The house was one of those twenty-foot brown stone
houses—architecturally featureless—which was all
there was to New York architecture fifty years ago.

But John William Cleland's dead wife had managed
to make a gem of the interior, and the breakfast room
on the second floor front, once his wife's bedroom, was
charming with its lovely early American furniture and
silver, and its mellow, old-time prints in colour.

Cleland Junior continued to look rather soberly at
the familiar pictures, now, as he sat in silence
opposite his father, his heart of a boy oppressed by the
approaching parting.

"So you think you'll make writing a profession,
Jim?" repeated John Cleland, not removing his eyes
from the cigar he was turning over and over.

"Yes, father."

"All right.  Then a general education is the thing,
and Harvard the place—unless you prefer another
university."

"The fellows are going to Harvard—most of them,"
said the boy.

"A boy usually desires to go where his school friends
go....  It's all right, Jim."

Cleland Junior's fresh, smooth face of a school boy
had been slowly growing more and more solemn.  Sometimes
he looked at the prints on the wall; sometimes he
glanced across the table at his father, who still sat
absently turning over and over the unlighted cigar
between his fingers.  The approaching separation was
weighing on them both.  That, and the empty third
chair by the bay window, inclined them to caution in
speech, lest memory strike them suddenly, deep and
unawares, and their voices betray their men's hearts
to each other—which is not an inclination between men.

Cleland Senior glanced involuntarily from the empty
chair to the table, where, as always, a third place had
been laid by Meachem, and, as always, a fresh flower
lay beside the service plate.

No matter what the occasion, under all circumstances
and invariably Meachem laid a fresh blossom of some
sort beside the place which nobody used.

Cleland Senior gazed at the frail cluster of frisia in
silence.

Through the second floor hallway landing, in the
library beyond, the boy could see his suitcase, and,
lying against it, his hockey stick.  Cleland Senior's
preoccupied glance also, at intervals, reverted to these
two significant objects.  Presently he got up and
walked out into the little library, followed in silence by
Cleland Junior.

There was a very tall clock in that room, which had
been made by one of the Willards many years before
the elder Cleland's birth; but it ticked now as
aggressively and bumptiously as though it were brand new.

The father wandered about for a while, perhaps with
the vague idea of finding a match for his cigar; the
son's clear gaze followed his father's restless movements
until the clock struck the half hour.

"Father?"

"Yes, dear—yes, old chap?"—with forced carelessness
which deceived neither.

"It's half past nine."

"All right, Jim—any time you're ready."

"I hate to go back and leave you all alone here!"
broke out the boy impulsively.

It was a moment of painful tension.

Cleland Senior did not reply; and the boy, conscious
of the emotion which his voice had betrayed, and
suddenly shy about it, turned his head and gazed out into
the back yard.

Father and son still wore mourning; the black
garments made the boy's hair and skin seem fairer than
they really were—as fair as his dead mother's.

When Cleland Senior concluded that he was able to
speak in a perfectly casual and steady voice, he said:

"Have you had a pretty good holiday, Jim?"

"Fine, father!"

"That's good.  That's as it should be.  We've
enjoyed a pretty good time together, my son; haven't we?"

"Great!  It was a dandy vacation!"

There came another silence.  On the boy's face
lingered a slight retrospective smile, as he mentally
reviewed the two weeks now ending with the impending
departure for school.  Certainly he had had a splendid
time.  His father had engineered all sorts of parties
and amusements for him—schoolboy gatherings at the
Ice Rink; luncheons and little dances in their own home,
to which school comrades and children of old friends
were bidden; trips to the Bronx, to the Aquarium, to
the Natural History Museum; wonderful evenings at
home together.

The boy had gone with his father to see the "Wizard
of Oz," to see Nazimova in "The Comet"—a doubtful
experiment, but in line with theories of Cleland
Senior—to see "The Fall of Port Arthur" at the Hippodrome;
to hear Calvé at the Opera.

Together they had strolled on Fifth Avenue, viewed
the progress of the new marble tower then being built
on Madison Square, had lunched together at Delmonico's,
dined at Sherry's, motored through all the parks,
visited Governor's Island and the Navy Yard—the
latter rendezvous somewhat empty of interest since the
great battle fleet had started on its pacific voyage
around the globe.

Always they had been together since the boy
returned from Saint James school for the Christmas
holidays; and Cleland Senior had striven to fill every
waking hour of his son's day with something pleasant
to be remembered.

Always at breakfast he had read aloud the items of
interest—news concerning President Roosevelt—the
boy's hero—and his administration; Governor Hughes
and *his* administration; the cumberous coming of
Mr. Taft from distant climes; local squabbles concerning
projected subways.  All that an intelligent and growing
boy ought to know and begin to think about, Cleland
Senior read aloud at the breakfast table—for this
reason, and also to fill in every minute with pleasant
interest lest the dear grief, now two years old, and yet
forever fresh, creep in between words and threaten the
silences between them with sudden tears.

But two years is a long, long time in the life of the
young—in the life of a fourteen-year-old boy; and yet,
the delicate shadow of his mother still often dimmed
for him the sunny sparkle of the winter's holiday.  It
fell across his clear young eyes now, where he sat
thinking, and made them sombre and a deeper brown.

For he was going back to boarding school; and old
memories were uneasily astir again; and Cleland Senior
saw the shadow on the boy's face; understood; but
now chose to remain silent, not intervening.

So memory gently enveloped them both, leaving them
very still together, there in the library.

For the boy's mother had been so intimately
associated with preparations for returning to school in
those blessed days which already had begun to seem
distant and a little unreal to Cleland Junior—so
tenderly and vitally a part of them—that now, when the
old pain, the loneliness, the eternal desire for her was
again possessing father and son in the imminence of
familiar departure, Cleland Senior let it come to the
boy, not caring to avert it.

Thinking of the same thing, both sat gazing into the
back yard.  There was a cat on the whitewashed fence.
Lizzie, the laundress—probably the last of the race of
old-time family laundresses—stood bare-armed in the
cold, pinning damp clothing to the lines, her Irish
mouth full of wooden clothes-pins, her parboiled arms
steaming.

At length Cleland Senior's glance fell again upon
the tall clock.  He swallowed nothing, stared grimly
at the painted dial where a ship circumnavigated the
sun, then squaring his big shoulders he rose with
decision.

The boy got up too.

In the front hall they assisted each other with overcoats;
the little, withered butler took the boy's luggage
down the brown-stone steps to the car.  A moment later
father and son were spinning along Fifth Avenue
toward Forty-second Street.

As usual, this ordeal of departure forced John
Cleland to an unnatural, off-hand gaiety at the crisis,
as though the parting amounted to nothing.

"Going to be a good kid in school, Jim?" he asked,
casually humorous.

The boy nodded and smiled.

"That's right.  And, Jim, stick to your Algebra,
no matter how you hate it.  I hated it too....
Going to get on your class hockey team?"

"I'll do my best."

"Right.  Try for the ball team, too.  And, Jim?"

"Yes, father?"

"You're all right so far.  You know what's good
and what's bad."

"Yes, sir."

"No matter what happens, you can always come to
me.  You thoroughly understand that."

"Yes, father."

"You've never known what it is to be afraid of me,
have you?"

The boy smiled broadly; said no.

"Never be afraid of me, Jim.  That's one thing I
couldn't stand.  I'm always here.  All I'm here on earth
for is you!  Do you really understand me?"

"Yes, father."

Red-capped porter, father and son halted near the
crowded train gate inside the vast railroad station.

Cleland Senior said briskly:

"Good-bye, old chap.  See you at Easter.  Good
luck!  Send me anything you write in the way of
verses and stories."

Their clasped hands fell apart; the boy went through
the gate, followed by his porter and by numerous
respectable and negligible travelling citizens, male and
female, bound for destinations doubtless interesting to
them.  To John Cleland they were merely mechanically
moving impedimenta which obscured the retreating
figure of his only son and irritated him to that extent.
And when the schoolboy cap of that only son disappeared,
engulfed in the crowd, John Cleland went back
to his car, back to his empty, old-fashioned brownstone
house, seated himself in the library that his wife
had made lovely, and picked up the *Times*, which he had
not read aloud at breakfast.

He had been sitting there more than an hour before
he thought of reading the paper so rigidly spread
across his knees.  But he was not interested in what
he read.  The battle fleet, it seemed, was preparing to
sail from Port-of-Spain; Mr. Taft was preparing to
launch his ponderous candidacy at the fat head of the
Republican party; a woman had been murdered in the
Newark marshes; the subway muddle threatened to
become more muddled; somebody desired to motor from
New York to Paris; President Roosevelt and Mr. Cortelyou
had been in consultation about something or
other; German newspapers accused the United States
of wasting its natural resources; Scotti was singing
*Scarpia* in "Tosca"; a new music hall had been built
in the Bronx——

Cleland Senior laid the paper aside, stared at the
pale winter sunshine on the back fence till things
suddenly blurred, then he resumed his paper, sharply, and
gazed hard at the print until his dead wife's smiling
eyes faded from the page.

But in the paper there seemed nothing to hold his
attention.  He turned to the editorials, then to the
last page.  This, he noticed, was still entirely devoted to
the "Hundred Neediest Cases"—the yearly Christmastide
appeal in behalf of specific examples of extreme
distress.  The United Charities Organization of the
Metropolitan district always made this appeal every year.

Now, Cleland Senior had already sent various sums
to that particular charity; and his eyes followed rather
listlessly the paragraphs describing certain cases which
still were totally unrelieved or only partially aided
by charitable subscriptions.  He read on as a man
reads whose heart is still sore within him—not
without a certain half irritable sense of sympathy,
perhaps, but with an interest still dulled by the
oppression which separation from his son always brought.

And still his preoccupied mind plodded on as he
glanced over the several paragraphs of appeal, and
after a while he yawned, wondering listlessly that such
pitiable cases of need had not been relieved by
somebody among the five million who so easily could give
the trifles desired.  For example:

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "Case No. 47.  A young man, 25,
   hopelessly crippled and bedridden, could
   learn to do useful work, sufficient to
   support him, if $25 for equipment were
   sent to the United Charities office."

.. vspace:: 2

Contributors were asked to mention Case No. 47
when sending cheques for relief.

He read on mechanically:

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "Case No. 108.  This case has been
   partly relieved through contributions,
   but thirty dollars are still required.
   Otherwise, these two aged and helpless
   gentlewomen must lose their humble
   little home and an institution will have
   to take care of them.  Neither one has
   many more years to live.  A trifling aid,
   now, means that the few remaining days
   left to these old people will be tranquil
   days, free from the dread of separation
   and destitution."
   
   "Case 113.  The father, consumptive
   and unable to work; the mother still
   weak from childbirth; the only other
   wage-earner a daughter aged sixteen,
   under arrest; four little children
   dependent.  Seventy dollars will tide them
   over until the mother can recover and
   resume her wage-earning, which, with
   the daughter's assistance, will be
   sufficient to keep the family together.  Three
   of the children are defectives; the
   oldest sister, a cash-girl, has been arrested
   and held as a witness for attending, at
   her mother's request, a clinic conducted
   by people advocating birth-control; and
   the three dollars a week which she
   brought to the family has been stopped
   indefinitely."
   
   "Case 119.  For this case no money at
   all has been received so far.  It is the
   case of a little child, Stephanie Quest,
   left an orphan by the death or suicide
   of both drug-addicted parents, and
   taken into the family of a kindly
   German carpenter two years ago.  It is the
   first permanent shelter the child has
   ever known, the first kindness ever
   offered her, the first time she has ever
   had sufficient nourishment in all her
   eleven years of life.  Now she is in
   danger of losing the only home she has
   ever had.  Stephanie is a pretty,
   delicate, winsome and engaging little
   creature of eleven, whose only experience
   with life had been savage cruelty, gross
   neglect, filth and immemorial starvation
   until the carpenter took her into his own
   too numerous family, and his wife cared
   for her as though she were their own
   child.
   
   "But they have five children of their
   own, and the wife is soon to have
   another baby.  Low wages, irregular
   employment, the constantly increasing cost
   of living, now make it impossible for
   them to feed and clothe an extra child.
   
   "They are fond of the little girl; they
   are willing to keep and care for her if
   fifty dollars could be contributed toward
   her support.  But if this sum be not
   forthcoming, little Stephanie will have
   to go to an institution.
   
   "The child is now physically healthy.
   She is of a winning personality, but
   somewhat impulsive, unruly, and wilful
   at times; and it would be far better for
   her future welfare to continue to live
   with these sober, kindly, honest people
   who love her, than to be sent to an orphanage."
   
   "Case No. 123.  A very old man,
   desperately poor and ill and entirely——"

.. vspace:: 2

John Cleland dropped the paper suddenly across his
knees.  A fierce distaste for suffering, an abrupt
disinclination for such details checked further perusal.

"Damnation!" he muttered, fumbling for another cigar.

His charities already had been attended to for the
year.  That portion of his income devoted to such
things was now entirely used up.  But he remained
uneasily aware that the portion reserved for further
acquisition of Americana—books, prints, pictures,
early American silver, porcelains, furniture, was still
intact for the new year now beginning.

That was his only refuge from loneliness and the
ever-living grief—the plodding hunt for such things
and the study connected with this pursuit.  Except for
his son—his ruling passion—he had no other interest,
now that his wife was dead—nothing that particularly
mattered to him in life except this collecting of
Americana.

And now his son had gone away again.  The day
had to be filled—filled rather quickly, too; for the
parting still hurt cruelly, and with a dull persistence
that he had not yet shaken off.  He must busy himself
with something.  He'd go out again presently, and
mouse about among musty stacks of furniture "in the
rough."  Then he'd prowl through auction rooms and
screw a jeweller's glass into his right eye and pore
over mezzotints.

He allowed himself just so much to spend on Americana;
just so much to spend on his establishment, so
much to invest, so much to give to charity——

"Damnation!" he repeated aloud.

It was the last morning of the exhibition at the
Christensen Galleries of early American furniture.
That afternoon the sale was to begin.  He had not had
time for preliminary investigation.  He realized the
importance of the collection; knew that his friends would
be there in force; and hated the thought of losing
such a chance.

Turning the leaves or his newspaper for the
advertisement, he found himself again confronted by the
columns containing the dreary "Hundred Neediest
Cases."  And against every inclination he re-read the
details of Case 119.

Odd, he thought to himself angrily, that there was
nobody in the city to contribute the few dollars necessary
to this little girl.  The case in question required
only fifty dollars.  Fifty dollars meant a home,
possibly moral salvation, to this child with her winning
disposition and unruly ways.

He read the details again, more irritated than ever,
yet grimly interested to note that, as usual, it is the
very poor with many burdens who help the poor.  This
carpenter, living probably in a tenement, with a wife,
an unborn baby, and a herd of squalling children to
support, had still found room for another little waif,
whose drug-sodden parents had been kind to her only
by dying.

John Cleland turned the page, searched for the
advertisement of the Christensen Galleries, discovered it,
read it carefully.  There were some fine old prints
advertised to be sold.  His hated rivals would be
there—beloved friends yet hated rivals in the endless battle
for bargains in antiquities.

When he got into his car a few minutes later, he told
the chauffeur to drive to Christensen's and drive fast.
Halfway there, he signalled and spoke through the
tube:

"Where is the United Charities Building?  *Where*?
Well, drive there first."

"Damn!" he muttered, readjusting himself in the
corner under the lynx robe.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER II`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

"Would you care to go there and see the child
for yourself, Mr. Cleland?  A few moments
might give you a much clearer idea of her
than all that I have told you," suggested the capable
young woman to whom he had been turned over in
that vast labyrinth of offices tenemented by the "United
Charities Organizations of Manhattan and the Four
Boroughs, Inc."

John Cleland signed the cheque which he had filled
in, laid it on the desk, closed his cheque-book, and shook
his head.

"I'm a busy man," he said briefly.

"Oh, I'm sorry!  I *wish* you had time to see her for
a moment.  You may obtain permission through the
Manhattan Charities Concern, a separate organization,
winch turns over certain cases to the excellent
child-placing agency connected with our corporation."

"Thank you; I haven't time."

"Mr. Chiltern Grismer would be the best man to
see—if you had time."

"Thank you."

There was a chilly silence; Cleland stood frowning
at space, wrapped in gloomy preoccupation.

"But," added the capable young woman, wistfully,
"if you are so busy that you have no time to bother
with this case personally——"

"I *have* time," snapped Cleland, turning red.  For
the man was burdened with the inconvenient honesty
of his race—a sort of tactless truthfulness which
characterized all Clelands.  He said:

"When I informed you that I'm a busy man, I evidently
but unintentionally misled you.  I'm not in business.
I *have* time.  I simply don't wish to go into
the slums to see somebody's perfectly strange
offspring."

The amazed young woman listened, hesitated, then
threw back her pretty head and laughed:

"Mr. Cleland, your frankness is most refreshing!
Certainly there is no necessity for you to go if you
don't wish to.  The little girl will be *most* grateful to
you for this generous cheque, and happy to be relieved
of the haunting terror that has made her almost ill at
the prospect of an orphanage.  The child will be
beside herself with joy when she gets word from us that
she need not lose the only home and the only friends
she has ever known.  Thank you—for little Stephanie
Quest."

"What did the *other* people do to her?" inquired
John Cleland, buttoning his gloves and still scowling
absently at nothing.

"What people?"

"The ones who—her parents, I mean.  What was it
they did to her?"

"They were dreadfully inhuman——"

"*What* did they do to the child?  Do you know?"

"Yes, I know, Mr. Cleland.  They beat her mercilessly
when they happened to be crazed by drugs; they
neglected her when sober.  The little thing was a mass
of cuts and sores and bruises when we investigated her
case; two of her ribs had been broken, somehow or
other, and were not yet healed——"

"Oh, Lord!" he interrupted sharply.  "That's enough
of such devilish detail!——  I beg your pardon, but
such things—annoy me.  Also I've some business that's
waiting—or pleasure, whichever you choose to call
it——"  He glanced at his watch, thinking of the
exhibition at Christensen's, and the several rival and
hawk-like amateurs who certainly would be prowling
around there, deriding him for his absence and looking
for loot.

"Where does that child live?" he added carelessly,
buttoning his overcoat.

The capable young woman, who had been regarding
him with suppressed amusement, wrote out the address
on a pad, tore off the leaf, and handed it to him.

"—In case you ever become curious to see little
Stephanie Quest, whom you have aided so
generously——" she explained.

Cleland, recollecting with increasing annoyance that
he had three hundred dollars less to waste on Christensen
than he had that morning, muttered the polite
formality of leave-taking required of him, and bowed
himself out, carrying the slip of paper in his gloved fingers,
extended as though he were looking for a place to drop it.

Down in the street, where his car stood, the
sidewalks were slowly whitening under leisurely falling
snowflakes.  The asphalt already was a slippery mess.

"Where's *that*!" he demanded peevishly, shoving the
slip of paper at his chauffeur.  "Do you know?"

"I can find it, sir."

"All right," snapped John Cleland.

He stepped into the little limousine and settled back
with a grunt.  Then he hunched himself up in the
corner and perked the fur robe over his knees,
muttering.  Thoughts of his wife, of his son, had been heavily
persistent that morning.  Never before had he felt
actually old—he was only fifty-odd.  Never before had
he felt himself so alone, so utterly solitary.  Never
had he so needed the comradeship of his only son.

He had relapsed into a sort of grim, unhappy
lethargy, haunted by memories of his son's baby days,
when the car stopped in the tenement-lined street,
swarming with push-carts and children.

The damp, rank stench of the unwashed smote him
as he stepped out and entered the dirty hallway, set
with bells and letter boxes and littered with débris and
filthy melting snow.

The place was certainly vile enough.  A deformed
woman with sore eyes directed him to the floor where
the Schmidt family lived.  On the landing he stumbled
over several infants who were playing affectionately
with a dead cat—probably the first substitute for a
doll they had ever possessed.  A fight in some room
on the second floor arrested his attention, and he halted,
alert and undecided, when the dim hallway resounded
with screams of murder.

But a slatternly young woman who was passing
explained very coolly that it was only "thim Cassidys
mixing it"; and she went her way down stairs with her
cracked pitcher, and he continued upward.

"Schmidt?  In there," replied a small boy to his
inquiry; and resumed his game of ball against the
cracked plaster wall of the passage.

Answering his knock, a shapeless woman opened the
door.

"Mrs. Schmidt?"

"Yes, sir,"—retying the string which alone kept up
her skirt.

He explained briefly who he was, where he had been,
what he had done through the United Charities for
the child, Stephanie.

"I'd like to take a look at her," he added, "if it's
perfectly convenient."

Mrs. Schmidt began to cry:

"*Ex*-cuse me, sir; I'm so glad we can keep her.
Albert has all he can do for our own kids—but the poor
little thing!—it seemed hard to send her away to a
Home——"  She gouged out the tears abruptly with
the back of a red, water-soaked hand.

"Steve!  Here's a kind gentleman come to see you.
Dry your hands, dearie, and come and thank him."

A grey-eyed child appeared—one of those slender
little shapes, graceful in every unconscious movement
of head and limbs.  She was drying her thin red fingers
on a bit of rag as she came forward, the steam of the
wash-boiler still rising from her bare arms.

A loud, continuous noise arose in the further room,
as though it were full of birds and animals fighting.

For a moment the tension of inquiry and embarrassment
between the three endured in silence; then an odd,
hot flush seemed to envelop the heart of Cleland
Senior—and something tense within his brain loosened,
flooding his entire being with infinite relief.  The man had
been starving for a child; that was all.  He had suddenly
found her.  But he didn't realize it even now.

There was a shaky chair in the exceedingly clean but
wretchedly furnished room.  Cleland Senior went over
and seated himself gingerly.

"Well, Steve?" he said with a pleasant, humourous
smile.  But his voice was not quite steady.

"Thank the good, kind gentleman!" burst out Mrs. Schmidt,
beginning to sob again, and to swab the
welling tears with the mottled backs of both fists.  "You're
going to stay with us, dearie.  They ain't no policeman
coming to take you to no institoot for orphan little
girls!  The good, kind gentleman has give the money
for it.  Go down onto your knees and thank him,
Steve——!"

"Are you really going to *keep* me?" faltered the
child.  "Is it *true*?"

"Yes, it's true, dearie.  Don't go a-kissing me!  Go
and thank the good, kind——"

"Let me talk to the child alone," interrupted Cleland
drily.  "And shut the door, please!"—glancing into
the farther room where a clothes-boiler steamed, onions
were frying, five yelling children swarmed over every
inch of furniture, a baby made apocryphal remarks
from a home-made cradle, and a canary bird sang shrilly
and incessantly.

Mrs. Schmidt retired, sobbing, extolling the goodness
and kindness of John Cleland, who endured it with
patience until the closed door shut out eulogies, yells,
canary and onions.

Then he said:

"Steve, you need not thank me.  Just shake hands
with me.  Will you?  I—I like children."

The little girl, whose head was still turned toward
the closed door behind which had disappeared the only
woman who had ever been consistently kind to her, now
looked around at this large, strange man in his fur-lined
coat, who sat there smiling at her in such friendly
fashion.

And slowly, timidly, over the child's face the faintest
of smiles crept in delicate response to his advances.
Yet still in the wonderful grey eyes there remained that
heart-rending expression of fearful inquiry which
haunts the gaze of children who have been cruelly used.

"Is your name Stephanie?"

"Yes, sir."

"Stephanie Quest?"

"Yes, sir."

"What shall I call you?  Steve?"

"Yes, sir," winningly grave.

"All right, then.  Steve, will you shake hands?"

The child laid her thin, red, water-marred fingers in
his gloved hand.  He retained them, and drew her nearer.

"You've had a rather tough deal, Steve, haven't you?"

The child was silent, standing with head lowered, her
bronzed brown hair hanging and shadowing shoulders
and face.

"Do you go to school, Steve?"

"Yes, sir."

"Not to-day?"

"No, sir.  It's Saturday."

"Oh, yes.  I forgot.  What do you learn in school?"

"Things—writing—reading."

"Do you like school?"

"Yes, sir."

"What do you like best?"

"Dancing."

"Do they teach *that*?  What kind of dancing do you
learn to do?"

"Fancy dancing—folk-dances.  And I like the little
plays that teacher gets up for us."

"Do you like any other of your studies?" he asked drily.

"Droring."

"Drawing?"

"Yes, sir," she replied, flushing painfully.

"Oh.  So they teach you to draw?  Who instructs you?"

"Miss Crowe.  She comes every week.  We copy
picture cards and things."

"So you like to draw, Steve," nodded Cleland absently,
thinking of his only son, who liked to write, and
who, God willing, would have every chance to develop
his bent in life.  Then, still thinking of his only son,
he looked up into the grey eyes of this little stranger.

As fate would have it, she smiled at him.  And,
looking at her in silence he felt the child-hunger
gnawing in his heart—felt it, and for the first time,
vaguely surmised what it really was that had so long
ailed him.

But the idea, of course, seemed hopeless, impossible!
It was not fair to his only son.  Everything that he had
was his son's—everything he had to give—care,
sympathy, love, worldly possessions.  These belonged to his
son alone.

"Are you happy here with these kind people, Steve?"
he asked hastily.

"Yes, sir."

But though his conscience should have instantly
acquitted him, deep in his lonely heart the child-hunger
gnawed, unsatisfied.  If only there had been other
children of his own—younger ones to play with, to have
near him in his solitude, to cuddle, to caress, to fuss
over as he and his dead wife had fussed over their only
baby!——

"Steve?"

"Sir?"

"You are sure you will be quite happy here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would you——" A pause; and again he looked
up into the child's face, and again she smiled.

"Steve, I never had a little girl.  It's funny, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

A silence.

"Would you like to—to go to a private school?"

The child did not understand.  So he told her about
such schools and the little girls who went to them.
She seemed deeply interested; her grey eyes were clear
and seriously intelligent, and very, very intently fixed
on him in the effort to follow and understand what he
was saying.

He told her about other children who lived amid
happy surroundings; what they did, how they were
cared for, schooled, brought up; what was expected
of them by the world—what was required by the world
from those who had had advantages of a home, of training,
of friends, and of an education.  He was committing
himself with every word, and refused to believe it.

At times he paused to question her, and she always
nodded seriously that she understood.

"But this," he added smilingly, "you may not
entirely comprehend, Steve; that such children, brought
up as I have explained to you, owe the human race a
debt which is never cancelled."  He was talking to
himself now, more than to her; voicing his thoughts;
feeling his way toward the expression of a philosophy which
he had heretofore only vaguely entertained.

"The hope of the world lies in such children, Steve,"
he said.  "The world has a right to expect service from
them.  You don't understand, do you?"

Her wonderfully clear eyes were almost beautiful
with intelligence as they looked straight into his.
Perhaps the child understood more than she herself
realized, more than he believed she understood.

"Shall I come to see you again, Steve?"

"Yes, sir, please."

There was a pause.  Very gently the slight pressure
of his arm, which had crept around her, conveyed to
her its wistful meaning; and when she understood she
leaned slowly toward him in winning response, and
offered her lips with a gravity that captivated him.

"Good-bye, Steve, dear," he said unsteadily.  "I'll
come to see you again very soon.  I surely, surely will
come back again to see you, Steve."

Then he put on his hat and went out abruptly—not
down town to Christensen's, but back to the United
Charities, and, after an hour, from there he went down
town to his attorney's, where he spent the entire day
under suppressed excitement.

For there were many steps to take and much detail
to be attended to before this new and momentous deal
could be put through—a transaction concerning a
human soul and the measures to be taken to insure its
salvage.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

During the next few weeks John William
Cleland's instinct fought a continuous series of
combats with his reason.

Instinct, with her powerful allies, loneliness and love,
urged the solitary man to rash experiment; reason
ridiculed impulse and made it very clear to Cleland that he
was a fool.

But instinct had this advantage; she was always
awake, whispering to his mind and heart; and reason
often fell asleep on guard over his brain.

But when awake, reason laughed at the conspirators,
always in ambush to slay him; and carried matters with
a high hand, rebuking instinct and frowning upon her
allies.

And John Cleland hesitated.  He wrote to his only
son every day.  He strove to find occupation for every
minute between the morning awakening in his silent
chamber and the melancholy lying down at night.

But always the battle between reason and instinct
continued.

Reason had always appealed to Cleland Senior.  His
parents and later his wife and son had known the only
sentimental phenomena which had ever characterized
him in his career.  Outside of these exceptions, reason
had always ruled him.  This is usually the case among
those who inherit money from forebears who, in turn,
have been accustomed to inherit and hand down a
moderate but unimpaired fortune through sober generations.

Such people are born logical when not born fools.
And now Cleland Senior, mortified and irritated by the
increasing longing which obsessed him, asked himself
frequently which of these he really was.

Every atom of logic in him counselled him to abstain
from what every instinct in him was desiring and
demanding—a little child to fill the loneliness of his
heart and house—something to mitigate the absence
of his son, whose absences must, in the natural course
of events, become more frequent and of longer duration
with the years of college imminent, and the demands
of new interests, new friends increasing year by year.

He told himself that to take another child into his
home would be unfair to Jim; to take her into his heart
was disloyal; that the dear past belonged to his wife
alone, the present and the future to his only son.

And all the while the man was starving for what he
wanted.

Well, the arrangements took some time to complete;
but they were fairly complete when finished.  She kept
her own name; she was to have six thousand dollars a
year for life after she became twenty-one.  He charged
himself with her mental, moral, spiritual, physical, and
general education.

It came about in the following manner:

First of all, he went to see a gentleman whom he had
known for many years, but whose status with himself
had always remained a trifle indefinite in his
mind—somewhere betwixt indifferent friendship and informal
acquaintanceship.

The gentleman's name was Chiltern Grismer; his business,
charity and religion.  He did not dispense either
of these, however; he made a living for himself out of
both.  Cleland had learned at the United Charities that
Grismer was an important personage in the *Manhattan
Charities Concern*, a separate sectarian affair with
a big office building, and a book bindery in Brooklyn
for the immense tonnage of sectarian books and pamphlets
published and sold by the "Concern," as it called
itself.  The profits were said to be enormous.

Grismer, tall, bony, sandy and with a pair of
unusually light yellowish eyes behind eye-glasses, appeared
the classical philanthropist of the stage.  With his
white, bushy side-whiskers, his frock coat, and his little
ready-made black bow-tie, slightly askew under a high
choker, he certainly dressed the part.  In fact, any
dramatic producer would have welcomed him in the rôle,
for he had no "business" to learn; it was perfectly
natural for him to join his finger tips together while
conversing; and his voice and manner left nothing whatever
to criticize.

"Ah!  My friend of many years!" he exclaimed as
Cleland was ushered into his office in the building of
the Manhattan Charities Concern.  "And how, I pray,
can I be of service to my old friend, John Cleland?
M-m-m'yes—my friend of many years!"

Cleland told his story very simply, adding:

"I understand that your Concern is handling Case
119, Grismer—acting, I believe, for a child-placing
agency."

"*Which* case?" demanded Grismer, almost sharply.

"Case 119.  The case of Stephanie Quest," repeated
Cleland.

Grismer looked at him with odd intentness for a
moment, then his eyes shifted, as though something were
disturbing his suave mental tranquillity:

"M-m-m'yes.  Oh, yes.  I believe we have this case to
handle among many others.  M-m-m!  Quite so; quite
so.  Case 119?  Quite so."

"May I have the child?" asked Cleland bluntly.

"Bless me!  Do you really wish to take such
chances, Cleland?"

"Why not?  Others take them, don't they?"

"M-m-m'yes.  Oh, yes.  Certainly.  But it is
usually people of the—ah—middle and lower classes
who adopt children.  M-m-m'yes; the middle and lower
classes.  And, naturally, *they* would not be very much
disappointed in a foundling or waif who failed
to—ah—develop the finer, subtler, more delicate Christian
qualities that a gentleman in your position might
reasonably expect—m-m-m'yes!—might, as it were,
demand in an adopted child."

"I'll take those chances in the case in question," said
Cleland, quietly.

"M-m-m'yes, the case in question.  Case 119.  Quite
so....  I am wondering——" he passed a large, dry
hand over his chin and mouth, reflectively, while his
light-coloured eyes remained alertly on duty.  "I have
been wondering whether you have looked about before
deciding on this particular child.  There are a great
many other deserving cases, m-m-m'yes—a great many
deserving cases——"

"I want this particular child, Grismer."

"Quite so.  M-m-m'yes."  He looked up almost
furtively.  "You—ah—have some previous knowledge,
perhaps, of this little girl's antecedents?"

Mr. Grismer's voice grew soft and persuasive; his
finger tips were gently joined.  Cleland, looking up at
him, caught a glimmer resembling suspicion in those
curiously light-coloured eyes.

"Yes, I have learned certain things about her," he
said shortly.  "I know enough!  I want that child for
mine and I'm going to have her."

"May I ask—ah—just what facts you have learned
about this unfortunate infant?"

Cleland, bored to the verge of irritation, told him
what he had learned.

There was a silence during which Grismer came to
the conclusion that he had better tell Cleland another
fact which necessary legal investigation of the child's
antecedents might more bluntly reveal.  Yes, certainly
Grismer felt that he ought to place himself on record
at once and explain this embarrassing fact in his own
way before others cruelly misinterpreted it to Cleland.
For John Cleland's position in New York among men
of wealth, of affairs, of influence, and of culture made
this sudden and unfortunate whim of his for Stephanie
Quest a matter of awkward importance to Chiltern
Grismer, who had not cared to figure in the case at all.

Grismer's large, dry hand continued to massage his
jaw.  Now and then the bony fingers wandered caressingly
toward the white side-whiskers, but always returned
to screen the thin lips with a gentle, incessant
massage.

"Cleland," he began in a solemn voice, "have you
ever heard that this child is—ah—is a very distant
connection of my family?—m-m-m'yes—my immediate family.
Have you ever heard any ill-natured gossip of this
nature?"

Cleland, too astonished to reply, merely gazed at
him.  And Grismer wrongly concluded that he had
heard about it, somewhere or other.

"M-m-m'yes—a connection—very distant, of course.
In the event that you have heard of this unfortunate
affair from sources perhaps unfriendly to myself and
family—m-m-m'yes, unfriendly—possibly it were
judicious to explain the matter to you—in justice to
myself."

"I never heard of it," said Cleland, "—never dreamed
of such a connection."

But to Grismer all men were liars.

"Oh, I did not know.  I thought you might have
heard malicious rumours.  But it is just as well that
you should be correctly informed....  Do you recollect
ever reading anything concerning my—ah—late
sister?"

"Do you mean something that happened many, many
years ago?"

"That is what I refer to.  Did you read of it in the
newspapers?"

"Yes," said Cleland.  "I read that she ran away with
a married man."

"Doubtless," continued Grismer with a sigh, "you
recollect the dreadful disgrace she brought upon my
family?  The cruel scandal exploited by a pitiless and
malicious press?"

Cleland said nothing.

"Let me tell you the actual facts," continued
Grismer gently.  "The unfortunate woman became
infatuated with a common Pullman conductor—an Irishman
named Conway—a very ordinary man who already
was married.

"His religion forbade divorce; my wretched sister ran
away with him.  We have always striven to bear the
disgrace with resignation—m-m-m'yes, with patience
and resignation.  That is the story."

Cleland, visibly embarrassed, sat twisting the handle
of his walking-stick, looking persistently away from
Grismer.  The latter sighed heavily.

"And so," he murmured, "our door was forever closed
to her and hers.  She became as one ignobly dead to
us—as a soul damned for all eternity."

"Oh, come, Grismer——"

"Damned—hopelessly, and for all eternity," repeated
Grismer with a slight snap of his jaw; "—she
and her children, and her children's children——"

"What!"

"—The sins of the parents that are borne through
generations!"

"Nonsense!  That is Old Testament bosh——"

"Pardon!" said Grismer, with a pained forbearance.
"It is the creed of those who worship and believe the
truth as taught in the church of which I am a member."

"Oh, I beg your pardon."

"Granted," said Grismer sadly.

He sat caressing his jaw in silence for a while, then:

"Her name was Jessie Grismer.  She—ah—assumed
the name of Conway....  God did not bless the
unholy union.  There was a daughter, Laura.  A certain
Harry Quest, the profligate, wasted son of that good
man, the Reverend Anthony Quest, married this girl,
Laura Conway....  God, mindful of His wrath, still
punished the seed of my sinful sister, even until the
second generation....  Stephanie Quest is their daughter."

"Good heavens, Grismer!  I can't understand that
you, knowing this, have not done something——"

"Why?  Am I to presume to interfere with God's
purpose?  Am I to question the righteousness of His
wrath?"

"But—she is the little grandchild of your own sister!——"

"A sister utterly cut off from among us!  A sister
dead to us—a soul eternally lost and to be eternally
forgotten."

"Is that your—*creed*—Grismer?"

"It is."

"Oh.  I thought that sort of—I mean, I thought
such creeds were out of date—old-fashioned——"

"God," said Chiltern Grismer patiently, "is old-fashioned,
I believe—m-m-m'yes—very old fashioned, Cleland.
But His purposes are terrible, and His wrath
is a living thing to those who have the fear of God
within their hearts."

"Oh.  Well, I'm sorry, but I really can't be afraid
of God.  If I were, I'd doubt Him, Grismer....
Come; may I have the little girl?"

"Do you desire her to abide under your roof after
what you have learned?"

"Why, Grismer, I'd travel all the way to hell to get
her now, if any of your creed had managed to send her
there.  Come; I've seen the child.  It may be a risk,
as you say.  In fact, it can't help being a risk, Grismer.
But—I want her.  May I have her?"

"M-m-m——" he touched a bell and a clerk appeared.
Then he turned to Cleland.  "Would you be
good enough to see our Mr. Bunce?  I thank you.
Good afternoon!  I am happy to have conversed again
with my old friend, John Cleland,—m-m-m'yes, my
friend of many years."

An hour later John Cleland left "our" Mr. Bunce,
armed with proper authority to begin necessary legal
proceedings.

Talking it over with Brinton, his attorney, that
evening, he related the amazing conversation between
himself and Chiltern Grismer.

Brinton laughed:

"It isn't religious bigotry; it's just stinginess.
Grismer is the meanest man on Manhattan Island.  Didn't
you know it?"

"No.  I don't know him well—though I've been
acquainted with him for a long while.  But I don't see
how he can be stingy."

"Why?"

"Well, he's interested in charity——"

"He's paid a thumping big salary!  He makes money
out of charity.  Why shouldn't he be interested?"

"But he publishes religious books——"

"Of course.  They sell.  It's a great graft, Cleland.
Don't publish novels if you want to make money; print
Bibles!"

"Is that a fact?"

"You bet!  There are more parasites in pulpit,
publishing house and charity concerns, who live exclusively
by exploiting God, than there were unpleasant afflictions
upon the epidermis of our late friend, Job.  And
Chiltern Grismer is one of them—the old skinflint!—hogging
his only sister's share of the Grismer money
and scared stiff for fear some descendant might reopen
the claim and fight the verdict which beggared his own
sister!"

"By Gad!" exclaimed Cleland, very red; "I've a mind
to look into it and start proceedings again if there is
any ground——"

"You can't."

"Why?"

"Not if you adopt this child."

"Not in her behalf?"

"Your motives would be uncharitably suspected,
Cleland.  You can give her enough.  Besides, you don't
want to stir up anything—rattle any skeletons—for
this little girl's sake."

"No, of course not.  You're quite right, Brinton.
No money could compensate her.  And, as you say, I
am able to provide for her amply."

"Besides," said Brinton, "there's the paternal aunt,
Miss Rosalinda Quest.  She's as rich as mud.  It may
be that she'll do something for the child."

"I don't want her to," exclaimed Cleland angrily.
"If she'll make no objection to my taking the girl, she
can keep her money and leave it to the niggers of
Senegambia when she dies, for all I care!  Fix it for me,
Brinton."

"You'd better go down to Bayport and interview
her yourself," said the lawyer.  "And, by the way,
I hear she's a queer one—something of a bird, in
fact."

"Bird?"

"Well, a vixen.  They say so.  All the same, she's
doing a lot of real good with her money."

"How do you mean?"

"She's established a sort of home for the offspring
of vicious and degenerate parents.  It's really quite
a wonderful combination of clinic and training school
where suspected or plainly defective children are
brought to be taught and to remain under observation—really
a finely conceived charity, I understand.  Why
not call on her?"

"Very well," said Cleland, reluctantly, not caring
very much about encountering "vixens" and "birds"
of the female persuasion.

Except for this paternal aunt and the Grismers,
there turned out to be no living human being related
to the child Stephanie.

Once assured of this, John Cleland undertook the
journey to Bayport, running down in his car one morning,
and determined that a combination of mild dignity
and gallant urbanity should conquer any untoward
symptoms which this "bird" might develop.

When he arrived at the entrance to the place, a
nurse on duty gave him proper directions how to find
Miss Quest, who was out about the grounds somewhere.

He found her at last, in nurse's garb, marching up
and down the gravel paths of the "Common Sense
Home for Defectives," as the institution was called.

She was pruning privet hedges.  She had a grim
face, a belligerent eye, and she stood clicking her
pruning shears aggressively as he approached, hat in hand.

"Miss Quest, I presume?" he inquired.

"I'm called Sister Rose," she answered shortly.

"By any other name——" began Cleland, gallantly,
but checked himself, silenced by the hostility in her
snapping black eyes.

"What do you wish?" she demanded impatiently.

Cleland, very red, swallowed his irritation:

"I came here in regard to your niece——"

"Niece?  I haven't any!"

"I beg your pardon; I mean your great-niece——"

"What do you mean?  I haven't any that I know of."

"Her name is Stephanie Quest."

"Harry Quest's child?  Has he really got a baby?
I thought he was lying!  He's such a liar—how was I
to know that he has a baby?"

"You didn't know it, then?"

"No.  He wrote about a child.  Of course, I
supposed he was lying.  That was before I went abroad."

"You've been abroad?"

"I have."

"Long?"

"Several years."

"How long since you've heard from Harry Quest?"

"Several years—a dozen, maybe.  I suppose he's living
on what I settled on him.  If he needed money I'd
hear from him soon enough."

"He doesn't need money, now.  He doesn't need
anything more from anybody.  But his little daughter
does."

"Is Harry dead?" she asked sharply.

"Very."

"And—that hussy he married——"

"Equally defunct.  I believe it was suicide."

"How very nasty!"

"Or," continued Cleland, "it may have been suicide
and murder."

"Nastier still!"  She turned sharply aside and stood
clicking her shears furiously.  After a silence: "I'll
take the baby," she said in an altered voice.

"She's eleven years old."

"I forgot.  I'll take her anyway.  She's probably
a defective——"

"She is *not*!" retorted Cleland so sharply that Sister
Rose turned on him in astonishment.

"Madame," he said, "I want a little child to bring
up.  I have chosen this one.  I possess a comfortable
fortune.  I offer to bring her up with every advantage,
educate her, consider her as my own child, and settle
upon her for life a sum adequate for her maintenance.
I have the leisure, the inclination, the means to do these
things.  But you, Madame, are too busy to give this
child the intimate personal attention that all children
require——"

"How do you know I am?"

"Because your time is already dedicated, in a larger
sense, to those unhappy children who need you more
than she does.

"Because your life is already consecrated to this
noble charity of which you are founder and director.
A world of unfortunates is dependent on you.  If,
therefore, I offer to lighten your burden by relieving
you of one responsibility, you could not logically
decline or disregard my appeal to your reason——"  His
voice altered and became lower: "And, Madame, I
already love the child, as though she were my own."

After a long silence Sister Rose said:

"It isn't anything you've advanced that influences
me.  It's my—failure—with Harry.  Do you think
it hasn't cut me to the—the soul?" she demanded
fiercely, flinging the handful of clipped twigs onto the
gravel.  "Do you think I am heartless because I said
his end was a nasty one!  It was!  Let God judge me.
I did my best."

Cleland remained silent.

"As a matter of fact, I don't care what you think,"
she added.  "What concerns me is that, possibly—probably,
this child would be better off with you....
You're *the* John Cleland, I presume."

He seemed embarrassed.

"You collect prints and things?"

"Yes, Madame."

"Then you are *the* John Cleland.  Why not say so?"

He bowed.

"Very well, then!  What you've said has in it a
certain amount of common sense.  I have, in a way,
dedicated my life to all unfortunate children; I might not
be able to do justice to Harry's child—give her the
intimate personal care necessary—without impairing
this work which I have undertaken, and to which I am
devoting my fortune."

There was another silence, during which Sister Rose
snapped her shears viciously and incessantly.  Finally,
she looked up at Cleland:

"Does the child care for you?"

"I—think so."

"Very well.  But I sha'n't permit you to adopt her."

"Why not?"

"I may want her myself when I'm too old and worn
out to work here.  I wish her to keep her name."

"Madame——"

"I insist.  What did you say her name is?  Stephanie?
Then her name is to remain Stephanie Quest."

"If you insist——"

"I do!  And that's flat!  And you need not settle
an income on her——"

"I shall do so," he interrupted firmly.  "I have ample
means to provide for the future of anybody dependent
on me, Madame."

"Do you presume to dictate to me what I shall do
concerning my own will?" she demanded; and her
belligerent eyes fairly snapped at him.

"Do what you like, Madame, but it isn't necessary
to——"

"Don't instruct *me*, Mr. Cleland!"

"Very well, Madame——"

"I shall do as I always have done, and that is exactly
as I please," she said, glancing at him.  "And if
I choose to provide for the child in my will, I shall do
so without requesting your opinion.  Pray understand
me, Mr. Cleland.  If I let you have her it is only
because I am self-distrustful.  I failed with Harry Quest.
I have not sufficient confidence in myself to risk failure
with his daughter.

"Let the matter stand this way until I can consult
my attorney and investigate the entire affair.  Take
her into your home.  But remember that she is to bear
her own name; that the legal guardianship shall be
shared by you and me; that I am to see her when I
choose, take her when I choose....  Probably I shall
not choose to do so.  All the same, I retain my liberty
of action."

Cleland said in a low voice:

"It would be—heartless—if——"

"I'm not heartless," she rejoined tartly.  "Therefore,
you need not worry, Mr. Cleland.  If you love
her and she loves you—I tell you you need not worry.
All I desire is to retain my liberty of action.  And I
intend to do it.  And that settles it!"

Cleland Senior went home in his automobile.

In a few days the last legal objection was removed.
There were no other relatives, no further impediments;
merely passionate tears from the child at parting with
Schmidt; copious, fat tears from the carpenter's wife;
no emotion from the children; none from the canary bird.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2

In February the child departed from the Schmidts'
in charge of an elderly, indigent gentlewoman,
recommended to Mr. Cleland at an exorbitant salary.
Mrs. Westlake was her name; she inhabited, with a
mild and useless husband, the ancient family mansion
in Pelham.  And here the preliminary grooming of
Stephanie Quest began amid a riot of plain living,
lofty thinking, excision of double negatives acquired
at hazard, and a hospital régime of physical scrubbing.

During February and March the pitiless process
continued, punctuated by blessed daily visits from
Cleland Senior, laden with offerings, edible and otherwise.
And before April, he had won the heart of Stephanie
Quest.

The first night that she slept under Cleland's roof,
he was so excited that he sat up in the library all night,
listening for fear she should awake, become frightened,
and cry out.

She slept perfectly.  Old Janet had volunteered as
nurse and wardrobe mistress, and a new parlour-maid
took her place.  Janet, aged sixty, had been his dead
wife's childhood nurse, his son's nurse in babyhood:
then she had been permitted to do in the household
whatever she chose; and she chose to dust the drawing-room,
potter about the house, and offer herself tea between times.

Janet, entering the library at six in the morning,
found Mr. Cleland about ready to retire to bed after
an all-night vigil.

"What do you think of what I've done—bringing
this child here?" he demanded bluntly, having lacked
the courage to ask Janet's opinion before.

Janet could neither read nor write.  Her thoughts
were slow in crystallizing.  For a few moments master
and ancient servant stood confronted there in the dusk
of early morning.

"Maybe it was God's will, sor," she said at last, in
her voice which age had made a little rickety.

"You don't approve?"

"Ah, then Mr. Cleland, sor, was there annything you
was wishful for but the dear Missis approved?"

That answer took him entirely by surprise.  He
had never even thought of looking at the matter from
such an angle.

And after Janet went away into the dim depths of
the house, he remained standing there, pondering the
old Irishwoman's answer.

Suddenly his heart grew full and the tears were salt
in his throat—hot and wet in his closed eyes.

"Not that memory and love are lessened, dear," he
explained with tremulous, voiceless lips, "—but you
have been away so long, and here on earth time moves
slowly without you—dearest—dearest——"

"Th' divil's in that young wan," panted Janet outside
his chamber door.  "She won't be dressed!  She's
turning summersalts on her bed, God help her!"

"Did you bathe her?" demanded Cleland, hurriedly
buttoning his collar and taking one of the scarfs
offered by old Meacham.

"I did, sor—and it was like scrubbing an eel.  Not
that she was naughty, sor—the darlint!—only playful-like
and contrayry—all over th' tub, under wather and
atop, and pretindin' the soap and brush was fishes and
she another chasin' them——"

"Janet!"

"Sorr?"

"Has she had her breakfast?"

"Two, sorr."

"What?"

"Cereal and cream, omelet and toast, three oranges
and a pear, and a pint of milk——"

"Good heavens!  Do you want to kill the child?"

"Arrah, sorr, she'll never be kilt with feedin'!  It's
natural to the young, sorr—and she leppin' and skippin'
and turnin' over and over like a young kid!—and
how I'm to dress her in her clothes God only
knows——"

"Janet!  Stop your incessant chatter!  Go upstairs
and tell Miss Stephanie that I want her to dress
immediately."

"I will, sorr."

Cleland looked at Meacham and the little faded old
man looked back out of wise, tragic eyes which had
seen hell—would see it again more than once before
he finished with the world.

"What do you think of my little ward, Meacham?"

"It is better not to think, sir; it is better to just
believe."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that, sir.  If we really think we can't believe.
It's pleasanter to hope.  The young lady is very pretty,
sir."

Cleland Senior always wore a fresh white waistcoat,
winter and summer, and a white carnation in his
button-hole.  He put on and buttoned the one while
Meacham adjusted the other.

They had been together many years, these two
men.  Every two or three months Meacham locked himself
in his room and drank himself stupid.  Sometimes
he remained invisible for a week, sometimes for two
weeks.  Years ago Cleland had given up hope of
helping him.  Once, assisted by hirelings, he had taken
Meacham by a combination of strategy and force to a
famous institute where the periodical dipsomaniac is
cured if he chooses to be.

And Meacham emerged, cured to that extent; and
immediately proceeded to lock himself in his room and
lie there drunk for eighteen days.

Always when he emerged, ashy grey, blinking, neat,
and his little, burnt-out eyes tragic with the hell they
had looked upon, John Cleland spoke to him as though
nothing had happened to interrupt the routine of
service.  The threads were picked up and knotted where
they had been broken; life continued in its accustomed
order under the Cleland roof.  The master would not
abandon the man; the man continued to fight a losing
fight until beaten, then locked himself away until the
enemy gave his broken body and broken mind a few
weeks' respite.  Otherwise, the master's faith and trust
in this old-time servant was infinite.

"Meacham?"

"Sir."

"I think—Mrs. Cleland—would have approved.
Janet thinks so."

"Yes, sir."

"You think so, too?"

"Certainly, sir.  Whatever you wished was madame's
wish also."

"Master James is so much away these days....  I
suppose I am getting old, and——"

He suffered Meacham to invest him with his coat,
lifted the lapel and sniffed at the blossom there, squared
his broad shoulders, twisted his white moustache.

There was no more attractive figure on Fifth Avenue
than Cleland Senior with the bright colour in his
cheeks, his vigorous stride and his attire, so suitable
to his fresh skin, sturdy years and bearing.

Meacham's eyes were lifted to his master, now.  They
were of the same age.

"Will you wear a black overcoat or a grey, sir?"

"I don't care.  I'm going up to the nursery first.
The nursery," he repeated, with a secret thrill at the
word, which made him tingle all over in sheerest
happiness.

"The car, sir?"

"First," said Cleland, "I must find out what Miss
Stephanie wishes—or rather, I must decide what I wish
her to do.  Telephone the garage, anyway."

There was a silence; Cleland had walked a step or
two toward the door.  Now, he came back.

"Meacham, I hope I have done what was best.  On
her father's side there was good blood; on her
mother's, physical health....  I know what the risk is.
But character is born in the cradle and lowered into the
grave.  The world merely develops, modifies, or cripples
it.  But it is the same character....  I've taken the
chance—the tremendous responsibility....  It isn't
a sudden fancy—an idle caprice;—it isn't for the
amusement of making a fine lady out of a Cinderella.
I want—a—baby, Meacham.  I've been in love with an
imaginary child for a long, long time.  Now, she's
become real.  That's all."

"I understand, sir."

"Yes, you do understand.  So I ask you to tell me;
have I been fair to Mr. James?"

"I think so, sir."

"Will *he* think so?  I have not told him of this affair."

"Yes, sir.  He will think what madame would have
thought of anything that you do."  He added under
his breath: "As we all think, sir."

There was a pause, broken abruptly by the sudden
quavering appeal of Janet at the door once more:

"Mr. Cleland!  Th' young lady is all over the house,
sor!  In her pajaymis and naked feet, running
wild-like and ondacent——"

Cleland stepped to the door:

"Where's that child?"

"In the butler's pantry, sor——"

"I'm up here!" came a clear voice from the landing
above.  Cleland, Janet and Meacham raised their
heads.

The child, in her pyjamas, elbows on the landing
rail, smiled down upon them through her thick shock
of burnished hair.  Her lips were applied to an orifice
in an orange; her slim fingers slowly squeezed the fruit;
her eyes were intently fixed on the three people below.

When Cleland arrived at the third floor landing,
he found Stephanie Quest in the nursery, cross-legged
on her bed.  As he entered, she wriggled off, and,
in rose-leaf pyjamas and bare feet, dropped him the
curtsey which she had been taught by Mrs. Westlake.

But long since she had taken Cleland's real measure;
in her lovely grey eyes a thousand tiny devils
danced.  He held out his arms and she flung
herself into them.

When he seated himself in a big chintz arm-chair,
she curled up on his knees, one arm around his neck,
the other still clutching her orange.

"Steve, isn't it rather nice to wake up in bed in your
own room under your own roof?  Or, of course if you
prefer Mrs. Westlake's——"

"I don't.  I don't——"  She kissed him impulsively
on his freshly-shaven cheek, tightened her arm around
his neck.

"You know I love you," she remarked, applying her
lips to the orange and squeezing it vigorously.

"I don't believe you really care much about me, Steve."

Her grey eyes regarded him sideways while she
sucked the orange; contented laughter interrupted the
process; then, suddenly both arms were around his
neck, and her bewitching eyes looked into his, deep,
very deeply.

"You know I love you, Dad."

"No, I don't."

"Don't you *really* know it?"

"Do you, really, Steve?"

There was a passionate second of assurance, a slight
sigh; the little head warm on his shoulder, vague-eyed,
serious, gazing out at the early April sunshine.

"Tell me about your little boy, Dad," she murmured
presently.

"You know he isn't very little, Steve.  He's fourteen,
nearly fifteen."

"I forgot.  Goodness!" she said softly and respectfully.

"He seems little to me," continued Cleland, "but he
wouldn't like to be thought so.  Little girls don't mind
being considered youthful, do they?"

"Yes, they *do*!  You are teasing me, Dad."

"Am I to understand that I have a ready-made,
grown-up family, and no little child to comfort me?"

With a charming little sound in her throat like a
young bird, she snuggled closer, pressing her cheek
against his.

"*Tell* me," she murmured.

"About what, darling?"

"About your lit—about your boy."

She never tired hearing about this wonderful son,
and Cleland never tired of telling about Jim, so they
were always in accord on that subject.

Often Cleland tried to read in the gravely youthful
eyes uplifted to his the dreamy emotions which his
narrative evoked—curiosity, awe, shy delight, frank
hunger for a playmate, doubt that this wonder-boy would
condescend to notice her, wistfulness, loneliness—the
delicate tragedy of solitary souls.

Always her gaze troubled him a little, because he had
not yet told his son of what he had done—had not
written to him concerning the advent of this little
stranger.  He had thought that the best and easiest
way was to tell Jim when he met him at the railroad
station, and, without giving the boy time to think,
brood perhaps, perhaps worry, let him see little
Stephanie face to face.

It seemed the best way to John Cleland.  But, at
moments, lying alone, sleepless in the night, he became
horribly afraid.

It was about that time that he received a letter from
Miss Rosalinda Quest:

.. vspace:: 2

DEAR MR. CLELAND:

Will you bring the child out to Bayford, or shall I call to
see her when business takes me into town?

I want to see her, so take your choice.

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.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   Yours truly,
       ROSALINDA QUEST.

.. vspace:: 2

This brusque reminder that Stephanie was not
entirely his upset Cleland.  But there was nothing to do
about it except to write the lady a civil invitation to
call.

Which she did one morning a week later.  She wore
battle-grey tweeds and toque, and a Krupp steel equipment
of reticule and umbrella; and she looked the fighter
from top to toe.

When Cleland came down to the drawing-room with
Stephanie.  Miss Quest greeted him with perfunctory
civility and looked upon Stephanie with unfeigned
amazement.

"Is that my niece?" she demanded.  And Stephanie,
who had been warned of the lady and of the relationship,
dropped her curtsey and offered her slender hand
with the shy but affable smile instinctive in all
children.

But the grey, friendly eyes and the smile did
instantly a business for the child which she never could
have foreseen; for Miss Quest lost her colour and stood
quite dumb and rigid, with the little girl's hand grasped
tightly in her grey-gloved fingers.

Finally she found her voice—not the incisive,
combative, precise voice which Cleland knew—but a
feminine and uncertain parody on it:

"Do you know who I am, Stephanie?"

"Yes, ma'am.  You are my Aunt Rosalinda."

Miss Quest took the seat which Cleland offered and
sat down, drawing the child to her knee.  She looked
at her for a long while without speaking.

Later, when Stephanie had been given her congé, in
view of lessons awaiting her in the nursery, Miss Quest
said to Cleland, as she was going:

"I'm not blind.  I can see what you are doing for
her—what you have done.  The child adores you."

"I love her exactly as though she were my own," he
said, flushing.

"That's plain enough, too....  Well, I shall be
just.  She is yours.  I don't suppose there ever will be
a corner in her heart for me....  I could love her,
too, if I had the time."

"Is not what you renounce in her only another
sacrifice to the noble work in which you are engaged?"

"Rubbish!  I like my work.  But it does do a lot of
good.  And it's quite true that I can not do it and give
my life to Stephanie Quest.  And so——" she shrugged
her trim shoulders—"I can scarcely expect the child
to care a straw for me, even if I come to see her now
and then."

Cleland said nothing.  Miss Quest marched to the
door, held open by Meacham, turned to Cleland:

"Thank God you got her," she said.  "I failed with
Harry; I don't deserve her and I dare not claim
responsibility.  But I'll see that she inherits what I
possess——"

"Madame!  I beg you will not occupy yourself with
such matters.  I am perfectly able to provide
sufficiently——"

"Good Lord!  Are you trying to tell me again how
to draw my will?" she demanded.

"I am not.  I am simply requesting you not to
encumber this child with any unnecessary fortune.  There
is no advantage to her in any unwieldy inheritance;
there is, on the contrary, a very real and alarming
disadvantage."

"I shall retain my liberty to think as I please, do as
I please, and differ from you as often as I please," she
retorted hotly.

They glared upon each other for a moment; Meacham's
burnt-out gaze travelled dumbly from one to the
other.

Suddenly Miss Quest smiled and stretched out her
hand to Cleland.

"Thank God," she said again, "that it is you who
have the child.  Teach her to think kindly of me, if
you can.  I'll come sometimes to see her—and to
disagree with you."

Cleland, bare-headed, took her out to her taxicab.
She smiled at him when it departed.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER V`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V

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There came the time when Easter vacation was
to be reckoned with.  Cleland wrote to Jim that
he had a surprise for him and that, as usual, he
would be at the station to meet the school train.

During the intervening days, at moments fear became
an anguish.  He began to realize what might happen,
what might threaten his hitherto perfect
understanding with his only son.

He need not have worried.

Driving uptown in the limousine beside his son, their
hands still tightly interlocked, he told him very quietly
what he had done, and why.  The boy, astonished,
listened in silence to the end.  Then all he said was:

"For heaven's sake, Father!"

There was not the faintest hint of resentment,
no emotion at all except a perfectly neutral amazement.

"How old is she?"

"Eleven, Jim."

"Oh.  A kid.  Does she cry much?"

"They don't cry at eleven," explained his father,
laughing in his relief.  "You didn't squall when you
were eleven."

"No.  But this is a girl."

"Don't worry, old chap."

"No.  Do you suppose I'll like her?"

"Of course, I hope you will."

"Well, I probably sha'n't notice her very much,
being rather busy....  But it's funny....  A kid in
the house! ... I hope she won't get fresh."

"Be nice to her, Jim."

"Sure....  It's funny, though."

"It really isn't very funny, Jim.  The little thing has
been dreadfully unhappy all her life until I—until we
stepped in."

"*We?*"

"You and I, Jim.  It's our job."

After a silence the boy said:

"What was the matter with her?"

"Starvation, cruelty."

The boy's incredulous eyes were fastened on his
father's.

"Cold, hunger, loneliness, neglect.  And drunken
parents who beat her so mercilessly that once they
broke two of her ribs....  Don't talk about it to
her, Jim.  Let the child forget if she can."

"Yes, sir."

The boy's eyes were still dilated with horror, but his
features were set and very still.

"We've got to look out for her, old chap."

"Yes," said the boy, flushing.

Cleland Senior, of course, expected to assist at the
first interview, but Stephanie was not to be found.

High and low Janet searched; John Cleland,
troubled, began a tour of the house, calling:

"Steve!  Where are you?"

Jim, in his room, unstrapping his suitcase, felt
rather than heard somebody behind him; and,
looking up over his shoulder saw a girl.

She was a trifle pale; dropped him a curtsey:

"I'm Steve," she said breathlessly.

Boy and girl regarded each other in silence for a
moment; then Jim offered his hand:

"How do you do?" he said, calmly.

"I—I'm very well.  I hope you are, too."

Another pause, during a most intent mutual inspection.

"My tennis bat," explained Jim, with polite
condescension, "needs to be re-strung.  That's why I
brought it down from school....  Do you play tennis?"

"No."

Cleland Senior, on the floor below, heard the young
voices mingling above him, listened, then quietly
withdrew to the library to await events.

Janet looked in later.

"Do they like each other?" he asked in a low, anxious
voice.

"Mr. Cleland, sor, Miss Steve is on the floor listenin'
to that blessed boy read thim pieces he has wrote in the
school paper!  Like two lambs they do be together, sor,
and the fine little gentleman and little lady they are,
God be blessed this April day!"

After a while he went upstairs, cautiously, the soft
carpet muffling his tread.

Jim, seated on the side of his bed, was being worshipped,
permitting it, accepting it.  Stephanie, cross-legged
on the floor, adored him with awed, uplifted gaze,
her clasped hands lying in her lap.

"To be a writer," Jim condescended to explain, "a
man has got to work like the dickens, study everything
you ever heard of, go out and have adventures, notice
everything that people say and do, how they act and
walk and talk.  It's a very interesting profession,
Steve....  What are *you* going to be?"

"I don't know," she whispered, "—nothing, I suppose."

"Don't you want to be something?  Don't you want
to be celebrated?"

She thought, hesitatingly, that it would be pleasant
to be celebrated.

"Then you'd better think up something to do to
make the world notice you."

"I shouldn't know what to do."

"Father says that the thing you'd rather do to
amuse yourself is the proper profession to take up.
What do you like to do?"

"Ought I to try to write, as you do?"

"You mustn't ask me.  Just think what you'd rather
do than anything else."

The girl thought hard, her eyes fixed on him, her
brows slightly knitted with the effort at concentration.

"I—I'd honestly really rather just be with dad—and
*you*——"

The boy laughed:

"I don't mean that!"

"No, I know.  But I can't think of anything....
Perhaps I could learn to act in a play—or do beautiful
dances, or draw pictures——?" her voice continuing
in the rising inflection of inquiry.

"Do you like to draw and dance and act in private
theatricals?"

"Oh, I never acted in a play or danced folk-dances,
except in school.  And I never had things of my own
to make pictures with—except once I had a piece
of blue chalk and I made pictures on the wall in the
hall."

"What hall?"

"It was a very dirty hall.  I was punished for making
pictures on the wall."

"Oh," said the boy, soberly.

After a moment the boy jumped up:

"I'm hungry.  I believe luncheon is nearly ready.
Come on, Steve!"

The child could scarcely speak from pride and
happiness when the boy condescended to take her hand
and lead her out of that enchanted place into the magic
deeps below.

At nine-thirty that evening Stephanie made the
curtsey which had been taught her, to Cleland Senior, and
was about to repeat the process to Cleland Junior,
when the latter laughed and held out his hand.

"Good night, Steve," he said reassuringly.  "You've
got to be a regular girl with me."

She took his hand, held it, drew closer.  To his
consternation, he realized that she was expecting to kiss
him, and he hastily wrung her hand and sat down.

The child's face flushed: she turned to Cleland Senior
for the kiss to which he had accustomed her.  Her lips
were quivering, and the older man understood.

"Good night, darling," he said, drawing her close
into his arms, and whispered in her ear gaily: "You've
scared him, Steve.  He's only a boy, you know."

Her head, buried against his shoulder, concealed the
starting tears.

"You've scared him," repeated Cleland Senior.  "All
boys are shy about girls."

Suddenly it struck her as funny; she smiled; the tears
dried in her eyes.  She twisted around, and, placing her
lips against the elder man's ear, she whispered:

"I'm afraid of him, but I do like him!"

"He likes *you*, but he's a little afraid of you yet."

That appealed to her once more as exquisitely funny.
She giggled, snuggled closer, observed by Jim with
embarrassment and boredom.  But he was too polite to
betray it.

Stephanie, with one arm around Cleland's neck,
squeezed herself tightly against him and recounted in
a breathless whisper her impressions of his only son:

"I do like him so much, Dad!  He talked to me upstairs
about his school and all the boys there.  He was
very kind to me.  Do you think I'm too little for him to
like me?  I'm growing rather fast, you know.  I'd do
anything for him, anything.  I wish you'd tell him that.
Will you?"

"Yes, I will, dear.  Now, run upstairs to Janet."

"Shall I say good night to Jim again?"

"If you like.  But don't kiss him, or you'll scare him."

They both had a confidential and silent fit of laughter
over this; then the child slid from his knees, dropped
a hasty, confused curtsey in Jim's direction, turned
and scampered upstairs.  And a gale of laughter came
floating out of the nursery, silenced as Janet shut the
door.

The subdued glow of a lamp fell over father and son;
undulating strata of smoke drifted between them from
the elder man's cigar.

"Well, Jim?"

"Yes, Father."

"Do you like her?"

"She's a—funny girl....  Yes, she's a rather nice
little kid."

"We'll stand by her, won't we, Jim?"

"Yes, sir."

"Make up to her the lost days—the cruellest injustice
that can be inflicted—the loss of a happy childhood."

"Yes, sir."

"All right, old chap.  Now, tell me all about
yourself and what has happened since you wrote."

"I had a fight."

"With whom, Jim?"

"With Oswald Grismer, of the first form."

"What did he do to you?" inquired his father.

"He said something—about a girl."

"What girl?"

"I don't know her."

"Go on."

"Nothing....  Except I told him what I thought
of him."

"For what?  For speaking disrespectfully about a
girl you never met?"

"Yes, sir."

"Oh.  Go on."

"Nothing more, sir....  Except that we mixed it."

"I see.  Did you—hold your own?"

"They said—I think I did, sir."

"Grismer is—your age?  Younger?  Older?"

"Yes, sir, older."

"How do you and he weigh in?"

"He's—I believe—somewhat heavier."

"First form boy.  Naturally.  Well, did you shake
hands?"

"No, sir."

"That's bad, Jim."

"I know it.  I—somehow—couldn't."

"Do it next term.  No use to fight unless to settle
things."

The boy remained silent, and his father did not press
the matter.

"What shall we do to-morrow, Jim?" inquired
Cleland Senior, after a long pause.

"Do you mean just you and me, Father?"

"Oh, yes.  Steve will be busy with her lessons.  And,
in the evening, nine-thirty is her bedtime."

The boy said, with a sigh of unconscious relief:

"I need a lot of things.  We'll go to the shops first.
Then we'll lunch together, then we can take in a movie,
then we'll dine all by ourselves, and then go to the
theatre.  What do you say, Father?"

"Fine!" said his father, with the happy thrill which
comes to fathers whose growing sons still prefer their
company to the company of anybody else.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VI`:

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   CHAPTER VI

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To Cleland Senior it seemed as though Jim's
Easter vacation ended before it had fairly
begun; so swiftly sped the blessed days together.

Already the morning of his son's departure for
school had dawned, and he realized it with the same
mental sinking, the same secret dismay and painful
incredulity which he always experienced when the dreaded
moment for parting actually arrived.

As usual, he prepared to accompany his son to the
railway station.  It happened not to occur to him that
Stephanie might desire to go.

At breakfast, his son sat opposite as usual, Stephanie
on his right, very quiet, and keeping her grey eyes on
her plate so persistently that the father finally noticed
her subdued demeanour, and kept an eye on her until in
her momentarily lifted face he detected the sensitive,
forced smile of a child close to tears.

All the resolute composure she could summon did not
conceal from him the tragedy of a child who is about
to lose its hero and who feels itself left out—excluded,
as it were, from the last sad rites.

He was touched, conscience stricken, and yet almost
inclined to smile.  He said casually, as they rose from
the table:

"Steve, dear, tell Janet to make you ready at once,
if you are going to see Jim off."

"Am—*I*—going!" faltered the child, flushing and
tremulous with surprise and happiness.

"Why, of course.  Run quickly to Janet, now."  And,
to his son, when the eager little flying feet had
sped out of sight and hearing: "Steve felt left out,
Jim.  Do you understand, dear?"

"Y-yes, Father."

"Also, she is inclined to take your departure very
seriously.  You do understand, don't you, my dear son?"

The boy said that he did, vaguely disappointed that
he was not to have the last moments alone with his
father.

So they all went down town together in the car, and
there were other boys there with parents; and some
recognitions among the other people; desultory,
perfunctory conversations, cohesion among the school boys
welcoming one another with ardour and strenuous
cordiality after only ten days' separation.

Chiltern Grismer, father of Oswald, came over and
spoke to Cleland Senior:

"Our respective sons, it appears, so far forgot their
Christian principles as to indulge in a personal
encounter in school," he said in a pained voice.  "Hadn't
they better shake hands, Cleland?"

"Certainly," replied John Cleland.  "If a fight
doesn't clean off the slate, there's something very wrong
somewhere ... Jim?"

Cleland Junior left the group of gossiping boys;
young Grismer, also, at his father's summons, came
sauntering nonchalantly over from another group.

"Make it up with young Cleland!" said Chiltern Grismer,
tersely.  "Mr. Cleland and I are friends of many
years.  Let there be no dissension between our sons."

"Offer your hand, Jim," added Cleland Senior.  "A
punch in the nose settles a multitude of sins; doesn't it,
Grismer?"

The ceremony was effected reluctantly, and in
anything but a cordial manner.  Stephanie, looking on,
perplexed, caught young Grismer's amber-coloured eyes
fixed on her; saw the tall, sandy-haired boy turn to
look at her as he moved away to rejoin his particular
group; saw the colour rising in his mischievous face
when she surprised him peeping at her again over
another boy's shoulder.

Several times, before the train left, the little girl
became conscious that this overgrown, sandy-haired boy
was watching her, sometimes with frankly flattering
admiration, sometimes furtively, as though in sly
curiosity.

"Who is that kid?" she distinctly heard him say to
another boy.  She calmly turned her back.

And was presently aware of the elder Grismer's
expressionless gaze concentrated upon herself.

"Is this the little girl?" he said to Cleland Senior in
his hard, dry voice.

"That is my little daughter, Stephanie," replied
Cleland coldly, discouraging any possible advances on
Grismer's part.  For there would never be any reason
for bringing Stephanie in contact with the Grismers;
and there might be reasons for keeping her ignorant of
their existence.  Which ought to be a simple matter,
because he never saw Grismer, except when he chanced
to encounter him quite casually here and there in town.

"She's older than I supposed," remarked Grismer,
staring steadily at her, where she stood beside Jim,
shyly conversing with a group of his particular cronies.
Boy-like, they all were bragging noisily for her
exclusive benefit, talking school-talk, and swaggering and
showing off quite harmlessly as is the nature of the
animal at that age.

"I don't observe any family resemblance," mused
Grismer, pursing his slit-like lips.

"No?" inquired Cleland drily.

"No, none whatever.  Of course, the connection is
remote—m-m-m'yes, quite remote.  I trust," he added
magnanimously, "that you will be able to render her
life comfortable and pleasant; and that the stipend you
purpose to bestow upon her may, if wisely administered,
keep her from want."

Cleland, who was getting madder every moment,
turned very red now.

"I think," he said, managing to control his temper,
"that it will scarcely be a question of want with
Stephanie Quest.  What troubles me a little is that she's
more than likely to be an heiress."

"What!"

"It looks that way."

"Do you—do you mean, Cleland, that—that any
legal steps to re-open——"

"Good Lord, no!" exclaimed Grismer, contemptuously.
"She wouldn't touch a penny of Grismer money—not
a penny!  I wouldn't lift a finger to stir up that
mess again, even if it meant a million for her!"

Grismer breathed more easily, though Cleland's frank
and unconcealed scorn left a slight red on his
parchment-like skin.

"Our conception of moral and spiritual responsibility
differs, I fear," he said, "—as widely as our
creeds differ.  I regret that my friend of many years
should appear to be a trifle biassed—m-m-m'yes, a trifle
biassed in his opinion——"

"It's none of my affair, Grismer.  We're different,
that's all.  You had, perhaps, a legal right to your
unhappy sister's share of the Grismer inheritance.  You
exercised it; I should not have done so.  It's a matter
of conscience—to put it pleasantly."

"It is a matter of creed," said Grismer grimly.  "It
was God's will."

Cleland shrugged.

"Let it go at that.  Anyway, you needn't worry over
any possible action that might be brought against you
or your heirs.  There won't be any.  What I meant
was that the child's aunt, Miss Rosalinda Quest, seems
determined to leave little Stephanie a great deal more
money than is good for anybody.  It isn't necessary.
I don't believe in fortunes.  I'm wary of them, afraid
of them.  They change people—often change their very
natures.  I've seen it too many times—observed the
undesirable change in people who were quite all right
before they came into fortunes.  No; I am able to
provide for her amply; I have done so.  That ought to be
enough."

Grismer's dry, thin lips remained parted; he scarcely
breathed; and his remarkable eyes continued to bore
into Cleland with an intensity almost savage.

Finally he said, in a voice so dry that it seemed to
crackle:

"This is—amazing.  I understood that the family
had cast out and utterly disowned the family of Harry
Quest—m-m-m'yes, turned him out completely—him
and his.  So you will pardon my surprise, Cleland....
Is—ah—the Quest fortune—as it were—considerable?"

"Several millions, I believe," replied Cleland
carelessly, moving away to rejoin his son and Stephanie,
where they stood amid the noisy, laughing knot of
school-boys.

Grismer looked after him, and his face, which had
become drawn, grew almost ghastly.  So this was it!
Cleland had fooled him.  Cleland, with previous
knowledge of what this aunt was going to do for the child,
had cunningly selected her for adoption—doubtless
designed her, ultimately, for his son.  Cleland had known
this; had kept the knowledge from him.  And that was
the reason for all this philanthropy.  Presently he
summoned his son, Oswald, with a fierce gesture of his
hooked forefinger.

The boy detached himself leisurely from his group
of school-fellows and strolled up to his father.

"Don't quarrel with young Cleland again.  Do you
hear?" he said harshly.

"Well, I——"

"Do you *hear*?—you little fool!"

"Yes, sir, but——"

"Be silent and obey!  Do as I order you.  Seek his
friendship.  And, if opportunity offers, become friends
with that little girl.  If you don't do as I say, I'll
cut your allowance.  Understand me, I want you to be
good friends with that little girl!"

Oswald cast a mischievous but receptive glance toward
Stephanie.

"I'll sure be friends with her, if I have a show," he
said.  "She's easily the prettiest kid I ever saw.  But
Jim doesn't seem very anxious to introduce me.  Maybe
next term——"  He shrugged, but regarded Stephanie
with wistful golden eyes.

After the gates were opened, and when at last the
school boys had departed and the train was gone,
Stephanie remained tragically preoccupied with her
personal loss in the departure of Cleland Junior.  For
he was the first boy she had ever known; and she
worshipped him with all the long-pent ardour of a lonely
heart.

Memory of the sandy youth with golden eyes continued
in abeyance, although he had impressed her.  It
had, in fact, been a new experience for her to be
noticed by an older boy; and, although she considered
young Grismer homely and a trifle insolent, there
remained in her embryonic feminine consciousness the
grateful aroma of incense swung before her—incense
not acceptable, but still unmistakably incense—the
subtle flattery of man.

As for young Grismer, reconciliation between him
and Jim having been as pleasantly effected as the
forcible feeding of a jailed lady on a hunger strike,
he sauntered up to Cleland Junior in the car reserved
for Saint James School, and said amiably:

"Who was the little peach you kissed good-bye, Jim?"

The boy's clear brown eyes narrowed just a trifle.

"She's—my—sister," he drawled.  "What about it?"

"She's so pretty—for a kid—that's all."

Jim, eyeing him menacingly, replied in the horrid
vernacular:

"That's no sty on *your* eye, is it?"

"F'r heaven's sake!" protested Grismer.  "Are you
still carrying that old chip on your shoulder?  I
thought it was all squared."

Jim considered him for a few moments.

"All right," he said; "it's squared, Oswald....
Only, somehow I can't get over feeling that there are
some more fights ahead of us....  Have a caramel?"

Chiltern Grismer joined Cleland Senior on the way
to the street, and they strolled together toward the
station entrance.  Stephanie walked in silence beside
Cleland, holding rather tightly to his arm, not even
noticing Grismer, and quite overwhelmed by her own
bereavement.

Grismer murmured in his dry, guarded voice:

"She's pretty enough and nicely enough behaved to
be your own daughter."

Cleland nodded; a deeper flush of annoyance spread
over his handsome, sanguine face.  He resented it when
people did not take Stephanie for his own flesh and
blood; and it even annoyed him that Grismer should
mention a matter upon which he had become oddly sensitive.

"I hope you won't ever be sorry, Cleland," remarked
the other in his dry, metallic voice.  "Yes, indeed,
I hope you won't regret your philanthropic venture."

"I am very happy in my little daughter," replied
Cleland quietly.

"She's turning out quite satisfactory?"

"Of course!" snapped the other.

"M-m-m!" mused Grismer between thin, dry lips.
"It's rather too early to be sure, Cleland.  You never
can tell what traits are going to reveal themselves in
the young.  There's no knowing what may crop out in
them.  No—no telling; no telling.  Of course,
sometimes they turn out well.  M-m-m'yes, quite well.
That's our experience in the Charities Association.
But, more often, they—don't!—to be perfectly frank
with you—they *don't* turn out very well."

Cleland's features had grown alarmingly red.

"I'm not apprehensive," he managed to say.

"Oh, no, of course, it's no use worrying.  Time will
show.  M-m-m!  Yes.  It will all be made manifest in
time.  M-m-m'yes!  Time'll show, Cleland—time'll
show.  But—I knew my sister," he added sadly, "and
I am afraid—very much afraid."

At the entrance for motors they parted.  Grismer
got into a shabby limousine driven by an unkempt
chauffeur.

"Going my way, Cleland?"

"Thanks, I have my car."

"In that case," returned Grismer, "I shall take my
leave of you.  Good-bye, and God be with you," he
said piously.  "And good-bye to *you*, my pretty little
miss," he added graciously, distorting his parchment
features into something resembling a smile.  "Tell your
papa to bring you to see me sometime when my boy is
home from school; and," he added rather vaguely,
"we'll have a nice time and play games.  *Good-bye*!"

"Who was that man, Daddy?" asked Stephanie, as
their own smart little car drew up.

"Oh, nobody—just a man with whom I have a—a
sort of acquaintance," replied Cleland.

"Was that his boy who kept looking at me all the
while in the station, Daddy?"

"I didn't notice.  Come, dear, jump in."

So he took Stephanie back to the house where
instruction in the three R's awaited her, with various
extras and embellishments suitable for the education
of the daughter of John William Cleland.

The child crept up close to him in the car, holding
tightly to his arm with both of hers.

"I'm lonely for Jim," she whispered.  "I——" but
speech left her suddenly in the lurch.

"You're going to make me proud of you, darling;
aren't you?" he murmured, looking down at her.

The child merely nodded.  Grief for the going of her
first boy had now left her utterly dumb.





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.. _`CHAPTER VII`:

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   CHAPTER VII

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There is a serio-comic, yet charming, sort of
tragedy—fortunately only temporary—in the
attachment of a little girl for an older boy.  It
often bores him so; and she is so daintily in earnest.

The one adores, tags after, and often annoys; the
other, if chivalrous, submits.

It began this way between Stephanie Quest and Jim
Cleland.  It continued.  She realized with awe the
discrepancy in their ages; he was amiable enough to
pretend to waive the discrepancy.  And his condescension
almost killed her.

The poor child grew older as fast as she possibly
could; resolute, determined to overtake him somewhere,
if that could be done.  For in spite of arithmetic she
seemed to know that it was possible.  Moreover, it was
wholly characteristic of her to attack with pathetic
confidence the impossible—to lead herself as a forlorn
hope and with cheerful and reckless resolution into the
most hopeless impasse.

Cleland Senior began to notice this trait in
her—began to wonder whether it was an admirable trait or
a light-headed one.

Once, an imbecile canary, purchased by him for her,
and passionately cherished, got out of its open cage, out
of the open nursery window, and perched on a cornice
over one of the windows.  And out of the window
climbed Stephanie, never hesitating, disregarding
consequences, clinging like a desperate kitten to sill and
blind, negotiating precarious ledges with steady feet;
and the flag-stones of the area four stories below her,
and spikes on the iron railing.

A neighbour opposite fainted; another shouted
incoherently.  It became a hair-raising situation; she could
neither advance nor retreat.  The desperate, Irish keening
of Janet brought Meacham; Meacham, at the telephone,
notified the nearest police station, and a section
of the Fire Department.  The latter arrived with
extension ladders.

It was only when pushed violently bed-ward, as
punishment, that the child realized there had been anything
to be frightened about.  Then she became scared; and
was tearfully glad to see Cleland when he came in that
evening from a print-hunting expedition.

And once, promenading on Fifth Avenue with Janet,
for the sake of her health—such being the régime
established—she separated two violently fighting school-boys,
slapped the large one, who had done the bullying,
soundly, cuffed another, who had been enjoying the
unequal combat, fell upon a fourth, and was finally hustled
home with her expensive clothing ruined.  But in her
eyes and cheeks still lingered the brilliant fires of
battle, when Janet stripped her for a bath.

And once in the park she sprang like a young tigress
upon a group of ragamuffins who had found a wild
black mallard duck, nesting in a thicket near the lake,
and who were stoning the frightened thing.

All Janet could see was a most dreadful melée
agitating the bushes, from which presently burst boy after
boy, in an agony of flight, rushing headlong and
terror-stricken from that dreadful place where a wild-girl
raged, determined on their extermination.

Stephanie's development was watched with tender,
half-fearful curiosity by Cleland.

As usual, two separate columns were necessary to
record the varied traits so far apparent in her.  These
traits Cleland noted in the book devoted to memoranda
concerning the child, writing them as follows:

.. vspace:: 2

::

     Inclined to self-indulgence.       Easily moved to impulsive
     Consequently, a trifle           self-sacrifice.
   selfish at times.                    Ardent in her affections;
     Over-sensitive and likely        loyal to friendship; and
   to exaggerate.                     essentially truthful.
     Very great talent latent:          Indignation quickly excited
   possibly histrionic.               by any form of cruelty or
     Anger, when finally              treachery.  Action likely to
   aroused, likely to lead to         be immediate without regard
   extremes.                          for personal considerations.
     Generous with her possessions.

.. vspace:: 2

So far he could discover nothing vicious in her, no
unworthy inherited instincts beyond those common to
young humans, instincts supposed to be extirpated by
education.

She was no greedier than any other healthy child, no
more self-centred; all her appetites were normal, all her
inclinations natural.  She had a good mind, but a very
human one, fairly balanced but sensitive to emotion,
inclination, and impulse, and sometimes rather tardy in
readjusting itself when logic and reason were required
to regain equilibrium.

But the child was more easily swayed by gratitude
than by any other of the several human instincts known
as virtues.

So she grew toward adolescence, closely watched by
Cleland, good-naturedly tolerated by Jim, worshipped
by Janet, served by Meacham with instinctive devotion—the
only quality in him not burnt out in his little
journeys through hell.

There were others, too, in the world, who remembered
the child.  There was her aunt, who came once a month
and brought always an expensive present, over the
suitability of which she and Cleland differed to the verge of
rudeness.  But they always parted on excellent terms.
And there was Chiltern Grismer, who sat sometimes
for hours in his office, thinking about the child and the
fortune which threatened her.

Weeks, adhering to one another, became months;
months totalled years—several of them, recorded so
suddenly that John Cleland could not believe it.

He had arrived at that epoch in the life of man when
the years stood still with him: when he neither felt
himself changing nor appeared to grow older, though
all around him he was constantly aware of others aging.
Yet, being always with Stephanie, he could not notice
her rapid development, as he noted the astonishing
growth of his son when the boy came home after brief
absences at school.

Stephanie, still a child, was becoming something else
very rapidly.  But still she remained childlike enough
to idolize Jim Cleland and to show it, without reserve.
And though he really found her excellent company,
amusing and diverting, her somewhat persistent and
dog-like devotion embarrassed and bored him sometimes.
He was at that age.

Young Grismer, in Jim's hearing, commenting upon
a similar devotion inflicted on himself by a girl,
characterized her as "too damn pleasant"—a brutal yet
graphic summary.

And for a while the offensive phrase stuck in Jim's
memory, though always chivalrously repudiated as
applying to Stephanie.  Yet, the poor girl certainly bored
him at times, so blind her devotion, so pitiful her
desire to please, so eager her heart of a child for the
comradeship denied her in the dreadful years of
solitude and fear.

For a year or two the affair lay that way between
these two; the school-boy's interest in the little girl was
the interest of polite responsibility; consideration for
misfortune, toleration for her sex, with added allowance
for her extreme youth.  This was the boy's attitude.

Had not boarding-school and college limited his
sojourn at home, it is possible that indifference might
have germinated.

But he saw her so infrequently and for such short
periods; and even during the summer vacation, growing
outside interests, increasing complexity in social
relations with fellow students—invitations to house
parties, motor trips, camping trips—so interrupted the
placid continuity of his vacation in their pleasant
summer home in the northern Berkshires, that he never
quite realized that Stephanie Quest was really anything
more than a sort of permanent guest, billeted
indefinitely under his father's roof.

When he was home in New York at Christmas and
Easter, his gravely detached attitude of amiable
consideration never varied toward her.

The few weeks at a time that he spent at "Runner's
Rest," his father's quaint and ancient place on Cold
River, permitted him no time to realize the importance
and permanency of the place she already occupied as
an integral part of the house of Cleland.

A thousand new interests, new thoughts, possessed
the boy in the full tide of adolescence.  All the world
was beginning to unclose before him like the brilliant,
fragrant petals of a magic flower.  And in this
rainbow transformation of things terrestrial, a boy's mind
is always unbalanced by the bewildering and charming
confusion of it all—for it is he who is changing, not
the world; he is merely learning to see instead of to
look, to comprehend instead of to perceive, to realize
instead of to take for granted all the wonders and
marvels and mysteries to which a young man is heir.

It is drama, comedy, farce, tragedy, this inevitable
awakening; it is the alternate elucidation and deepening
of mysteries; it is a day of clear, keen reasoning
succeeding a day of illogical caprice; an hour aquiver
with undreamed-of mental torture followed by an hour
of spiritual exaltation; it is the era of magnificent
aspiration, of inexplicable fear, of lofty abnegations, of
fierce egotisms, of dreams and of convictions, of faiths
for which youth dies; and, alas, it is a day of pitiless
development which leaves the shadowy memory of faith
lingering in the brain, and, on the lips, a smile.

And, amid such emotions, such impulses, such desires,
fears, aspirations, hopes, regrets, the average boy puts
on that Nessus coat called manhood.  And he has, in
his temporarily dislocated and unadjusted brain, neither
the time nor the patience, nor the interest, nor the logic
at his command necessary to see and understand what
is happening under his aspiring and heavenward-tilted
nose.  Only the clouds enrapture him; where every star
beckons him he responds in a passion of endeavour.

And so he begins the inevitable climb toward the
moon—the path which every man born upon the earth
has trodden far or only a little way, but the path all
men at least have tried.

In his freshman year at Harvard, he got drunk.  The
episode was quite inadvertent on his part—one of those
accidents incident to the vile, claret-coloured "punches"
offered by some young idiot in "honour" of his own
birthday.

The Cambridge police sheltered him over night; his
fine was over-subscribed; he explored the depths of
hell in consequence of the affair, endured the agony of
shame, remorse, and self-loathing to the physical and
mental limit, and eventually recovered, regarding
himself as a reformed criminal with a shattered past.

However, the youthful gloom and melancholy dignity
with which this clothed him had a faint and not
entirely unpleasant flavour—as one who might say, "I
have lived and learned.  There is the sad wisdom of
worldly things within me."  But he cut out alcohol.
It being the fashion at that time to shrug away an
offered cup, he found little difficulty in avoiding it.

In his Sophomore year, he met the inevitable young
person.  And, after all that had been told him, all that
he had disdainfully pictured to himself, did not
recognize her when he met her.

It was one of those episodes which may end any
way.  And it ended, of course, in one way or another.
But it did end.

Thus the limited world he moved in began to wear
away the soft-rounded contours of boyhood; he learned
a little about men, nothing whatever about women, but
was inclined to consider that he understood them sadly
and perfectly.  He wrote several plays, novels and
poems to amuse himself; wrote articles for the college
periodicals, when he was not too busy training with
the baseball squad or playing tennis, or lounging
through those golden and enchanted hours when the
smoke of undergraduate pipes spins a magic haze over
life, enveloping books and comrades in that exquisite
and softly brilliant web which never tears, never fades
in memory while life endures.

He made many friends; he visited many homes; he
failed sometimes, but more often he made good in
whatever he endeavoured.

His father came on to Cambridge several times—always
when his son requested it—and he knew the sympathy
of his father in days of triumph, and he understood
his father's unshaken belief in his only son when
that son, for the moment, faltered.

For he had confided in his father the episodes of the
punch and the young person.  Never had his father
and he been closer together in mind and spirit than
after that confession.

In spite of several advances made by Chiltern
Grismer, whose son, Oswald, was also at Harvard and a
popular man in his class, John Cleland remained
politely unreceptive; and there were no social amenities
exchanged.  Jim Cleland and Oswald Grismer did not
visit each other, although friendly enough at
Cambridge.  Cleland Senior made no particular effort to
discourage any such friendly footing, and he was not
inclined to judge young Grismer by his father.  He
merely remained unresponsive.

In such cases, he who makes the advances interprets
their non-success according to his own nature.  And
Grismer concluded that he had been a victim of
insidious guile and sharp practice, and that John Cleland
had taken Stephanie to his heart only after he had
learned that, some day, she would inherit the Quest
fortune from her eccentric relative.

Chagrin and sullen irritation against Cleland had
possessed him since he first learned of this inheritance;
and he nourished both until they grew into a dull,
watchful anger.  And he waited for something or other
that might in some way offer him a chance to repair
the vital mistake he had made in his attitude toward
the child.

But Cleland gave him no opening whatever; Grismer's
social advances were amiably ignored.  And it became
plainer and plainer to Grismer, as he interpreted the
situation, that John Cleland was planning to unite,
through his son Jim, the comfortable Cleland income
with the Quest millions, and to elbow everybody else
out of the way.

"The philanthropic hypocrite," mused Grismer, still
smarting from a note expressing civil regrets in reply
to an invitation to Stephanie and Jim to join them
after church for a motor trip to Lakewood.

"Can't they come?" inquired Oswald.

"Previous engagement," snapped Grismer, tearing
up the note.  His wife, an invalid, with stringy hair
and spots on her face, remarked with resignation that
the Clelands were too stylish to care about plain,
Christian people.

"Stylish," repeated Grismer, "I've got ten dollars
to Cleland's one.  I can put on style enough to swamp
him if I've a mind to!—m-m-m'yes, if I've a mind to."

"Why don't you?" inquired Oswald, with a malicious
side glance at his father's frock coat and ready-made
cravat.  "Chuck the religious game and wear spats
and a topper!  It's a better graft, governor."

Chiltern Grismer, only partly attentive to his son's
impudence, turned a fierce, preoccupied glance upon
him.  But his mind was still intrigued with that word
"stylish."  It began to enrage him.

He repeated it aloud once or twice, sneeringly:

"So you think we may not be sufficiently stylish
to suit the Clelands—or that brat they picked out
of the sewer?  M-m-m'yes, out of an east-side
sewer!"

Oswald pricked up his intelligent and rather pointed
ears.

"What brat?" he inquired.

Chiltern Grismer had never told his son the story of
Stephanie Quest.  In the beginning, the boy had been
too young, and there seemed to be no particular reason
for telling him.  Later, when Grismer suddenly developed
ambitions in behalf of his son for the Quest fortune,
he did not say anything about Stephanie's origin,
fearing that it might prejudice his son.

Now, he suddenly concluded to tell him, not from
spite entirely, nor to satisfy his increasing resentment
against Cleland; but because Oswald would, some day,
inherit the Grismer money.  And it might be just as
well to prime him now, in the event that any of the
Clelands should ever start to reopen the case which had
deprived Jessie Grismer of her own inheritance so many
years ago.

The young fellow listened with languid astonishment
as the links of the story, very carefully and
morally polished, were displayed by his father for his
instruction and edification.

"That is the sort of stylish people they are,"
concluded Grismer, making an abrupt end.  "Let it be a
warning to you to keep your eye on the Clelands; for
a man that calls himself a philanthropist, and is sharp
enough to pick out an heiress from the gutter, will bear
watching!—m-m-m'yes, indeed, he certainly will bear
watching."

Mrs. Grismer, who was knitting with chilly fingers,
sighed.

"You always said it was God's judgment on Jessie
and her descendants, Chiltern.  But I kind of wish
you'd been a little mite more forgiving."

"Who am I?" demanded Grismer, sullenly, "to thwart
God's wrath ... m-m-m'yes, the anger of the Lord
Almighty!  And I never thought of that imbecile
aunt....  It was divine will that punished my erring
sister and her children, and her children's chil——"

"Rot!" remarked Oswald.  "Cleland caught you
napping and put one over.  That's all that worries
you.  And now you are properly and piously sore!"

"That is an impious and wickedly outrageous way
to talk to your father!" said Grismer, glaring at him.
"You have come back from college lacking reverence
and respect for everything you have been taught to
consider sacred!—m-m-m'yes—everything!  You have
returned to us utterly demoralized, defiant, rebellious,
changed!  Every worldly abomination seems to attract
you: you smoke openly in your mother's presence; your
careless and loose conversation betrays your contempt
for the simple, homely, and frugal atmosphere in which
you have been reared by Christian parents.  Doubtless
we are not sufficiently stylish for you any longer!"
he added sarcastically.

"I'm sorry I was disrespectful, governor——"

"*No*!  You are *not* sorry!" retorted Grismer tartly.
"You rejoice secretly in your defiance of your parents!
You have been demoralized by the license permitted you
by absence from home.  You live irresponsibly; you
fling away your money on theatres!  You yourself
admit that you have learned to dance.  Nothing that
your pastor has taught you, nothing that our church
holds sacred seems capable of restraining you from
wickedness.  That is the truth, Oswald.  And your
mother and I despair of your future, here and——" he
lifted his eyes solemnly—"above."

There was an awkward silence.  Finally Oswald said
with sullen frankness:

"You see I'm a man, now, and I've got to do my
own thinking.  Things I used to believe seem
tommyrot to me now——"

"Oswald!" sighed his mother.

"I'm sorry to pain you, Mother, but they do!  And
about everything you object to I find agreeable.  I'm
not very bad, Mother.  But this sort of talk inclines
me to raise the devil.  What's the harm in going to a
show?  In dancing?  In smoking a cigar?  For heaven's
sake, let a fellow alone.  The line of talk the
governor hands me makes a cynic of a man who's got any
brains."

There was another silence; then Oswald continued:

"And, while we are trying to be frank with each other
this pleasant Sunday morning, what about my career?
Let's settle it now!"

"I'm opposed to any such frivolous profession!"
snapped Grismer angrily.  "That's your answer.  And
that settles it."

"You mean that you still oppose my studying sculpture?"

"Emphatically."

"Why?" demanded the youth, rather white, but smiling.

"Because it is no business career for a Christian!"
retorted his father, furious.  "It is a loose, irregular,
eccentric profession, beset with pitfalls and temptations.
It leads to immorality and unbelief—m-m-m'yes,
to hell itself!  And that is why I oppose it!"

Oswald shrugged:

"I'm sorry you feel that way but I can't help it,
of course."

"Do you mean," inquired his mother, "that you
intend to disregard our solemn wishes?"

"I don't know," said the young fellow, "I really don't
know, Mother.  I can't seem to breathe and expand
at home.  You've never made things very cheerful for me."

"Oswald!  You are utterly heartless!"

"I've been fed up on the governor's kind of religion,
on narrow views and gloom; and that's no good for a
modern boy.  It's a wonder I have any heart at all, and
sometimes I think it's dried up——"

"That will do!" shouted Grismer, losing all self-control.
"If your home, your parents, and your Creator
can not make a Christian of you, there is nothing to
hope from you! ... I'll hear no more from you.
Go and get ready for church!"

"I sha'n't go," said the young fellow calmly.

When he went back to Cambridge at the end of the
week, it was with the desire never to see his home again,
and with a vague and burning intention to get even,
somehow, by breaking every law of the imbecile religion
on which he had been "fed up."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII

.. vspace:: 2

When Stephanie was fifteen years old, John
Cleland took her to Cambridge.

The girl had been attending a celebrated
New York school during the last two years.  She had
developed the bearing and manners which characterized
the carefully trained products of that institution, but
the régime seemed to have subdued her, and made her
retiring and diffident.

She could have formed friendships there had she
desired to do so; she formed none; yet any girl there
would have been happy and flattered to call Stephanie
Quest her friend.  But Stephanie cared little for those
confidential and intimate relations so popular among
school girls of her age.

She made no enemies, however.  An engaging
reticence and reserve characterized her—the shy and
wistful charm of that indeterminate age when a girl is
midway in the delicate process of transformation.

If she cared nothing about girls, she lacked
self-confidence with boys, though vastly preferring their
society; but she got little of it except when Jim's school
friends came to the house during holidays.  Then she
had a heavenly time just watching and listening.

So when John Cleland took her to Cambridge, she
had, in the vernacular of the moment, a "wonderful"
experience—everything during that period of her
career being "wonderful" or "topping."

Jim, as always, was "wonderful;" and the attitude
of his friends alternately delighted and awed her, so
gaily devoted they instantly became to Jim's "little
sister."

But what now secretly thrilled the girl was that Jim,
for the first time, seemed to be proud of her, not
tolerating her as an immature member of the family, but
welcoming her as an equal, on an equal footing.  And,
with inexpressible delight, she remembered her
determination, long ago, to overtake him; and realized that
she was doing it very rapidly.

So she went to a football game at the stadium; she
took tea in the quarters of these god-like young men;
she motored about Cambridge and Boston; she saw all
that a girl of fifteen ought to see, heard all that she
ought to hear, and went back to New York with John
Cleland in the seventh paradise of happiness fulfilled,
madly enamoured of Jim and every youthful superman
he had introduced to her.

Every year while Jim was at college there was a
repetition of this programme, and she and John Cleland
departed regularly for Cambridge amid excitement
indescribable.

And when, in due time, Jim prepared to emerge from
that great university, swaddled in sheepskin, and
reeking with Cambridge culture, Stephanie went again to
Cambridge with her adopted father—a girl, then, of
seventeen, still growing, still in the wondering maze of
her own adolescence, exquisitely involved in its magic,
conscious already of its spell, of its witchcraft, which
lore she was shyly venturing to investigate.

She had a "wonderful" week in Cambridge—more
and more excited by the discovery that young men
found her as agreeable as she found them, and that
they sought her now on perfectly even terms of years
and experience; regarded her as of them, not merely
with them.  And this enchanted her.

Two of her school friends, the Hildreth girls, were
there with their mother, and the latter very gladly
extended her wing to cover Stephanie for the dance, John
Cleland not feeling very well and remaining in Boston.

And it chanced that Stephanie met there Oswald
Grismer; and knew him instantly when he was
presented to her.  Even after all those years, the girl
clearly recollected seeing him in the railroad station,
and remembered the odd emotions of curiosity and
disapproval she experienced when he stared at her so
persistently—disapproval slightly mitigated by
consciousness of the boyish flattery his manner toward her
implied.

He said, in his easy, half-mischievous way:

"You don't remember me, of course, Miss Quest, but
when you were a very little girl I once saw you at the
Grand Central Station in New York."

Stephanie, as yet too inexperienced a diplomat to
forget such things, replied frankly that she remembered
him perfectly.  When it was too late, she blushed at her
admission.

"That's unusually nice of you," he said.  "Maybe it
was my bad manners that impressed you, Miss Quest.
I remember that I had never seen such a pretty little
girl in my life, and I'm very sure I stared at you, and
that you were properly annoyed."

He was laughing easily, as he spoke, and she laughed,
too, still a trifle confused.

"I did think you rather rude," she admitted.  "But
what a long time ago that was!  Isn't it *strange* that
I should remember it?  I can even recollect that you
and my brother had had a fight in school and that dad
made you both shake hands there in the station, before
you went aboard the train....  Naturally, I didn't
feel kindly toward you," she added, laughingly.

"Jim and I are now on most amiable terms," he
assured her, "so please feel kindly toward me
now—kindly enough to give me one unimportant dance.  Will
you, Miss Quest?"

Later when he presented himself to claim the dance,
her reception of him was unmistakably friendly.

He had grown up into a spare, loosely coupled, yet
rather graceful young fellow, with hair and eyes that
matched, both of a deep amber shade.

But there was in his bearing, in his carelessly attractive
manner, in his gaze, a lurking hint of irresponsibility,
perhaps of mischief, which did not, however,
impress her disagreeably.

On the contrary, she felt oddly at ease with him, as
though she had known him for some time.

"Have you forgiven me for staring at you so many
years ago?" he inquired, smilingly.

She thought that she had.

But his next words startled her a little; he said, still
smiling in his careless and attractive way:

"I have a queer idea that we're beginning in the
middle of everything—that we've already known each
other long enough to waive preliminaries and begin our
acquaintance as old friends."

He was saying almost exactly what she had not put
into words.  He was still looking at her intently,
curiously, with the same slightly importunate, slightly
deferential smile which she now vividly remembered in the boy.

"Do you, by any chance, feel the same about our
encounter?" he asked.

"What way?"

"That we seem to have known each other for a long time?"

Stephanie had not yet learned very much in the art
of self-defense.  A question to her still meant either a
truthful answer or a silence.  She remained silent.

"Do you, Miss Quest?" he persisted.

"Yes, I do."

"As though," he insisted, "you and I are beginning
in the middle of the book of friendship instead of
bothering to cut the pages of the preface?" he suggested
gaily.

She laughed.

"You know," she warned him, "that I have not yet
made up my mind about you."

"Oh.  Concerning what are you in doubt?"

"Concerning exactly how I ought to consider you."

"As a friend, please."

"Perhaps.  Are we going to dance or talk?"

After they had been dancing for a few moments:

"So you are a crew man?"

"Who told you?"

"I've inquired about you," she admitted, glancing
sideways at the tall, spare, graceful young fellow with
his almost golden colouring.  "I have questioned
various people.  They told me things."

"Did they give me a black eye?" he asked, laughingly.

"No.  But somebody gave you a pair of golden
ones....  Like two sun-spots on a brown brook.
You've a golden look; do you know it?"

"Red-headed men turn that way when they're in the
sun and wind," he explained, still laughing, yet plainly
fascinated by the piquant, breezy informality of this
young girl.  "Tell me, do you still go to school, Miss
Quest?"

"How insulting! ... Yes!  But it was mean of
you to ask."

"Good Lord!  You didn't expect me to think you the
mother of a family, did you?"

That mollified her.

"Where do you go to school?" he continued.

"Miss Montfort's.  I finish this week."

"And then?"

"To college, I'm afraid."

"Don't you want to?"

"I'd rather go to a dramatic school."

"Is that your inclination, Miss Quest?"

"I'd adore it!  But dad doesn't."

"Too bad."

"I don't know.  I'm quite happy, anyway.  I'm
having a wonderful time, whatever I'm doing."

"Then it isn't an imperious call from Heaven to leave
all and elevate the drama?" he asked, with a pretense
of anxiety that made her laugh.

"You are disrespectful.  I'm sure I could elevate the
drama if I had the chance.  But I sha'n't get it.
However, next to the stage I adore to paint," she explained.
"There is a class.  I have attended it for two years.
I paint rather nicely."

"No wonder we feel so friendly," exclaimed Grismer.

"Why?  Do *you* paint?"

"No, but I'm to be a sculptor."

"How *wonderful*!  I'm simply mad to do something,
too!  Don't you love the atmosphere of Bohemia, Mr. Grismer?"

He said that he did with a mischievous smile straight
into her grey eyes.

"It is my dream," she went on, slightly confused,
"to have a studio—not a bit fixed up, you know, and
not frilly—but with just one or two wonderful old
objects of art here and there and the rest a fascinating
confusion of artistic things."

"Great!" he assented.  "Please ask me to tea!"

"Wouldn't it be *wonderful*?  And of course I'd work
like fury until five o'clock every day, and then just
have tea ready for the brilliant and interesting people
who are likely to drop in to discuss the most wonderful
things!  Just think of it, Mr. Grismer!  Think
what a heavenly privilege it must be to live such a
life, surrounded by inspiration and—and atmosphere
and—and such things—and listening to the conversation
of celebrated people telling each other all about
art and how they became famous!  What a lofty, exalted
life!  What a magnificent incentive to self-cultivation,
attainment, and creative accomplishment!  And
yet, how charmingly informal and free from artificiality!"

Grismer also had looked forward to a professional
career in Bohemia, with a lively appreciation of its
agreeable informalities.  And the irresponsibility and
liberty—perhaps license—of such a life had appealed to
him only in a lesser degree than the desire to satisfy his
artistic proclivities with a block of marble or a
fistful of clay.

"Yes," he repeated, "that is undoubtedly *the* life,
Miss Quest.  And it certainly seems as though you and
I were cut out for it."

Stephanie sighed, lost in iridescent dreams of
higher things—vague visions of spiritual and artistic
levels from which, if attained, genius might stoop to
regenerate the world.

But Grismer's amber eyes were brilliant with
slumbering mischief.


"What do you think of Grismer, Steve?" inquired
Jim Cleland, as they drove back to Boston that night,
where his father, at the hotel, awaited them both.

"I really don't exactly know, Jim.  Do you like him?"

"Sometimes.  He's crew, Dicky, Hasty Pudding.
He's a curious chap.  You've got to hand him that,
anyway."

"Cleverness?"

"Oh, more than that, I think.  He's an artist through
and through."

"Really!"

"Oh, yes.  He's a bird on the box, too."

"*What!*"

"On the piano, Steve.  He's the real thing.  He sings
charmingly.  He draws better than Harry Beltran.
He's done things in clay and wax—really wonderful
things.  You saw him in theatricals."

"Did I?  Which was he?"

"Why, the *Duke of Brooklyn*, of course.  He was
practically the whole show!"

"I didn't know it," she murmured.  "I did not
recognize him.  How clever he really is!"

"You hadn't met him then," remarked Jim.

"But I had seen him, once," she answered in a low,
dreamy voice.

Jim Cleland glanced around at her.  Again it struck
him that Stephanie was growing up very rapidly into
an amazingly ornamental girl—a sister to be proud of.

"Did you have a good time, Steve?" he asked.

"Wonderful," she sighed; smiling back at him out of
sleepy eyes.

The car sped on toward Boston.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

Stephanie Quest was introduced to society
when she was eighteen, and was not a success.
She had every chance at her debut to prove popular,
but she remained passive, charmingly indifferent to
social success, not inclined to step upon the treadmill,
unwilling to endure the exactions, formalities, sacrifices,
and stupid routine which alone make social position
possible.  There was too much chaff for the few grains
of wheat to interest her.

She wanted a career, and she wanted to waste no
time about it, and she was delightfully certain that the
path to it lay through some dramatic or art school to
the stage or studio.

Jim laughed at her and teased her; but his father
worried a great deal, and when Stephanie realized that
he was worrying she became reasonable about the matter
and said that the next best thing would be college.

"Dad," she said, "I adore dancing and gay dinner
parties, but there is nothing else to them but mere
dancing and eating.  The trouble seems to be with the
people—nice people, of course—but——"

"Brainless," remarked Jim, looking over his evening
paper.

"No; but they all think and do the same things.
They all have the same opinions, the same outlook.
They all read the same books when they read at all,
go to see the same plays, visit the same people.  It's
jolly to do it two or three times; but after a little while
you realize that all these people are restless and don't
know what to do with themselves; and it makes me
restless—not for that reason—but because I *do* know what
to do with myself—only you, darling——" slipping one
arm around John Cleland's neck, "—don't approve."

"Yours is a restless sex, Steve," remarked Jim, still
studying the evening paper.  "You've all got the fidgets."

"A libel, my patronizing friend.  Or rather a tribute,"
she added gaily, "because only a restless mind
matures and accomplishes."

"Accomplishes what?  Suffrage?  Sex equality?
You'll all perish with boredom when you get it, because
there'll be nothing more to fidget about."

"He's just a bumptious boy yet, isn't he, Dad?"

Jim laughed and laid aside his paper:

"You're a sweet, pretty girl, Steve——"

"I'll slay you if you call me that!"

"Why not be what you look?  Why not have a good
time with all your might, marry when you wish, and
become a perfectly——"

"Oh, Jim, you *are* annoying!  Dad, is there anything
more irritating than a freshly hatched college
graduate?  Or more maddeningly complacent?  Look
at your self-satisfied son!  There he sits, after having
spent the entire day in enjoyment of his profession, and
argues that I ought to be satisfied with an idle day in
which I have accomplished absolutely nothing!  I'm
afraid your son is a pig."

Jim laughed lazily:

"The restless sex is setting the world by the ears,"
he said tormentingly.  "All this femininist business, this
intrusion into man's affairs, this fidgety dissatisfaction
with a perfectly good civilization, is spoiling you all."

"Is that the sort of thing you're putting into your
wonderful novel?" she inquired.

"No, it's too unimportant——"

"Dad!  Let's ignore him!  Now, dear, if you feel
as you do about a career for me at present, I really
think I had better go to college.  I do love pleasure,
but somehow the sort of pleasure I'm supposed to enjoy
doesn't last; and it's the people, I think, that tire one
very quickly.  It *does* make a difference in dancing,
doesn't it?—not to hear an idea uttered during an
entire evening—not to find anybody thinking for
themselves——"

"Oh, Steve!" laughed Jim, "you're not expected to
think at your age!  All that society expects of you is
that you chatter incessantly during dinner and the
opera and do your thinking in a ballroom with your feet!"

She was laughing, but an unwonted colour brightened
her cheeks as she turned on him from the padded arm
of John Cleland's chair, where she had been sitting:

"If I really thought you meant that, Jim, I'd spend
the remainder of my life in proving to you that I have
a mind."

"Never mind him, Steve," said John Cleland.  "If
you wish to go to college, you shall."

"How about looking after us?" inquired Jim, alarmed.

"Dad, if my being here is going to make *you* more
comfortable," she said, "I'll remain.  Really, I am
serious.  Don't you want me to go?"

"Are you really so restless, Steve?"

"Mentally," she replied, with a defiant glance at Jim.

"This will be a gay place to live in if *you* go off for
four years!" remarked that young man.

"You don't mean that *you'd* miss me!" she
exclaimed mockingly.

"Of course I'd miss you."

"Miss the mental stimulus I give you?"—sweetly
persuasive.

"Not at all.  I'd miss the mental relaxation you
afford my tired brain——"

"You beast!  Dad, I'm *going*!  And some day your
son will find out that it's an *idle* mind that makes a girl
restless; not a restless mind that makes her idle!"

"I was just teasing, Steve!"

"I know it."  She smiled at the young fellow, but
her grey eyes were brilliant.  Then she turned and
nestled against John Cleland: "I have made up my
mind, darling, and I have decided to go to Vassar."

Home, to John Cleland and his son, had come to mean
Stephanie as much as everything else under the
common roof-tree.

For the background of familiar things framed her
so naturally and so convincingly and seemed so
obviously devised for her in this mellow old household,
where everything had its particular place in an orderly
ensemble, that when she actually departed for college,
the routine became dislocated, jarring everything above
and below stairs, and leaving two dismayed and
extremely restless men.

"Steve's going off like this has put the whole house
on the blink," protested Jim, intensely surprised to
discover the fact.

It nearly finished Janet, whose voice, long afflicted
with the cracked tremolo of age, now became almost
incoherent at the very mention of Stephanie's name.

Old Lizzie, the laundress, deeply disapproving of
Stephanie's departure, insisted on doing her linen and
sheer fabrics, and sending a hamper once a week to
Poughkeepsie.  Every week, also, Amanda, the cook,
dispatched cardboard boxes Vassarward, containing
condiments and culinary creations which she stubbornly
refused to allow Cleland Senior to censor.

"Ay t'ank a leetle yelly-cake and a leetle yar of yam
it will not hurt Miss Stephanie," she explained to
Cleland.  And he said no more.

As for Meacham, he prowled noiselessly about his
duties, little, shrunken, round-shouldered, as though no
dislocation in the family circle had occurred; but every
day since her departure, at Stephanie's place a fresh
flower of some sort lay on the cloth to match the other
blossom opposite.

In the library together, after dinner, father and son
discussed the void which her absence had created.

"She'll get enough of it and come back," suggested
Jim, but without conviction.  "It's beastly not having
her about."

"Perhaps you have a faint idea how it was for me
when you were away," observed his father.

"I know.  I *had* to go through, hadn't I?"

"Of course....  But—with your mother gone—it
was—lonely.  Do you understand, now, why I took
Steve when I had the chance?"

The young fellow nodded, looking at his father:

"Of course I understand.  But I don't see why Steve
had to go.  She has everything here to amuse
her—everything a girl could desire!  Why the deuce should
she get restless and go flying about after knowledge?"

"Possibly," said John Cleland, "the child has a mind."

"A feminine one.  Yes, of course.  I tell you, Father,
it's all part and parcel of this world-wide restlessness
which has set women fidgeting the whole world over.
What is it they want?—because they themselves can't
tell you.  Do you know?"

"I think I do.  They desire to exercise the liberty of
choice."

"They have it now, haven't they?"

"Virtually.  They're getting the rest.  If Steve goes
through college she will emerge to find all paths open
to women.  It worries me a little."

Jim shrugged:

"What is it she calls it—I mean her attitude about
choosing a career?"

"She refers to it, I believe, as 'the necessity for
self-expression.'"

"Fiddle!  The trouble with Steve is that she's
afflicted with extreme youth."

"I don't know, Jim.  She *has* a mind."

"It's a purely imitative one.  People she has read
about draw, write, compose music.  Steve is sensitive
to impression, high strung, with a very receptive mind;
and the idea attracts her.  And what happens?  She
sees me, for example, scribbling away every day; she
knows I'm writing a novel; it makes an impression on
her and she takes to scribbling, too.

"Oswald Grismer drops in and talks studio and
atmosphere and Rodin and Manship.  That stirs her up.
What occurs within twenty-four hours?  Steve orders
a box of colours and a modelling table; and she smears
her pretty boudoir furniture with oil paint and plasticine.
And that's all it amounts to, Father, just the
caprice of a very young girl who thinks creative art a
romantic cinch, and takes a shy at it."

His father, not smiling, said:

"Possibly.  But the mere fact that she *does* take a
shy at these things—spends her leisure in trying to
paint, model, and write, when other girls of her age
*don't*, worries me a little.  I do not want her to become
interested in any profession of an irregular nature.  I
want Steve to keep away from the unconventional.  I'm
afraid of it for her."

"Why?"

"Because all intelligence is restless—and Steve is very
intelligent.  All creative minds desire to find some
medium for self-expression.  And I'm wondering
whether Steve's mind is creative or merely imitative;
whether she is actually but blindly searching for an
outlet for self-expression, or whether it's merely the
healthy mental energy of a healthy body requiring its
share of exercise, too."

Jim laughed:

"It's in the air, Father, this mania for 'doing things.'
It's the ridiculous renaissance of the commonplace, long
submerged.  Every college youth, every school girl
writes a novel; every janitor, every office boy a scenario.
The stage to-day teems with sales-ladies and
floor-walkers; the pants-presser and the manufacturer of
ladies' cloaks direct the newest art of the moving
pictures.  Printers' devils and ex-draymen fill the papers
with their draughtsmanship; head-waiters write the
scores for musical productions.  Art is in the air.  So
why shouldn't Steve believe herself capable of creating
a few things?  She'll get over it."

"I hope she will."

"She will.  Steve is a reasonable child."

"Steve is a sweet, intelligent and reasonable girl....
Very impressionable....  And sensitive....  I
hope," he added irrelevantly, "that I shall live a few
years more."

"You hadn't contemplated anything to the contrary,
had you?" inquired Jim.

They both smiled.  Then Cleland Senior said in his
pleasant, even way:

"One can never tell....  And in case you and Steve
have to plod along without me some day, before either
of you are really wise enough to dispense with my
invaluable advice, try to understand her, Jim.  Try
always; try patiently....  Because I made myself
responsible....  And, for all her honesty and sweetness
and her obedience, Jim, there is—perhaps—restless
blood in Steve....  There may even be the creative
instinct in her also....  She's very young to develop
it yet—to show whether it really is there and amounts
to anything....  I should like to live long enough to
see—to guide her for the next few years——"

"Of course you are going to live to see Steve's
kiddies!" cried the young fellow in cordially scornful
protest.  "You know perfectly well, Father, that you
don't look your age!"

"Don't I?" said Cleland Senior, with a faint smile.

"And you feel all right, don't you, Father?" insisted
the boy in that rather loud, careless voice which often
chokes tenderness between men.  For the memory that
these two shared in common made them doubly sensitive
to the lightest hint that everything was not entirely
right with either.

"Do you feel perfectly well?" repeated the son, looking
at his father with smiling intentness.

"Perfectly," replied Cleland Senior, lying.

He had another chat with Dr. Wilmer the following
afternoon.  It had been an odd affair, and both physician
and patient seemed to prefer to speculate about it
rather than to come to any conclusion.

It was this.  A week or two previous, lying awake in
bed after retiring for the night, Cleland seemed to
lose consciousness for an interval—probably a very
brief interval; and revived, presently, to find himself
upright on the floor beside his bed, holding to one of
the carved posts, and unable to articulate.

He made no effort to arouse anybody; after a while—but
how long he seemed unable to remember clearly—he
returned to bed and fell into a heavy sleep.  And in
the morning when he awoke, the power of speech had
returned to him.

But he felt irritable, depressed and tired.  That was
his story.  And the question he had asked Dr. Wilmer
was a simple one.

But the physician either could not or would not be
definite in his answer.  His reply was in the nature of
a grave surmise.  But the treatment ordered struck
Cleland as ominously significant.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER X`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

To any young man his first flirtation with Literature
is a heart-rending affair, although the jade
takes it lightly enough.

But that muse is a frivolous youngster and plagues
her young lovers to the verge of distraction.

And no matter how serious a new aspirant may be
or how determined to remain free from self-consciousness,
refrain from traditional mental attitudes and
censor every impulse toward "fine writing," his
frivolous muse beguiles him and flatters him, and leads
him on until he has succumbed to every deadly
scribbler's sin in his riotous progress of a literary
rake.

The only hope for him is that his muse may some
day take enough interest in him to mangle his feelings
and exterminate his adjectives.

Every morning Jim remained for hours hunched up
at his table, fondling his first-born novel.  The period
of weaning was harrowing.  Joy, confidence, pride,
excitement, moments of mental intoxication, were
succeeded by every species of self-distrust, alarm, funk,
slump, and most horrid depression.

One day he felt himself to be easily master of the
English language; another day he feared that a public
school examination would reveal him as a hopeless
illiterate.  Like all beginners, he had swallowed the axiom
that genius worked only when it had a few moments to
spare from other diversions; and he tried it out.  The
proposition proved to be a self-evident fake.

It was to his own credit that he finally discovered that
inspiration comes with preparedness; that the proper
place for creative inspiration was a seat at his desk
with pencil and pad before him; that the pleasure of
self-expression must become a habit as well as a
pleasure, and not an occasional caprice to be casually
gratified; and that technical excellence is acquired at the
daily work-bench alone, and not among the talkers of
talk.

So the boy began to form his habit of work; discovered
that sooner or later a receptive mind resulted;
and, realizing that inspiration came when preparations
for its reception had been made, gradually got over his
earlier beliefs in the nonsense talked about genius and
the commercializing of the same.  And so he ceased
getting out of bed to record a precious thought, and
refrained from sitting up until two in the morning to
scribble.  He plugged ahead as long as he could stand
it; and late in the afternoon he went out to hunt for
relaxation, which, except for the creative, is the only
other known species of true pleasure.

Except for their conveniences as to lavatories and
bars, there are very few clubs in New York worth
belonging to; and only one to which it is an honour to
belong.

In this club Cleland Senior sat now, very often,
instead of pursuing his daily course among print-shops,
auction rooms, and private collections of those beautiful
or rare or merely curious and interesting objects
which for many years it had been his pleasure to nose
out and sometimes acquire.

For now that his son was busy writing for the greater
portion of the day, and Stephanie had gone away to
college, Cleland Senior gradually became conscious of
a subtle change which was beginning within himself—a
tendency to relax mentally and physically—a vague
realization that his work in life had been pretty nearly
accomplished and that it was almost time to rest.

With this conviction came a tendency to depression,
inclination for silence and retrospection, not entirely
free from melancholy.  Not unnoticed by his physician,
either, who had arrived at his own conclusions.  The
medical treatment, however, continued on the same lines
sketched out by the first prescriptions, except that all
narcotics and stimulants were forbidden.

John Cleland now made it a custom to go every day
to his club, read in the great, hushed library, gossip
with the older members, perhaps play a game of chess
with some friend of his early youth, lunch there with
ancient cronies, sometimes fall asleep in one of the great,
deep chairs in the lounging hall.  And, as he had always
been constitutionally moderate, the physician's edict
depriving him of his cigar and his claret annoyed him
scarcely at all.  Always he returned to the home on
80th Street, when his only son was likely to be free
from work; and together they dined at home, or more
rarely at Delmonico's; and sometimes they went
together to some theatre or concert.

For they were nearer to each other than they had
ever been in their lives during those quiet autumn and
winter days together; and they shared every thought—almost
every thought—only Cleland had never spoken
to his son about the medicine he was taking regularly,
nor of that odd experience when he had found himself
standing dazed and speechless by his own bed in the
silence and darkness of early morning.

Stephanie came back at Christmas—a lovely
surprise—a supple, grey-eyed young thing, grown an inch
and a half taller, flower-fresh, instinct with the
intoxicating vigour and delight of mere living, and tremulous
with unuttered and very youthful ideas about everything
on earth.

She kissed Cleland Senior, clung to him, caressed
him.  But for the first time her demonstration ended
there; she offered her hand to Jim in flushed and slightly
confused silence.

"What's the matter with you, Steve?" demanded the
youth, half laughing, half annoyed.  "You think you're
too big to kiss me?  By Jove, you shall kiss me——!"

And he summarily saluted her.

She got away from him immediately with an odd little
laugh, and held tightly to Cleland Senior again.

"Dad darling, darling!" she murmured, "I'm glad
I'm back.  Are *you*?  Do you really *want* me?  And
I'm going to tell you right now, I don't wish to have
you arrange parties and dinners and dances and things
for me.  All I want is to be with you and go to the
theatre every night——"

"Good Lord, Steve!  That's no programme for a
pretty little girl!"

"I'm *not*!  Don't call me that!  I've got a mind!
But I *have* got such lots to learn—so many, many things
to learn!  And only one life to learn them in——"

"Fiddle!" remarked Jim.

"It really isn't fiddle, Jim!  I'm just crazy to learn
things, and I'm not one bit interested in frivolity and
ordinary things and people——"

"You liked people once; you liked to dance——"

"When I was a child, yes," she retorted scornfully.
"But I realize, now, how short life is——"

"Fiddle," repeated Jim.  "That fool college is
spoiling you for fair!"

"Dad!  He's a brute!  You understand me, darling,
don't you?  Don't let him plague me."

His arm around her slender shoulder tightened; all
three were laughing.

"You don't *have* to dance, Steve, if you don't want
to," he said.  "Do you consider it frivolous to dine
occasionally?  Meacham has just announced the
possibility of food."

She nestled close to him as they went out to dinner,
all three very gay and loquacious, and the two men
keenly conscious of the girl's rapid development, of the
serious change in her, the scarcely suppressed exuberance,
the sparkling and splendid bodily vitality.

As they entered the dining room:

"Oh, Meacham, I'm glad to see you," she cried
impulsively, taking the little withered man's hands into
both of hers.

There was no reply, only in the burnt-out eyes a
sudden mist—the first since his mistress had passed
away.

"Dad, do you mind if I run down a moment to see
Lizzie and Janet and Amanda?  Dear, I'll be right
back——"  She was gone, light-footed, eager, down
the service stairs—a child again in the twinkling of
an eye.  The two men, vaguely smiling, remained
standing.

When she returned, Meacham seated her.  She picked
up the blossom beside her plate, saw the other at
the unoccupied place opposite, and her eyes suddenly
filled.

There was a moment's silence, then she kissed the
petals and placed the flower in her hair.

"My idea," she began, cheerfully, "is to waste no
time in life!  So I think I'd like to go to the theatre
all the time——"

The men's laughter checked her and she joined in.

"You *do* understand, both of you!" she insisted.
"You're tormenting me and you know it!  *I* don't go
to the theatre to amuse myself.  I go to inform
myself—to learn, study, improve myself in the art of
self-expression—Jim, you are a beast to grin at me!"

"Steve, for Heaven's sake, be a human girl for a
few moments and have a good time!"

"*That's* my way of having a good time.  I wish to
go to studios and see painters and sculptors at work!
I wish to go to plays and concerts——"

"How about seeing a real author at work, Steve?"

"You?" she divined with a dainty sniff.

"Certainly.  Come up any morning and watch genius
work a lead-pencil.  That ought to educate you and
leave an evening or two for dancing——"

"Jim, I positively do not care for parties.  I don't
even desire to waste one minute of my life.  Ordinary
people bore me, I tell you——"

"Do I?"

"Sometimes," she retorted, with delighted malice.
And turning swiftly to Cleland Senior: "As for you,
darling, I could spend every minute of my whole
existence with you and not be bored for one second!"

The claret in John Cleland's glass—claret forbidden
under Dr. Wilmer's régime—glowed like a ruby.  But
he could not permit Stephanie to return without that
old-fashioned formality.

So John Cleland rose, glass in hand, his hair and
moustache very white against the ruddy skin.

"Steve, dear, you and Jim have never brought me
anything but happiness—anything but honour to my
name and to my roof.  We welcome you home, dear,
to your own place among your own people: Jim—we
have the honour—our little Stephanie!  Welcome home!"

The young fellow rose, smiling, and bowed gaily to
Stephanie.

"Welcome home," he said, "dearest of sisters and
most engaging insurgent of your restless sex!"

That night Stephanie seemed possessed of a gay
demon of demonstrative mischief.  She conversed with
Jim so seriously about his authorship that at first he
did not realize that he was an object of sarcastic and
delighted malice.  When he did comprehend that she
was secretly laughing at him, he turned so red with
surprise and indignation that his father and Stephanie
gave way to helpless laughter.  Seated there on the
sofa, across the room, tense, smiling, triumphantly and
delightfully dangerous, she blew an airy kiss at Jim:

"*That* will teach you to poke fun at me," she said.
"You're no longer an object of fear and veneration just
because you're writing a book!"

The young fellow laughed.

"I *am* easy," he admitted.  "All authors are without
honour in their own families.  But wouldn't it surprise
you, Steve, if the world took my book respectfully?"

"Not at all.  That's one of the reasons *I* don't.  The
opinion of ordinary people does not concern me," she
said with gay impudence, "and if your book is a best
seller it ought to worry you, Jim."

"You don't think," he demanded sadly, "that there's
anything in me?"

"Oh, Jim!"—swiftly remorseful—"I was joking, of
course."  And, seeing by his grin that he was, too,
turned up her nose, regretting too late her hasty and
warm-hearted remorse.

"How *common*, this fishing for praise and
sympathy!" she remarked disdainfully.  "Dad, does he
bother you to death trying to read his immortal lines
to you at inopportune moments?"

Cleland Senior, in his arm-chair, white-haired, deeply
ruddy, had been laughing during the bantering passage
at arms between the two he loved best on earth.

He seemed the ideal personification of hale and wholesome
age, sound as a bell, very handsome, save that the
flush on his face seemed rather heavier and deeper than
the usual healthy colour.

"Dad," exclaimed the girl, impulsively, "you
certainly are the best-looking thing in all New York!  I
don't think I shall permit you to go walking alone all
by yourself any more.  Do you hear me?"

She sprang up lightly, went over and seated herself
on the arm of his chair, murmuring close to his face gay
little jests, odd, quaint endearments, all sorts of
nonsense while she smoothed his hair to her satisfaction,
re-tied his evening tie, patted his lapels, and finally
kissed him lightly between his eyebrows, continuing her
murmured nonsense all the while:

"I won't have other women looking sideways at you—the
hussies!  I'm jealous.  I shall hereafter walk out
with you.  Do you hear what I threaten?—you very
flighty and deceitful man!  Steve is going to chaperon
you everywhere you go."

John Cleland's smile altered subtly:

"Not *everywhere*, Steve."

"Indeed, I shall!  Every step you take."

"No, dear."

"Why not?"

"Because—there is one rather necessary trip I shall
have to make—some day——"

A moment's silence; then her arms around his neck:

"Dad!" she whispered, in breathless remonstrance.

"Yes, dear?"

"Don't you—*feel* well?"

"Perfectly."

"Then," fiercely, "don't dare hint such things!"

"About the—journey I spoke of?" he asked, smiling.

"Yes!  Don't say such a thing!  You are not
going!—until I go, too!"

"If I could postpone the trip on your account——"

"*Dad*!  Do you want to break my heart and kill me
by such jokes?"

"There, Steve, I was merely teasing.  Men of my age
have a poor way of joking sometimes....  I mean to
postpone that trip.  Indeed, I do, Steve.  You're a
handful, and I've got to keep hold of you for a long
while yet."

Jim overheard that much:

"A handful?  Rubbish!" he remarked.  "Send her
to bed at nine for the next few years and be careful
about her diet and censor her reading matter.  That's
all Steve needs to become a real grown-up some day."

Stephanie had risen to face the shafts of good-natured
sarcasm.

"Suppose," she said, "that I told you I had sent a
poem to a certain magazine and that it had been accepted?"

"I'd say very amiably that you are precocious," he
replied tormentingly.

"Brute!  I *did*!  I sent it!"

"They accepted it?"

"I don't know," she admitted, pink with annoyance;
"but it won't surprise me very much if they accept it.
Really, Jim, do you think nobody else can write
anything worth considering?  Do you really believe that
you embody all the talent in New York?  *Do* you?"  And,
to Cleland Senior: "Oh, Dad, isn't he the horrid
personification of everything irritatingly masculine?
And I'll bet his old novel is perfectly commonplace.  I
think I'll go up to his room and take a critical glance
at it——"

"Hold on, Steve!" he exclaimed—for she was already
going.  She glanced over her shoulder with a defiant
smile, and he sprang up to follow and overtake her.

But Stephanie's legs were long and her feet light
and swift, and she was upstairs and inside his room
before he caught her, reaching for the sacred manuscript.

"Oh, Jim," she coaxed, beguilingly, "do let me have
one little peep at it, there's a dear fellow!  Just one
little——"

"Not yet, Steve.  It isn't in any shape.  Wait till
it's typed——"

"I don't care.  I can read your writing easily——"

"It's all scored and cross-written and messed up——"

"*Please*, Jim!  I'm simply half dead with curiosity,"
she admitted.  "Be an angel brother and let me sit here
and hear you read the first chapter—only one little
chapter.  Won't you?" she pleaded with melting sweetness.

"I—I'd be—embarrassed——"

"What!  To have your own sister hear what you've
written?"

There was a short silence.  The word "sister" was
meant to be reassuring to both.  To use it came instinctively
to her as an inspiration, partly because she had
vaguely felt that some confirmation of such matter-of-fact
relationship would put them a little more perfectly
at their ease with each other.

For they had not been entirely at their ease.  Both
were subtly aware of that—she had first betrayed it by
her offered hand instead of the friendly and sisterly
kiss which had been a matter of course until now.

"Come," she said, gaily, "be a good child and read
the pretty story to little sister."

She sat down on the edge of his bed; he, already
seated at his desk, frowned at the pile of manuscript
before him.

"I'd rather talk," he said.

"About what?"

"Anything.  Honestly, Steve, I'll let you see it when
it's typed.  But I rather hate to show anything until
it's done—I don't like to have people see the raw edges
and the machinery."

"I'm not 'people.'  How horrid.  Also, it makes a
difference when a girl is not only your sister but also
somebody who intends to devote her life to artistic
self-expression.  You can read your story to that kind of
girl, I should hope!"

"Haven't you given that up?"

"Given up what?"

"That mania for self-expression, as you call it."

"Of course not."

"What do you think you want to do?" he asked uneasily.

"Jim, you are entirely too patronizing.  I don't
'think' I want to do anything: but I *know* I desire to
find some medium for self-expression and embrace it
as a profession."

That rather crushed him for a moment.  Then:

"There'll be time enough to start that question when
you graduate——"

"It is *not* a question.  I intend to express myself
some day.  And you might as well reconcile yourself
to that idea."

"Suppose you haven't anything worth expressing?"

"Are you teasing?" She flushed slightly.

"Oh, yes, I suppose I am teasing you.  But, Steve,
neither father nor I want to see you enter any
unconventional profession.  It's no good for a girl unless
she is destined for it by a talent that amounts to genius.
If you have that, it ought to show by the time you
graduate——"

"You make me simply furious, Jim," she retorted
impatiently.  "These few months at college have taught
me *something*.  And, for one thing, I've learned that a
girl has exactly as much right as a man to live her own
life in her own way, unfettered by worn-out conventions
and unhampered by man's critical opinions concerning
her behaviour.

"The dickens," he remarked, and whistled softly.

"And, further," she continued warmly, "I am astonished
that in this age, when the entire world tacitly
admits that woman is man's absolute equal in every
respect, that you apparently still harbour old-fashioned,
worn-out and silly notions.  You are very far
out of date, my charming brother."

"What notions?" he demanded.

"Notions that a girl's mission is to go to parties and
dance when she doesn't desire to—that a girl had better
conform to the uninteresting and stilted laws of the
recent past and live her life as an animated clothes-rack,
mind her deportment, and do what nice girls do, and
marry and become the mother of numerous offspring;
which shall be taught to follow in her footsteps and do
the same thing all over again, generation after
generation—*ad nauseam*!——  Oh, Jim!  I'm not going to
live out my life that way and be looked after as
carefully as a pedigreed Pekinese——"

"For Heaven's sake——"

"For Heaven's sake—yes!—and in God's name, Jim,
it is time that a woman's mind was occupied by something
beside the question of clothes and husbands and
children!"

The boy whistled softly, stared at her, and she
looked at him unflinchingly, with her pretty, breathless
smile of defiance.

"I want to live my own life in my own way.  Can't I?"
she asked.

"Of course——"

"You say that.  But the instant I venture to express
a desire for any outlet—for any chance to be myself,
express myself, seek the artistic means for self-utterance,
then you tell me I am unconventional!"

He was silent.

"Nobody hampers *you*!" she flashed out.  "You are
free to choose your profession."

"But why do *you* want a profession, Steve?"

"Why?  Because I feel the need of it.  Because just
ordinary society does not interest me.  I prefer Bohemia."

He said:

"There's a lot of stuff talked about studios and
atmosphere and 'urge' and general Bohemian irresponsibility—and
a young girl is apt to get a notion that she,
also, experiences the 'cosmic urge' and that 'self-expression'
is her middle name....  That's all I mean, Steve.
You frequently have voiced your desire for a career
among the fine arts.  Now and then you have condescended
to sketch for me your idea of an ideal environment,
which appears to be a studio in studio disorder,
art produced in large chunks, and 'people worth while'
loudly attacking pianos and five o'clock tea——"

"Jim!  You are not nice to me....  If I didn't
love you with all my heart——"

"It's because I'm fond of you, too," he explained.
"I don't want my sister, all over clay or paint, sitting
in a Greenwich village studio, smoking cigarettes and
frying sausages for lunch!  No!  Or I don't want her
bullied by an ignorant stage director or leered at by
an animal who plays 'opposite,' or insulted by a Semitic
manager.  Is that very astonishing?"

The girl rose, nervous, excited, but laughing:

"You dear old out-of-date thing!  We'll continue this
discussion another time.  Dad's been alone in the library
altogether too long."  She laughed again, a little hint
of tenderness in her gaiety; and extended her hand.  He
took it.

"Without prejudice," she said.  "I adore you, Jim!"

"And with all my heart, Steve.  I just want you to
do what will be best for you, little sister."

"I know.  Thank you, Jim.  Now, we'll go and find dad."

They found him.  He lay on the thick Oushak rug at
the foot of the chair in which he had been seated when
they left him.

On his lips lingered a slight smile.

A physician lived across the street.  When he
arrived his examination was brief and perfunctory.  He
merely said that the stroke had come like a bolt of
lightning, then turned his attention to Stephanie, who
seemed to be sorely in need of it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI

.. vspace:: 2

When such a thing happens to young people
a certain mental numbness follows the first
shock, limiting the capacity for suffering,
and creating its own anodyne.

The mental processes resume their functions
gradually, chary of arousing sensation.

Grief produces a chemical reaction within the body,
poisoning it.  But within that daily visitor to the body,
the soul, a profound spiritual reaction occurs which
either cripples it or ennobles it eternally.

Many people called and left cards, or sent cards and
flowers.  Some asked for Jim; among others, Chiltern
Grismer.

"M-m-m'yes," he murmured, retaining the young
man's hand, "—my friend of many years has left
us;—m-m-m'yes, my friend of many years.  I am very sorry
to hear it; yes, very sorry."

Jim remained passive, incurious.  Grismer prowled
about the darkened room, alternately pursing up and
sucking in his dry and slitted lips.  Finally he seated
himself and gazed owlishly at the young man.

"And our little adopted sister?  How does this
deplorable affliction affect her?  May I hope to offer my
condolences to her also?"

"My sister Stephanie is utterly crushed....  Thank
you....  She is very grateful to you."

"M-m-m'yes.  May I see her?"

"I am sorry.  She is scarcely able to see anybody at
present.  Her aunt, Miss Quest, is with her."

"M-m-m.  After all—but let it remain unsaid—m-m-m'yes,
unsaid.  So her aunt is with her?  M-m-m!"

Jim was silent.  Grismer sat immovable as a gargoyle,
gazing at him out of unwinking eyes.

"M-m-m'yes," he said.  "Grief was his due.  My
friend of many years was worthy of such filial
demonstrations.  Quite so—even though there is, in point of
fact, no blood relationship between my friend of many
years and your adopted sister——"

"My sister could not feel her loss more keenly if she
and I had been born of the same mother," said the boy
in a dull voice.

"Quite so.  M-m-m'yes.  Or the same father.  Quite so."

"I—I simply can't talk about it yet," muttered the
young fellow.  "If you'll excuse me——"

"*Quite* so.  Far better to talk about other things just
at present, m'yes, far wiser.  M-m-m—and so the young
lady's aunt has arrived?  Very suitable, ve-ry suitable
and necessary.  And doubtless Miss Quest will take up
her permanent residence here, in view of
the—ah—m-m-m-m'yes!—no doubt of it; no doubt."

"We have not spoken of that."

A moment later Miss Quest entered the room.

"Stephanie is awake and is asking for you," she
said.  As the young man rose with a murmured excuse.
Miss Quest turned and looked at Chiltern Grismer.

"Madame," he began, rising to his gaunt height,
"permit me—my name is Grismer——"

"Oh," she interrupted drily, "I've talked you over
with the late Mr. Cleland."

"My friend of many years, Madame——"

"We didn't discuss your friendship for each other,
Mr. Grismer," she snapped out.  "Our subject of
conversation concerned money."

"Ma'am?"

"An inheritance, in fact, which, I believe, you allege
that you *legally* converted to your own uses," she
added, staring at him.

They sustained each other's gaze in silence for a moment.

Then Grismer's large, dry hand crept up over his lips
and began a rhythmical massage of the grim jaw.

"My friend of many years and I came to an
understanding in regard to the painful matter which you
have mentioned," he said slowly.

"Yes?"

"Absolutely, Madame.  Out of his abundance, I was
given to understand, he had bountifully provided for
your niece—m-m-m'yes, bounteously provided.  Further,
he gave me to understand that you, Madame, out
of the abundant wealth with which our Lord has blessed
you, had indicated your resolution to provide for the
young lady."

There was an uncanny gleam in Miss Quest's eyes.
But she said nothing.  Grismer, watching her, softly
joined the tips of his horny fingers.

"M-m'yes.  Quite so.  My friend of many years
voluntarily assured me that he did not contemplate
reopening the unfortunate matter in question—in point of
fact, Madame, he gave me his solemn promise never to
initiate any such action in behalf of the young lady."

Miss Quest remained mute.

"And John Cleland was right, Madame," continued
Grismer in a gentle, persuasive voice, "because any such
litigation must prove not only costly but fruitless of
result.  The unfortunate and undesirable publicity of
such a case, if brought to trial, could not vindicate my
own rectitude and the righteousness of my cause while
gossip and scandal cruelly destroyed the social position
which the young lady at present enjoys."

After another silence:

"Well?" inquired Miss Quest, "is there anything more
that worries you, Mr. Grismer?"

"Worries me, Madame?  I am not disturbed in the
slightest degree."

"Oh, yes you are.  You are not disturbed over any
possible scandal that might affect my niece, but you
are horribly afraid of any disgrace to yourself.  And
that is why you come into this house of death while
your 'friend of many years' is still lying in his coffin!
That is why you come prowling to find out whether I
am as much a lady in my way as he was a gentleman in
his.  That's all that disturbs you!"

"Madame——"

"Or, to put it plainer, you want to know whether you
have to defend an action, civil perhaps, possibly
criminal, charging you with mal-administration and illegal
conversion of trust funds.  That's all that worries you,
isn't it?  Well—worry then!" she added venomously.

"Do I understand——"

"No, you *don't* understand, Mr. Grismer.  And that's
another thing for you to worry over.  You don't know
what I'm going to do, or whether I am going to do
anything at all.  You may find out in a week—you may
not find out for years.  And it is going to worry you
every minute of your life."

She marched to the staircase hall:

"Meacham?"

"Ma'am?"

"Mr. Grismer's hat!"

Jim, seated beside the bed where Stephanie lay in the
darkened room, her tear-marred face buried in her
pillow, heard the front door close.  Then silence reigned
again in the twilight of the house of Cleland.

Miss Quest peeped into the room, then withdrew.  If
the young fellow heard her at all he made no movement,
so still, so intent had he been since his father's death in
striving to visualize the familiar face.  And found to
his astonishment and grief that he could not mentally
summon his father's image before his eyes—could not
flog the shocked brain to evoke the beloved features.
The very effort was becoming an agony to him.

It began to rain about four o'clock.  It rained hard
all night long on the resounding scuttle and roof
overhead.  Toward dawn the rain ceased and the dark
world grew noisy.  There was a cat-fight on the back
fence.  The car wheels on Madison Avenue seemed
unusually dissonant.  Very far away, foggy river whistles
saluted the dawn of another day.

There were a great many people at the funeral.  God
knows the dead are indifferent to such *attroupements
macabre*, but it seems to satisfy some morbid requirement
in the living—friends, a priest, and a passing bell.

*Hoc erat in more majorum: hodie tibi; cras mihi*.

The family—Jim, Stephanie and Miss Quest—sat
together, as is customary.  The church was bathed in
tinted sunlight streaming through stained glass and
falling over casket and flowers in glowing hues.  The
dyed splendour painted pew and chancel and stained
Stephanie's black veil with crimson.  Behind them a
discreet but interminable string of many people continued.

When the first creeping note of the organ, ominous
and low, grew out of the silence, young Cleland felt
Stephanie sway a little and remain resting against his
shoulder.  After a moment he realized that the girl had
lost consciousness; and he quietly passed his arm around
her, holding her firmly until she revived and moved
again.

As for himself, what was passing before him seemed
like a shadow scene enacted behind darkened glass.
There was nothing real about it, nothing that seemed
to appertain in any way to this dead father who had
been a comrade and beloved friend.  He looked at the
casket, at the massed flowers, at the altar, the
surplices.  All were foreign to the intensely human father
he had loved—nothing here seemed to be in harmony
with him—not the crawling vibration of the organ, not
the resonant, professional droning of the clergy; not
these throngs of unseen people behind his back,—not
the black garments he wore; not this slender, sombre,
drooping thing of crape seated here close beside him,
trembling at intervals, with one black-gloved hand
gripping his.

A sullen hatred for it all began to possess him.  All
this was interrupting him—actually making it harder
than ever for him to visualize his father—driving the
beloved phantom out from its familiar environment in
his heart into unrecognizable surroundings full of
caskets, pallid, heavy-scented flowers, surpliced clergymen
whose cadenced phrases were accurately timed; whose
every move and gesture showed them to be quite perfect
in the "business" of the act.

"Hell," he muttered under his breath; and became
aware of Stephanie's white face and startled eyes.

"Nothing," he whispered; "only I can't stand this
mummery!  I want to get back to the library where I
can be with father....  He *isn't* in that black and
silver thing over there.  He isn't in any orthodox
paradise.  He's part of the sunlight out doors—and the
spring air....  He's an immortal part of everything
beautiful that ever was.  When these people conclude
to let him alone, I'll have a chance with him....  You
think I'm crazy, Steve?"

Her pale lips formed "No."

They remained silent after that until the end, their
tense fingers interlocked.  Miss Quest's head remained
bowed in the folds of her crape veil.

The drive from the cemetery began through the level,
rosy rays of a declining sun, and ended in soft spring
darkness full of the cheery noises of populous streets.

Cleland had dreaded to enter the house as they drew
near to it; its prospective emptiness appalled him; but
old Meacham had lighted every light all over the house;
and it seemed to help, somehow.

Miss Quest went with Stephanie to her room, leaving
Jim in the library alone.

Strange, irrelevant thoughts came to the boy's mind
to assail him, torment him with their futility: he
remembered several things which he had forgotten to tell his
father—matters of no consequence which now suddenly
assumed agonizing importance.

There in the solitude of the library, he remembered,
among other things, that his father would never read
his novel, now.  Why had he waited, wishing to have it
entirely finished before his father should read this first
beloved product of his eager pen?

Stephanie found him striding about the library, lips
distorted, quivering with swelling grief.

"Oh, Steve," he said, seeing her in the doorway, "I
am beginning to realize that I can't talk to him any
more!  I can't touch him—I can't talk—hear his
voice—see——"

"Jim—*don't*——"

"The whole world is no good to me now!" cried the
boy, flinging up his arms in helpless resentment toward
whatever had done this thing to him.

Whatever had done it offered no excuse.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII.

.. vspace:: 2

The reading of John Cleland's will marked the
beginning of the end of the old régime for
Stephanie Quest and for James Cleland.

Two short letters accompanied the legal document.
All the papers were of recent date.

The letter directed to Jim was almost blunt in its
brevity:

.. vspace:: 2

MY DEAR SON:

I have had what I believe to have been two slight shocks
of paralysis.  If I am right, and another shock proves fatal,
I wish you, after my death, to go abroad and travel and
study for the next two years.  At the end of that period
you ought to know whether or not you really desire to make
literature your profession.  If you do, come back to your
own country and go to work.  Europe is a good school, but
you should practise your profession in your native land.

Keep straight, fit, and clean.  Keep your head in adversity
and in success.  Find out what business in life you
are fitted for, equip yourself for it, and then go into it with
all your heart.

I've left you some money and a good name.  And my
deep, abiding love.  My belief is that death is merely an
intermission.  So your mother and I will rejoin you when the
next act begins.  Until then, old chap—good luck!

.. vspace:: 1

FATHER.

.. vspace:: 2

To Stephanie he wrote:

.. vspace:: 2

STEVE, DEAR:

You have been wonderful!  I'm sorry I couldn't stay to
see you a little further along the path of life.  I love you
dearly.

Your aunt, Miss Quest, understands my wishes.  During
the two years that Jim is abroad, Miss Quest is to assume
the necessary and natural authority over you.  I have every
confidence in her.  Besides, she is legally qualified to act.

It is her desire and mine that you finish college.  But if
you really find yourself unhappy there after the term is
finished, then it is Miss Quest's belief and mine also that you
employ the period that otherwise should have spent at Vassar,
in acquiring some regular and legitimate profession so that
if ever the need comes you shall be able to take care of
yourself.

Miss Quest is inclined to think that a course in hospital
training under her direct supervision might prove acceptable
to you.  This you could have in the institution endowed by
Miss Quest at Bayport.

Perhaps such a course may appeal to you more than a
college education.  If so, I shall not be dissatisfied.

But after that if you still feel that your life's work lies in
the direction of artistic self-expression, you will be old enough
to follow your own bent, and entitled to employ your
opportunities toward that end.

I have left you properly provided for: I leave you and Jim
all the love that is in my heart.

This is not the end, Steve, dear.  There is no end—just a
little rest between the acts for such old actors in life's drama
as your dad.  Later, you and Jim will join us behind the
scenes—my wife and I—and we shall see what we shall
see!—my little girl!—my darling.

.. vspace:: 1

DAD.

.. vspace:: 2

The boy and the girl sat up late in the library that
night discussing the two letters which so profoundly
concerned them.

Indeed, the old order of things was about to pass
away before their dismayed and saddened eyes—eyes
not yet accustomed to the burning grief which dimmed
them—hearts not yet strengthened for the first heavy
responsibilities which they had ever borne.

"I can't bear to leave you, Steve," said the boy,
striving to steady his voice.  "What are you going
to do about college?"

"Well—I—I'll go back to college and finish the term.
Dad wanted it."

Neither dreamed of disobeying the desires expressed
in the two letters.

"Will you finish college?" he asked.

"I don't know.  I want to do what dad wished me to
do....  I wonder what a course in hospital training
is like?"

"Down there at Bayport?"

"Yes....  After all, that is accomplishing something.
And I like children, Jim."

"They're defective children down there."

"Poor little lambs!  I—I believe I could do some
good—accomplish something.  But do you know, Jim,
it almost frightens me when I remember that you will
be away two years——"  She began to weep, lying
there in her big chair with her black-edged handkerchief
pressed against her face.

"I wish I could take you to Europe, Steve," he said
huskily.

She dried her eyes leisurely.

"Couldn't you?  No, you couldn't, of course.  Dad
would have said so if it was what he wanted.  Well—then
I'll finish the term at Vassar.  You won't go
before Easter?"

"No, I'll be here, Steve.  We'll see each other then,
anyway....  Do you think you'll get along with
your aunt?"

"I don't know," said the girl.  "She means to be
kind, I suppose.  But dad spoiled me.  Oh, Jim!
I'm—I'm too unhappy to c-care what becomes of me now.
I'll finish the term and then I'll go and learn how to
nurse sick little defective children while you're
away——" her voice broke again.

"I wish you wouldn't cry," said the boy;—"I'm—I
can't stand it——"

"Oh, forgive me!"  She sprang up and flung herself
on the rug beside his chair.

"I'm sorry!  I'm selfish.  I'll do everything dad
wished, cheerfully.  You'll go abroad and educate
yourself by travel, and I'll learn a profession.  And some
day I'll find out what I really am fitted to do, and
then I'll go abroad and study, too."

"You'll be twenty, then, Steve—just the age to
know what you really want to do."

.. _`135`:

She nodded, listlessly, kneeling there beside his chair,
her cheek resting on her clasped hands, her grey eyes
fixed on the dying coals.

After a long silence she said:

"Jim, I really don't know what I want to do in
life.  I am not certain that I want to do anything."

"What?  Not the stage?"

"No—I'm not honestly sure.  *Everything* interests
me.  I have a craving to see everything and learn about
everything in the world.  I want to know all there is
to know; I'm feverishly curious.  I want to see
everything, experience everything, attempt everything!  It's
silly—it's crazy, of course.  But there's a restless
desire for the knowledge of experience in my heart that
I can't explain.  I love everything—not any one
particular thing above another—but everything.  To be
great in any one thing would not satisfy me—it's a
terrible thing to say, isn't it, Jim!—but if I were a
great actress I should try to become a great singer,
too; and then a great painter and sculptor and architect——"

"For Heaven's sake, Steve!"

"I tell you I want to know it all, be it all—see, do,
live everything that is to be seen, done, and lived in
the world——!"

She lifted her head and straightened her shoulders,
sweeping the tumbled hair from her brow impatiently:
and her brilliant grey eyes met his, unsmiling.

"Of course," she said, "this is rot I'm talking.  But
every hour of my life I'm going to try to learn
something new about the wonderful world I live in—try
something new and wonderful—live every minute to the
full—experience everything....  Do you think I'm
a fool, Jim?"

He smiled:

"No, but you make me feel rather unambitious
and commonplace, Steve.  After all, I merely wish
to write a few good novels.  That would content me."

"Oh, Jim," she said, "you'll do it, and I'll probably
amount to nothing.  I'll just be a crazy creature flying
about and poking my nose into everything, and stirring
it up a little and then fluttering on to the next thing.
Like the Bandar-log—that's what I am—just a monkey,
enchanted and excited by everything inside my cage
and determined to find out what is hidden under every
straw."

"Yours is a good mind, Steve," he said, still smiling.

The girl looked up at him wistfully:

"Is it?  I wish I knew.  I'm going to try to find
out.  Have I really a good mind?  Or is it just a
restless one?  Anyway, there's no use my trying to be an
ordinary girl.  I'm either monkey or genius; and I
am convinced that the world was made for me to
rummage in."

He laughed.

"Anyway," she said, "I've amused you and cheered
you up.  Good night, Jim dear."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII

.. vspace:: 2

Stephanie, looking very slim and young in her
deep mourning, went back to college unreconciled
and in tears.  Jim drove her to the station.
They stood together in the Pullman vestibule for
a few minutes before the train departed, and she clung
to him, both black-gloved hands holding tightly to his
shoulders.

"Everything familiar in life seems to be ending," she
said tremulously.  "I'm not very old yet, and I didn't
really wish to begin living seriously so soon—no matter
what nonsense I talked about self-expression.  All I
want now is to get off this train and go back home with
you."

"Poor little Steve," he said under his breath.  "But
it's better for you to return to college.  The house
would be too sad for you.  Go back to college and study
hard and play basket ball and skate——"

"Oh, I will," she said desolately.  "I'll see the
wretched term through.  I was merely telling you what
I'd rather do—go home and just live there all alone
with you."

"You'd become tired of it pretty soon, Steve.  Don't
you think so?"

They looked at each other intently for a moment,
then an odd expression came into the girl's grey eyes:

"It's you who would tire of it, Jim," she said.  "I'm
not old enough to amuse you yet.  I'm still only a child
to you."

"What nonsense——!"

"No.  You've been wonderful to me.  But you are
older.  I've bored you sometimes."

He protested; but she shook her head.

"A girl knows," she said.  "And a man can't make
a comrade of a girl who has no experiences to swap with
him, no conclusions to draw, none of life's discoveries
to compare with his....  Don't look so guilty and
distressed; you have always been a perfect dear.  But,
oh, if you knew how hard I've tried to catch up with
you!—how desperately I try to be old enough for
you——"

"Steve, you *are* an ideal sister!  But you know
how it is—when a man has such a lot to think
about——"

"I *do* know!  And that is exactly what I also am
determined to have—a lot to think about!"  Her colour
was high and her grey eyes brilliant.

"In two years you shall see.  I shall be an interesting
woman to you when you come back!  I vow and declare
I shall be interesting enough to be friends with you on
equal terms!  Wait and see!"

"But, Steve," he protested, smiling, yet bewildered
by the sudden fiery animation of the girl, "I never
supposed you felt that I condescended—patronized——"

"How could you help it!—a little fool who doesn't
know anything!"  She was laughing unnaturally, and
her nervous fingers tightened and relaxed on his shoulders.
"But when you come back after two years' travel,
I shall at least be able to take your temperature, and
keep you entertained if you're ill——!  Oh, Jim, I
don't know what I'm saying!  I'm just heart-broken
at going away from you.  You do care a lot for me,
don't you?"

"Of course I do."

"And I promise to be a very interesting woman when
you come back from abroad....  Oh, dear, the train
is moving.  Good-bye, Jim dear!"  She flung her veil
aside and put both slim arms around his neck in a
passion of adoration and farewell.

He dropped to the platform from the slowly moving
train and walked back toward the station.  And he was
uneasily conscious, for the first time in his life, of the
innocent abandon of this young girl's embrace—embarrassed
by the softness of her mouth—impatient of
himself for noticing it.

When he arrived at the house Miss Quest's luggage
had gone and that capable and determined lady was
ready to depart for Bayport in a large, powerful
automobile bearing her monogram, which stood in front
of the house.

"Mr. Cleland," she said, "before I go, I have several
things to say to you.  One is that I like you."

He reddened with surprise, but expressed his appreciation
pleasantly and without embarrassment.

"Yes," continued Miss Quest, reflectively, "you're
much like your father.  He and I began our acquaintance
by differing: we ended friends.  I hope his son and
I may continue that friendship."

"I hope so," he said politely.

"Thank you.  But the keynote to friendship is
frankness.  Shall I sound it?"

"Certainly," he replied, smiling.

"Very well: my niece ought to have a woman
companion when she returns from college at Easter."

"Why?" he asked, astonished.

"Because she isn't your sister, and she's an attractive
girl."

After a silence she went on:

"I know that you and Stephanie regard each other
as brother and sister.  But you're not.  And the world
knows it.  It's an absurd world, Mr. Cleland."

"It's rather a rotten world if Steve and I can't live
here alone together without gossip," he said hotly.

"Let's take it as we find it and be practical.  Shall
I look up a companion for Stephanie, or shall I return
here at Easter?"

He pondered the suggestion, frowning.  Miss Quest
said pleasantly:

"Please, I don't mean to interfere.  You are of age,
and over.  But the world, if it cares to think, will
remember that you and Stephanie are not related.  In
two years, when you return from Europe, Stephanie
will be twenty and you twenty-four.  And, laying aside
the suggestion that an older woman's presence might
be advantageous under the circumstances, who is going
to control Stephanie?"

"Control her?"

"Yes, control, guide, steady her through the most
critical period of her life?"

The young fellow, plainly unconvinced, looked at
Miss Quest out of troubled eyes.

"Come," she said briskly, "let's have a heart-to-heart
talk and find out what's ahead of us.  Let's be
business-like and candid.  Shall we?"

"By all means."

"Then we'll begin at the very beginning:

"Stephanie is a dear.  But she's very young.  And
at twenty she will still be very, very young.  What
traits and talents she may have inherited from a clever,
unprincipled father—my own nephew, Mr. Cleland—I
don't know.  God willing, there's nothing of him in
her—no tendencies toward irregularities; no unmoral
inclination to drift, nothing spineless and irresponsible.

"As for Stephanie's mother, I know little about her.
I think she was merely a healthy young animal without
education, submitting to and following instinctively the
first man who attracted her.  Which happened to be
my unhappy nephew."

She shook her head and gazed musingly at the window
where the sunshine fell.

"There are the propositions; this is the problem,
Mr. Cleland.  Now, let us look at the conditions which
bear directly on it.  Am I boring you?"

"No," he said.  "It's very necessary to consider this
matter.  I'm just beginning to realize that I'm really
not fitted to guide and control Stephanie."

She laughed.

"What a confession!  But do you know that, all over
the world, men are beginning to come to similar
conclusions?  Conditions absolutely without precedent have
arisen within a few brief years.  And Stephanie, just
emerging into womanhood, is about to face them.  The
day of the woman has dawned.

"Ours is a restless sex," continued Miss Quest grimly.
"And this is the age of our opportunity.  I don't know
just what it is that animates my enfranchised sex, now
that the world has suddenly flung open doors which
have confined us through immemorial ages—each woman
to her own narrow cell, privileged only to watch
freedom through iron bars.

"But there runs a vast restlessness throughout the
world; in every woman's heart the seeds of revolution,
so long dormant, are germinating.  The time has come
when she is to have her fling.  And she knows it!"

She shrugged her trim shoulders:

"It is the history of all enfranchisement that license
and excess are often misconstrued as freedom by
liberated prisoners.  To find ourselves free to follow the
urge of aspiration may unbalance some of us.  Small
wonder, too."

She sprang to her feet and began to march up and
down in front of the fireplace, swinging her reticule
trimmed with Krupp steel.  Cleland rose, too.

"What was all wrong in our Victorian mothers' days
is all right now," she said, smilingly.  "We're going to
get the vote; that's a detail already discounted.  And
we've already got about everything else except the
right to say how many children we shall bring into the
world.  That will surely come, too; that, and the single
standard of morality for both sexes.  Both are bound
to come.  And then," she smiled again brightly at
Cleland, "I have an idea that we shall quiet down and
outgrow our restlessness.  But I don't know."

"What you say is very interesting," murmured the
young fellow.

"Yes, it's interesting.  It is significant, too.  So is
the problem of making something out of defectives.
After a while there won't be any defectives when we
begin to breed children as carefully as we breed cattle.
Sex equality will hasten sensible discussion; discussion
will result in laws.  A, B and C may have babies; D, E
and F may not.  And, after a few generations, the
entire feminine alphabet can have and may have babies.
And if, here and there, a baby is not wanted, there'll be
no sniveling sectarian conference to threaten the wrath
of Mumbo-Jumbo!"

Miss Quest halted in her hearth-rug promenade:

"The doom of hypocrisy, sham and intolerance is
already in sight.  Hands off and mind your business are
written on the wall.  So I suppose Stephanie will think
we ought to keep our hands off her and mind our business
if she wishes to go on the stage or dawdle before
an easel in a Washington Mews studio some day."

Her logic made Cleland anxious again.

"The trouble lies in this intoxicating perfume we call
liberty.  We women sniff it afar, and it makes us
restless and excitable.  It's a heady odour.  Only a level
mind can enjoy it with discretion.  Otherwise, it incites
to excess.  That's all.  We're simply not yet used to
liberty.  And *that* is what concerns me about Stephanie—with
her youth, and her intelligence, her undoubted
gifts and—her possible inheritance from a fascinating
rascal of a father.

"Well, that is the girl; there are the conditions;
this is the problem....  And now I must be going."

She held out her smartly gloved hand; retained his
for a moment:

"You won't sail before Stephanie's Easter vacation?"

"No; I'll probably sail about May first."

"In that case, I'll come on from Bayport, and you
won't need to find a companion for Stephanie.  After
you sail, she'll come to me, anyway."

"For hospital training," he nodded.

"For two years of it.  It's her choice."

"Yes, I know.  She prefers it to college."

Miss Quest said very seriously:

"For a girl like Stephanie, it will be an excellent
thing.  It will give her a certain steadiness, a foundation
in life, to have a profession on which she may rely
in case of adversity.  To care for and to be responsible
for others develops character.  She already seems interested."

"She prefers it to graduating from Vassar."

Miss Quest nodded, then looking him directly in the eyes:

"I want to say one thing.  May I?"

"Certainly."

"Then, above all, be patient with Stephanie.  Will you?"

"Of course!" he replied, surprised.

"I am looking rather far into the future," continued
Miss Quest.  "You will change vastly in two years.
She will, too.  Cherish the nice friendship between you.
A man's besetting sin is impatience of women.  Try to
avoid it.  Be patient, even when you differ with her.
She's going to be a handful—I may as well be frank.
I can see that—see it plainly.  She's going to be a
handful for me—and you must always try to keep her
affections.

"It's the only way to influence any woman.  I know
my sex.  You're a typical man, entirely dependent on
logic and reason—or think you are.  All men think they
are.  But logic and reason are of no use in dealing with
us unless you have our affections, too.  Good-bye.  I
do like you.  I'll come again at Easter."

Alone in the quiet house, with his memories for companions,
the young fellow tried to face the future;—tried
to learn to endure the staggering blow which his
father's death had dealt him,—strove resolutely to
shake off the stunned indifference, the apathy through
which he seemed to see the world as through a fog.

Gradually, as the black winter months passed, and
as he took up his work again and pegged away at it,
the inevitable necessity for distraction developed, until
at last the deadly stillness of the house became
unendurable, driving him out once more into the world of
living men.

So the winter days dragged, and the young fellow
faced them alone in the sad, familiar places where, but
yesterday, he had moved and talked with his only and
best beloved.

Perhaps it was easier that way.  He had his memories
to himself, sharing none.  But he did not share his
sorrow, either.  And that is a thing that undermines.

At first he was afraid that it would be even harder
for him when Stephanie returned at Easter.  The girl
arrived in her heavy mourning, and he met her at the
station, as his father used to meet him.

She lifted her rather pale face and passively
received her kiss, but held tightly to his arm as they
turned away together through the hurrying crowds of
strangers.

Each one tried very hard to find something cheerful
to talk about; but little by little their narratives
concerning the intervening days of absence became
spiritless and perfunctory.

The car swung into the familiar street and drew up
before the house; Stephanie laid one hand on Jim's arm,
stepped out to the sidewalk, and ran up the steps,
animated for a moment with the natural eagerness for
home.  But when old Meacham silently opened the door
and her gaze met his:

"Oh—Meacham," she faltered, and her grey eyes
filled.

However, she felt her obligations toward Jim; and
they both made the effort, at dinner, and afterward in
the library, fighting to keep up appearances.

But silence, lurking near, crept in upon them, a living
intruder whose steady pressure gradually prevailed,
leaving them pondering there under the subdued lamplight,
motionless in the depths of their respective armchairs,
until endurance seemed no longer possible—and
speech no longer a refuge from the ghosts of what-had-been.
And the girl, in her black gown, rose, came silently
over to his chair, seated herself on the arm, and
laid her pale face against his.  He put one arm around
her, meaning to let her weep there; but withdrew it
suddenly, and released himself almost roughly with a
confused sense of her delicate fragrance clinging to
him too closely.

The movement was nervous and involuntary; he shot
a perplexed glance at her, still uneasily conscious of the
warmth and subtle sweetness which had so suddenly
made of this slender girl in black something unfamiliar
to his sight and touch.

"Let's try to be cheerful," he muttered, scarcely
understanding what he said.

It was the first time he had ever repulsed her or failed
to respond to her in their mutual loneliness.  And why
he did it he himself did not understand.

He left the arm-chair and went and stood by the
mantel, resting one elbow on it and looking down into
the coals; she slipped into the depths of the chair and
lay there looking at him.

For something in the manner of this man toward
her had set her thinking; and she lay there in silence,
watching his averted face, deeply intent on her own
thoughts, coming to no conclusions.

Yet somehow the girl was aware that, in that brief
moment of their grief when she had sought comfort in
his brotherly caress and he had offered it, then
suddenly repulsed her, a profound line of cleavage had
opened between him and her; and that the cleft could
never be closed.

Neither seemed to be aware that anything had
happened.  The girl remained silent and thoughtful; and
he became talkative after a while, telling her of his
plans for travel, and that he had arranged for keeping
open the house in case she and Miss Quest wished to
spend any time in town.

"I'll write you from time to time and keep you
informed of my movements," he said.  "Two years pass
quickly.  By the time I'm back I'll have a profession
and so will you."

She nodded.

"Then," he went on, "I suppose Miss Quest had
better come here and live with us."

"I'm not coming back here."

"What?"

"I'm going about by myself—as you are going—to
to observe and learn."

"You wish to be foot-free?"

"I do.  I shall be my own mistress."

"Of course," he said drily, "nobody can stop you."

"Why should anybody wish to?  I shall be twenty-one—nearly;
I shall have a profession if I choose to
practise it; I shall have my income—and all the world
before me to investigate."

"And then what?"

"How do I know, Jim?  A girl ought to have her
chance.  She ought to have her fling, too, if she wants
it—just as much as any man.  It's the only way she
can learn anything.  And I've concluded," she added,
looking curiously at him, "that it's the only way she
can ever become really interesting to a man."

"How?" he demanded.  "By having what you call
her fling?"

"Yes.  Men aren't much interested in girls who know
nothing except what men permit them to know.  A girl
at college said that the one certain source of interest
to any man in any woman is his unsatisfied curiosity
concerning her.  Satisfy it, and he loses interest."

Cleland laughed:

"That's college philosophy," he said.

Stephanie smiled:

"It is what a man doesn't know about a woman that
keeps his interest in her stimulated.  It isn't her mind
which is merely stored with the conventional—the
conventional being determined and prescribed by men.  It
isn't even her character or her traits or her looks which
can keep his interest unflagging.  What deeply interests
a man is an educated, cultivated girl who has had
as much experience as he has, and who is likely to have
further experience in the world without advice from
him or asking his permission.  No other woman can
hold the interest of a man for very long."

"That's what you've learned at Vassar, is it?"

"It's one of the things," said Stephanie, smiling
faintly.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV

.. vspace:: 2

The boy—for as yet he was only a boy—sailed in
May.  The girl—who was swiftly stripping from
her the last rainbow chiffons of girlhood—was
at the steamer to see him off—down from Poughkeepsie
for that purpose.

And the instant she arrived he noticed what this last
brief absence had done for her; how subtly her maturing
self-confidence had altered the situation, placing
her on a new footing with himself.

There was a little of the lean, long-legged, sweet-faced
girl left: a slender yet rounded symmetry had replaced
obvious joints and bones.

"What is it—basket ball?" he inquired admiringly.

"You like my figure?" she inquired guilelessly.  "Oh,
I've grown up within a month.  It's just what was
coming to me."

"Nice line of slang they give you up there," he said,
laughing.  "You're nearly as tall as I am, too.  I don't
know you, little sister."

"You never did, little brother.  You'll be sorry some
day that you wasted all the school-girl adoration I
lavished on you."

"Don't you intend to lavish any more?" he inquired,
laughing, yet very keenly alert to her smiling assurance,
which was at the same time humourous, provocative
and engaging.

"I don't know.  I'm over my girlhood illusions.  Men
are horrid pigs, mostly.  It's a very horrid thing you're
doing to me right now," she said, "—going off to have
a wonderful time by yourself for the next two years and
leaving me to work in a children's hospital!  But I
mean to make you pay for it.  Wait and see."

"If you'll come to Europe with me I'll take you,"
he said.

"You wouldn't.  You'd hate it.  You want to be free
to prowl.  So do I, and I mean to some day."

"Why not come now and prowl with me?  I'll take
care of you."

The girl looked at him with smiling intentness:

"If dad hadn't expressed his wishes, and even if my
aunt would let me go, I wouldn't—now."

"Why not?"

"Because I shall do no more tagging after you."

"What?"

"No.  And when you return I mean that you shall
come and ask my permission to prowl with me....
And if I find you interesting enough I'll let you.
Otherwise, I shall prowl by myself or with some other man."

He was laughing, and her face, also, wore a bright
and slightly malicious smile.

"You don't believe that's possible, do you, Jim?—a
total reversal of our rôles?  You think little sister will
tag gratefully after you always, don't you?  Wouldn't
it astonish you if little sister grew up into a desirable
and ornamental woman of independent proclivities and
tastes, and with a mind and a will of her own?  And,
to enjoy her company, you'd have to seek her and
prove yourself sufficiently interesting; and that you
would have to respect her freedom and individuality as
you would any man's!"

"I think, little sister," he said, laughing, "that you've
absorbed a vast deal of modern nonsense at Vassar;
that you're as pretty as a peach; and that you'll not
turn into a maid errant, but will become an ornament
to your sex and to society, and that you'll marry in
due time and do yourself proud."

"In children, you mean?  Numerically?"

"Quantitatively and qualitatively.  Also, you'll do
yourself proud in the matronly example you'll set to
all women of this great Republic."

"That's what you think, is it?"

"I know it."

She smiled:

"Watch the women of my generation, Jim—when you
can spare a few moments of your valuable time from
writing masterpieces of fiction."

"I certainly shall.  I'll study 'em.  They're material
for me.  They *are* funny, you know."

"They are, indeed," she said, her grey eyes full of
malice, "funnier than you dream of!  You are going
to see a generation that will endure no man-devised
restrictions, submit to no tyrannical trammels, endure no
masculine nonsense.  You'll see this new species of
woman coming faster and faster, thicker and thicker,
each one knowing her own mind or intent on knowing it.
You'll see them animated by a thousand new interests,
pursuing a thousand new vocations, scornful of masculine
criticism, impervious to admonition, regardless of
what men think and say and do about it.

"That's what you'll see, Jim, a restless sex destroying
their last barriers; a world of women contemptuous
of men's opinions, convinced of their own rights, going
after whatever they want, and doing it in their own
way.

"If they wish to marry and bother with children
they'll pick out a healthy man and do it; if not, they
won't.  Love plays a very, very small part in a man's
life.  Love, sentiment, domesticity, and the nursery
were once supposed to make up a woman's entire
existence.  Now the time is coming very swiftly when love
will play no more of a rôle in a woman's life than it
does in a man's.  She'll have her fling, first, if she
chooses, just as freely as he does.  And some day, if
she finds it worth the inconvenience, she'll marry and
take a year or two off and raise a few babies.  Otherwise,
decidedly not!"

"These are fine sentiments!" he exclaimed, laughing,
yet not too genuinely amused.  "I'm not sure that I'd
better go and leave you here with that exceedingly
pretty little head of yours stuffed and seething with
this sort of propaganda!"

"You might as well.  The whole world is beginning to
seethe with it.  After all, what does it mean except
equality of the sexes?  Hands off—that's all it means."

"Are you a suffragette, Steve?" he inquired, smilingly.

"Oh, Jim, that's old stuff!  Everybody is.  All that is
merely a matter of time, now.  What interests us is
our realization of our own individual independence.
Why, I can't tell you what a delightful knowledge it is
to understand that we can do jolly well what we please
and not care a snap of our fingers for masculine opinion!"

"That's a fine creed," he remarked.  "What a charming
bunch you must be training with at Vassar!  I
think I'll get off this steamer and remain here for a little
scientific observation of your development and conduct."

"No use," she said gaily.  "I've promised to learn to
be a hospital nurse.  After that, perhaps, if you
return, you'll find me really worth observing."

"Is that a threat, Steve?" he asked, not too sincerely
amused, yet still taking her and her chatter with a
lightness and amiable condescension entirely masculine.

"A threat?"

"Yes.  Do you mean that when I return I shall find
my little sister a handful?"

"A handful?  For whose hand?  Jim, dear, you are
old-fashioned.  Girls aren't on or in anybody's hands
any more after they're of age.  Do you think you'll
be responsible for me?  Dear child, we'll be comrades
or nothing at all to each other.  You really must grow
up, little brother, before you come back, or I'm afraid—much
as I love you—I might find you just a little bit
prosy——"

The call for all ashore silenced her.  She stood
confronting Cleland with high colour and pretty, excited
grey eyes, for a moment more, then the gay defiance
faded in her face and her attitude grew less
resolute.

"Oh, Jim!" she said under her breath, "—I adore
you——"  And melted into his embrace.

As he held her in his arms, for a moment the instinct
to repel her and disengage himself came over him
swiftly.  A troubled idea that her lips were very
soft—that he scarcely knew this girl whose supple figure
he held embraced, left him mute, confused.

"Dear Jim," she whimpered, "I love you dearly.  I
shall miss you dreadfully.  I'll always be your own little
sister Steve, and you can come back and bully me and
I'll tag after you and adore you.  Oh, Jim—Jim—my
own brother—my own—my *own*——!"

It was a bright, sunny, windy May day.  He could
still distinguish her in her black gown on the crowded
pier which was all a-flutter with brilliant gowns and
white handkerchiefs.

After the distant pier had become only a square of
colour like a flower-bed, he still stood on the hurricane
deck of the huge liner looking back at where he had last
seen her.  The fragrance of her still clung to him—seemed
to have been inhaled somehow and to have subtly
permeated him—something of the warm, fresh, pliant
youth of her—unspoiled, utterly unawakened to anything
more delicate or complex than the frank, vigorous
passion of her affection.

Yet, as her breathless, tearful lips had clung to his,
so the perfume of the embrace clung to him still,
leaving him perplexed, vaguely disturbed, yet intensely
conscious of new emotion, unfamiliar in his experience
with this girl who yesterday had been what she always
had been to him—a growing child to be affectionately
looked after and chivalrously cherished and endured.

"I couldn't be in love with Steve," he said to himself
incredulously.  The thought amazed and exasperated
him.  "I'm a fine sort of man," he thought bitterly, "if
I can't kiss Steve as innocently as she kisses me.
There's something wrong with me.  I must be a sort of
dog—or crazy——"

He went below.

Stephanie went back in the car, alone.  She
staunched her tears with her black-edged handkerchief
until they ceased to fill the wonderful grey eyes.

Later, detaching the limousine hand-mirror, she
inspected her countenance, patted her chestnut-tinted
hair, smoothed out her mourning veil, and then, in order,
lay back in the corner of the car and gave herself up
to passionate memory of this boy whom she had adored
from the first moment she ever laid eyes on him.

Two years' absence?  She tried to figure to herself
what that meant, but could not compass it.  It seemed
like a century of penance to be endured, to be lived
through somehow.

She wanted him dreadfully already.  She had no
pride left, no purpose, no threats.  She just wanted to
tag after him—knowing perfectly well that there could
be no real equality of comradeship where youth and
inexperience fettered her.  She didn't care; she wanted
him.

No deeper sentiment, nothing less healthy and frank
than her youthful adoration for him, disturbed her
sorrow.  The consanguinity might have been actual as far
as her affections had ever been concerned with him.

That she had, at various intervals, made of him a
romantic figure, altered nothing.  Stainlessly her heart
enshrined him; he was her ideal, hers; her brother, her
idol, her paladin—the incarnation of all that was
desirable and admirable in a boy, a youth, a young man.
Never in all her life had any youth interested her
otherwise—save, perhaps, once—that time she had met
Oswald Grismer after many years, and had danced with
him—and was conscious of his admiration.  That was
the only time in her life when her attitude toward any
man had been not quite clear—not entirety definable.
She wrote many pages to Cleland that night.  And
cried herself to sleep.

The next day her aunt came up from Bayport.  And,
a week later, she went away to Bayport with Miss Quest
to begin what seemed to her an endless penance of two
years' hospital training.

The uniform was pink with white cuffs, apron, and
cap.  She never forgot the first blood that soiled
it—from a double mastoid operation on a little waif of
twelve who had never been able to count more than six.
She held sponges, horrified, crushing back the terror
that widened her grey eyes, steeling herself to look,
summoning every atom of strength and resolution and
nerve to see her through.

They found her lying across the corridor in a dead
faint.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV

.. vspace:: 2

The usual happened to James Cleland; for
the first two months in Paris he was intensely
lonely.  Life in an English-speaking pension
near the Place de l'Etoile turned out to be very drab
and eventless after he returned to his rooms, fatigued
from sight-seeing and exploration.  The vast silver-grey
city seemed to him cold, monotonously impressive
and oppressive; he was not in sympathy with it, being
totally unaccustomed to the splendour of a municipal
ensemble with all its beauty of reticence and good taste.
The vast vistas, the subdued loveliness of detail, the
stately tranquillity of this capital, he did not
understand after the sham, the ignorance, the noisy
vulgarity of his native municipality.

Here were new standards; the grey immensity of the
splendid capital gave him, at first, an impression of
something flat and almost featureless under the horizon-wide
sweep of sky.  There were no sky-scrapers.  With
exquisite discretion, Notre Dame dominated the east,
the silvery majesty of the Pantheon the south; in the
west the golden bubble of the Invalides burned; the frail
tracery of the Eiffel Tower soared from the city's
centre.

And for the first two months he was an alien here,
depressed, silenced, not comprehending, oblivious of the
subtle atmosphere of civil friendliness possessing the
throngs which flowed by him on either hand, unaware
that he stood upon the kindly hearthstone of the world
itself, where the hospitable warmth never grew colder,
where the generous glow was for all.

He went to lectures at the Sorbonne; he attended a
class in philology in the Rue des Ecoles; he studied in
the quiet alcoves of the great Library of Ste. Genevieve;
he paced the sonorous marble pavements of the
Louvre.  And the austere statues seemed to chill him
to the soul.

All was alien to him, all foreign; the English-speaking
landlady of his pension, with her eternal cold in
the head and her little shoulder shawl; the dreary
American families from the Middle West who gathered
thrice a day at the pension table; passing wayfarers
he saw from the windows; red-legged soldiers in badly
fitting uniforms, priests in shovel hats and black
soutanes, policemen slouching by under cowled cloaks, their
bayonets dangling; hatless, chattering shop girls, and
the uninteresting types of civilian citizens; men in
impossible hats and oddly awful clothes; women who all
looked smart from the rear and dubious from the front.

He found an annoying monotony in the trees of the
Bois, a tiresome sameness in square and circle and park
and boulevard.  He found the language difficult to
understand, more difficult to speak.  Food, accommodations,
the domestic régime, were not to his liking.
French economies bored him.

At lectures his comrades seemed merely superficially
polite and not very desirable as acquaintances.  He
felt himself out of place, astray from familiar things,
out of touch with this civilization, out of sympathy with
place and people.  He was intensely lonely.

In the beginning he wrote to Stephanie every other
day.  That burst of activity lasted about two months.

Also, in his rather dingy and cheerless suite of rooms,
he began a tragedy in five acts and a pessimistic novel
called "Out of the Depths."  Also, he was guilty of a
book of poems called "Day Dreams."

He missed his father terribly; he missed his home;
he missed the noisy, grotesque, half-civilized and
monstrous city of his nativity.  And he missed Stephanie
violently.

He told her so in every letter.  The more letters he
wrote the warmer grew this abrupt affection for her.
And, his being a creative talent, with all its temperamental
impulses, exaggerations and drawbacks, he began
to evolve, unconsciously, out of Stephanie Quest
a girl based on the real girl he knew, only transcendentally
endowed with every desirable and ornamental
quality abstractly favoured by himself.

He began to create an ideal Stephanie to comfort him
in his loneliness; he created, too, a mutual situation and
a sentimental atmosphere for them both, neither of
which had existed when he left America.

But now, in his letters, more and more this romantic
and airy fabric took shape.  Being young, and for the
first time in his life thrown upon his own resources—and,
moreover, feeling for the first time the pleasures
of wielding an eloquent, delicate and capricious pen to
voice indefinable aspirations, he began to lose himself
in romantic subtleties, evoking drama out of nothing,
developing it by implication and constructing it with
pensive and capricious humour hinting of dreamy
melancholy.

Until the Stephanie Quest of his imagination had become
to him the fair, and exquisitely indifferent little
renaissance figure of his fancy; and he, somehow or
other, her victim.  And the more exquisite and indifferent
he created her, the more she fascinated him, until
he completely hypnotized himself with his own cleverly
finished product.

A letter from her woke him up more or less, jolting
him in his trance so that the jingle and dissonance
of the real world filled, for a moment, his enchanted
ears.

.. vspace:: 2

DEAR JIM:

.. vspace:: 1

Your letters perplex me more and more, and I don't know
at all how to take them.  Do you mean you are in love with
me?  I can't believe it.  I read and re-read your last three
letters—such dear, odd, whimsical letters!—so wonderfully
written, so full of beauty and of poetry.

They do almost sound like love-letters—or at least as I
imagine love-letters are written.  But they can't be!  *How*
can they be?

And first of all, even if you meant them that way, I don't
know what to think.  I've never been in love.  I know how
I feel about you—have always felt.  You know, too.

But you never gave me any reason to think—and I never
dreamed of thinking anything like *that* when you were here.
It never occurred to me.  It would not occur to me now
except for your very beautiful letters—so unlike you—so
strangely sad, so whimsical, so skillful in wonderful phrases
that they're like those vague prose poems you sent me, which
hint enough to awaken your imagination and set you aflame
with curiosity.

But you *can't* mean that you're in love with me.  I should
be too astonished.  Besides, I shouldn't know what to do
about it.  It wouldn't seem real.  I never have thought of
you in such a way.

What makes a girl fall in love?  Do you know?  Could
she fall in love with a man through his letters because they
are so beautiful and sad and elusive, so full of charm and
mystery?  I'm in love with *them*.  But, Jim, I don't know
what to think about you.  I'd have to see you again, first,
anyway.  You are such a dear boy!  I can't seem to think of
you that way.  You know it's a different kind of love, ours.
All I can think about it is the tremendous surprise—if it's
true.

But I don't believe it is.  You are lonely; you miss
dad—miss me, perhaps.  I think you do miss me, for the first
time in your life.  You see, I have rather a clear mind and
memory, and I can't help remembering that when you were
here you certainly could not have felt that way toward me;
so how can you now?  I did bore you sometimes.

Anyway, I adore you with all my heart, as you know.
My affection hasn't changed one bit since I was a tiny girl
and came into your room that day and saw you down on the
floor unpacking your suit-case.  I adored you instantly.  I
have not changed.  Girls don't change.

.. vspace:: 2

Another letter from her some months later:

.. vspace:: 2

You're such a funny boy—just a boy, still, while in these
six months I've overtaken and passed you in years.  You
won't believe it, but I have.  Maturity has overtaken me.
I am really a real woman.

Why are your letters vaguely reproachful?  Have I done
anything?  Were you annoyed when I asked you whether
you meant me to take them as love letters?  You didn't
write for a month after that.  Did I scare you?  You *are*
funny!

I do really think you *are* in love—not with me, Jim—not
with any other particular girl—but just in love with love.
Writers and artists and poets are inclined to that sort of
thing, I fancy.

That's what worries me about myself; I am not inclined
that way; I don't seem to be artistic enough in temperament
to pay any attention to sentiment of that sort.  I don't desire
it; I don't miss it; it simply is not an item in the list of
things that interest me.  But of all things in the world, I do
adore friendship.

I had an afternoon off from the hospital the other day—I'm
still a probationer in a pink and white uniform, you
know—and I went up to town and flew about the shops and
lunched with a college friend, Helen Davis, at the Ritz and
had a wonderful time.

And who do you suppose I ran into?  Oswald Grismer!
Jim, he certainly is the best-looking fellow—such red-gold
hair,—such fascinating golden eyes and colouring.

We chatted most amiably and he took us to tea, and
then—I suppose it wasn't conventional—but we went to his
studio with him, Helen Davis and I.

He *is* the cleverest man!  He has done a delightful fountain
and several portrait busts, and a beautiful tomb for the
Lidsey family, and his studies in wax and clay are
wonderful!

He really seems very nice.  And the life he leads is
heavenly!  Such a wonderful way to live—just a bed-room and
the studio.

He's going to give a little tea for me next time I have an
afternoon off, and I'm to meet a lot of delightful, unconventional
people there—painters, writers, actors—people who
have *done* things!—I'm sure it will be wonderful.

I have bought five pounds of plasticine and I'm going to
model in it in my room every time I have a few moments
to myself.  But oh, it does smell abominably, and it ruins
your finger nails.

.. vspace:: 2

After that, Oswald Grismer's name recurred frequently
in her letters.  Cleland recognized also the
names of several old schoolmates of his as figuring at
various unconventional ceremonies in Grismer's
studio—Harry Belter, now a caricaturist on the New York
*Morning Star*; Badger Spink, drawing for the illustrated
papers; Clarence Verne, who painted pretty girls
for the covers of popular magazines, and his one-time
master, Phil Grayson, writer for the better-class
periodicals.

.. vspace:: 2

It's delightful, she wrote; we sometimes have music—often
celebrated people from the Metropolitan Opera drop
in and you meet everybody of consequence you ever heard
of outside the Social Register—people famous in their
professions—and it is exciting and inspiring and fills me with
enthusiasm and desire to amount to something.

Of course there are *all* kinds, Jim; but I'm old enough
and experienced enough to know how to take care of myself.
Intellectuals are, of course, broad, liberal and impatient
of petty conventions: they live for their professions,
regardless of orthodox opinion, oblivious of narrow-minded
Philistines.

The main idea is to be tolerant.  That is the greatest thing
in the world, tolerance.  I may not care to smoke cigarettes
myself or drink cocktails and highballs, but if another girl
does it it's none of my business.  That is the foundation of
the unconventional and intellectual world—freedom and
tolerance of other people's opinions and behaviour.  *That* is
democracy!

As for the futurists and symbolists of various schools, I
am not narrow enough, I hope, to ridicule them or deny
them the right to self-expression, but I am not in sympathy
with them.  However, it is most interesting to listen to their
views.

Well, these delightful treats are rare events in my
horridly busy life.  I'm in the infirmary and the hospital
almost all the time; I'm always on duty or studying or
attending lectures and clinics.  I don't faint any more.  And
the poor little sufferers fill my heart with sympathy.  I do
love children—even defective ones.  It makes me furious
that there should be any.  We must regulate this some day.
And regulate birth control, too.

It is interesting; I am rather glad that I shall have had
this experience.  As a graduate nurse, some day, I shall add
immensely to my own self-respect and self-confidence.  But
I should never pursue the profession further; never study
medicine; never desire to become a professional physician.
The minute I graduate I shall rent a studio and start in to
find out what most properly shall be my vehicle for
self-expression.

I forgot to tell you that Oswald Grismer's father and
mother are dead within a week of each other.  Pneumonia!
Poor boy, he is stunned.  He wrote me.  He won't give any
every second to creative work without a thought of financial
gain.

Harry Belter is such a funny, fat man.  He asks after
you every time I meet him.  I sent you some of his cartoons
in the *Star*.  Badger Spink is an odd sort of man with his
big, boyish figure and his mass of pompadour hair and his
inextinguishable energy and amazing talent.  He draws,
draws, draws all the time; you see his pictures in every
periodical; yet he seems to have time for all sorts of gaiety,
private theatricals, dances, entertainments.  He belongs to tie
Players, the Ten Cent Club, the Dutch Treat, Illustrators,
Lotus, Coffee House, Two by Four—and about a hundred
others—and I think he's president of most of them.  He
*always* sends his regards to you and requests to know whether
you're not yet fed up with Latin Quarter stuff—whatever
that means!

And Clarence Verne always mentions you.  Such a
curious man with a face like Pharaoh, and Egyptian hands, too,
deeply cut in between thumb and forefinger like the hands
of people sculptured in bas reliefs on Egyptian tombs.

But such lovely girls he paints!—so exquisite!  He is a
very odd man—with a fixed gaze, and speaks as though he
were a trifle deaf—or drugged, or something....

You haven't said much about yourself, Jim, in your last
letters; and also your letters arrive at longer and longer
intervals.

Somehow, I think that you are becoming reconciled to
Paris.  I don't believe you feel very lonely any longer.  But
*what* do you do to amuse yourself after your hours of work
are ended?  And who are your new friends over there?  For,
of course, you must have made new friends—I don't mean
the students whose names you have occasionally mentioned.
Haven't you met any nice girls?

.. vspace:: 2

He did not mention having met any girls, nice or
otherwise, when he wrote again.  He did say that he
was enjoying his work and that he had begun to feel
a certain affection for Paris—particularly after he had
been away travelling in Germany, Spain and Italy.
Really, he admitted, it was like coming home.  The
usual was still happening to James Cleland.

He had an apartment, now, overlooking the Luxembourg
Gardens.  He had friends to dinner sometimes.
There was always plenty to do.  Life had become very
inspiring.  The French theatres were a liberal education;
French literature a miracle of artistic clarity and
a model for all young aspirants.  In fact, the spring
source of all art was France, and Paris the ornamental
fountain jet from which flashed the ever-living waters
that all may quaff.

Very pretty.  He did not add that some of the
waters were bottled and kept in pails of chopped ice.
He wrote many gracefully composed pages—when
he wrote at all—concerning the misty beauty of the
French landscape and the effect of the rising sun of
Notre Dame.  He had seen it rise several times.

But, on the whole, he behaved discreetly and with
much circumspection; and within his youthful heart lay
that deathless magic of the creative mind which
transmutes leaden reality into golden romance—which is
blind to the sordid and which transforms it into the
picturesque.

A saucy smile from a pretty girl on an April day
germinated into a graceful string of verses by night;
a chance encounter by the Seine, a laugh, a gay
adieu—and a delicate short story was born, perhaps to be
laboured over and groomed and swaddled and nourished
into life—or to be abandoned, perhaps, in the back
yard of literary débris.

Life ran evenly and pleasantly for Cleland in those
deathless days—light, happy, irresponsible days when
idleness becomes saturated with future energy unawares;
when the seeds of inspiration fall thicker and
thicker and take root; when the liberality, the vastness,
and the inspiration of the world begin to dawn upon a
youthful intellect, not oppressively, but with a wide and
reassuring kindliness.

There was a young girl—very pretty, whose loneliness
made her not too conventional.  After several encounters
on the stairs, she smiled in response; and they
crossed the Luxembourg Gardens together, strolling in
the chestnut shade and exchanging views of life.

The affair continued—charming and quite harmless—a
touch of tragedy and tears one evening—and the
boy deeply touched and temporarily in love—in love
with love, temporarily embodied in this blue-eyed,
white-skinned, slender girl who had wandered with him close
to the dead line and was inclined to cross it—with him.

He had a delightfully wretched hour of renunciation—and
was rewarded with much future material, though
he didn't know it at the time.

There were tears—several.  It is not certain that
she spiritually appreciated the situation.  That sort
of gratitude seldom is genuine in the feminine heart.

But such things are very real to the creative mind,
and Cleland was far too unhappy to sleep—deeply
wallowing in martyrdom.  Fate laughed and pinned this
little episode on the clothes-line to dry out with the
others—quite a little line-full, now, all fluttering gaily
there and drying in the sun.  And after a proper
interval Cleland wont about the business of washing out
a few more samples of experience in the life and
manners and customs of his time, later to be added to the
clothes-line wash.

He had to prod himself to write to Stephanie.  He
was finding it a little difficult to discover very much to
say to her.  In youth two people grow apart during
absence much faster than they grow together when in
each other's company.

It was so with Cleland and Stephanie—less so with her.

Not seeing her for nearly two years left him with
the unconscious impression that she had not altered
during that period—that she was still the same young
girl he had left, no more mature, no more experienced,
little wiser.

Her letters were interesting but he had lost touch,
in a measure, with interests and people at home.  He
had adapted himself to the new angle of vision, to the
new aspect of life, to new ideals, new aspirations.  He
was at the source of inspiration, drinking frequently
at times, always unconsciously absorbing.

At the end of the two years he had no desire to
return to New York.

A series of voluminous letters passed between him
and Stephanie and between him and Miss Quest.

He had plenty of excuses for remaining another
year; his education was not completed; he needed a
certain atmosphere and a certain environment which
could be enjoyed only in Europe.

Of course, if he were needed in New York, etc., etc.
No, he wasn't needed.  Matters could be attended
to.  The house in 80th Street ought to be closed as it
was a useless expense to keep the servants there.

Poor old Meacham had died; Janet, too, was dead;
Lizzie had gone back to Ireland.  The house in town
should, therefore, be closed and wired; and the house
in the country, "Runner's Rest," should remain closed
and in charge of the farmer who had always looked out
for it.

This could be attended to; no need of his coming back.

So he wrote his directions to Stephanie and settled
down again with a sigh of relief to the golden days
which promised.

His work, now deeply coloured by Gallic influence
and environment, had developed to that stage of
embryonic promise marred by mannerisms and affectations.
His style, temporarily spoiled by a sort of
Franco-American jargon, became involved in the
swamps of psychological subtleties, emerging jerkily at
times, or relapsing into Debussy-like redundancy.

Nobody wanted his short stories, his poems, his
impressions.  Publishers in London and in America
returned "Day Dreams" and "Out of the Depths" with
polite regrets.  He sounded every depth of despondency
and self-distrust; he soared on wings of hope
again, striving to keep his gaze on the blinding source
of light, only to become confused and dazzled in the
upper oceans and waver and flutter and come tumbling
down, frantically beating the too rarified atmosphere
with unaccustomed wings.

Nobody could tell him.  He had to find out the way.
He had within him what was worth saying; had not yet
learned how to say it.  The massed testimony of the
masters lay heavily undigested within him; he was too
richly fed, stuffed; the intricacies and complexities of
technique worried and disheartened him; he felt too
keenly, too deeply to keep a clear mind and a cool one.

Every sense he possessed was necessary to him in
his creative work; emotion, intense personal sympathy
with his characters, his theme, clogged, checked and
halted inspiration, smothering simplicity and clarity.
This was a phase.  He had the usual experience.  He
struggled through it and onward.

Stephanie wrote that she had graduated, but that
as her aunt was ill she would remain for the present at
the hospital.

He felt that he ought to go back.  And did not.  He
was in a dreadfully involved dilemma with his new
novel, "Renunciation"—all about a woman—one of the
sort he never had met—and no wonder he was in a
mess!  Besides that, and in spite of the gaily coloured
line of rags fluttering on the clothes-line of experience,
he knew very little about women.  One day, when he
came to realize that he knew nothing at all about them,
he might begin to write about them, convincingly and
acceptably.  But he was not yet as far along as that
in his education.

He had a desperate affair with an engaging woman
of the real world—a countess.  She took excellent care
of herself, had a delightful time with Cleland, and, in
gratitude, opened his eyes to the literary morass in
which he had been wading.

Clear-minded, witty, charming, very lovely to look
upon, she read and criticised what he wrote, discussed,
consulted, advised, and, with exquisite tact, divining
the boy's real talent, led him deftly to solid land again.
And left him there, enchanted, miserable, inspired,
heart-broken, with a laughing admonition to be faithful to
her memory while she enjoyed her husband's new post
at the Embassy in Sofia.

He wrote, after her departure, a poem simple enough
for a child to understand.  And tucked it away with a
ribbon and a dried flower in his portfolio.  It was the
first good thing he had ever written.  But he remained
unconscious of the fact for a long time.

Besides, other matters were bothering him, in
particular a letter from Miss Quest:

.. vspace:: 2

I am not well.  I shall not be better.  Still, there is no
particular hurry about your returning.

Stephanie remains with me very loyally.  She has graduated;
she is equipped with a profession.  She has turned
into a very lovely woman to look upon.

But that sex restlessness which now overwhelmingly obsesses
the world, possesses her.  Freedom from all restraint,
liberty to work out and accomplish her own destiny, contempt
of convention, utter disregard of established formality,
and hostility to custom, enroll her among the vast army of
revolutionists now demanding a revision of all laws and
customs made by one sex alone to govern the conduct of both.

You and I once conversed on this subject, if you remember.
I told you what I feared.  And it has happened: Stephanie
has developed along radical lines.  With everything
revolutionary in the world-wide feminist movement she is in
sympathy.  Standards that have been standards are no longer
so to her.  To the world's conservatism she is fiercely and
youthfully hostile; equality, tolerance, liberty are the only
guide-posts she pretends to recognize.

I shall not live to see the outcome of this world-wide
propaganda and revolt.  I don't want to.  But, in my opinion,
it takes a strong character, already accustomed to liberty,
to keep its balance in this dazzling flood let in by
opening prison doors....

I have left Stephanie what property I have outside of that
invested and endowed to maintain my Home for Defective
Children.  Securities have shrunk; it is not much.  It may
add four thousand dollars to her present income.

Mr. Cleland, you and Stephanie have gradually and very
naturally grown apart since your absence.  I don't know
what you have developed into.  But you were a nice boy.

Stephanie is a beautiful, willful, intelligent, and I fear
slightly erratic woman, alive with physical and mental vigour,
restless and sensitive under pressure of control, yet to be
controlled through her affections first, and only afterward
through her reason.

These are unconventional times; a new freedom is dawning,
and to me the dawn seems threatening.  I am too old,
too near my end not to feel that the old régime, with all its
drawbacks, was safer for women, productive of better
results, less hazardous, less threatening.

But I don't know: I am old-fashioned except in theory.
I have professed the creed of the new feminism; I have in my
time—and very properly—denounced the tyranny and
selfishness and injustice of man-made laws which fetter and
cripple my sex.

But—at heart—and with not very many days left to me—at
heart I am returning rather wearily along the way I
came toward what, now to me, seems safer.  It may be only
the notions of an old woman, very tired, very sad, conscious
of failure, and ready to rest and leave the responsibility where
it originated and where it belongs.  I don't know.  But I
wish Stephanie were not alone in the world.

.. vspace:: 2

Miss Quest died before the letter reached him.
Stephanie's next letter informed him of all the details.
She continued:

.. vspace:: 2

No use your coming back until you are quite ready, Jim.
There's nothing for you to do.

I've taken a studio and apartment with Helen Davis, the
animal sculptor.  I don't yet know just what I shall do.  I'm
likely to try several things before I know what I ought to
stick to.

Don't feel any absurd sense of responsibility for me.  That
would be too silly.  Feel free to remain abroad as long as it
suits you.  I also feel absolutely free to go and come as I
please.  That's the best basis for our friendship, Jim, and,
in fact, the necessary and vital basis.  My affection is
unaltered, but, somehow, it has been such a long time that you
seem almost unreal to me.


He did not sail at once.  After all, in the face of
such an unmistakable declaration of independence, it
did not seem worth while for him to arouse himself from
the golden lethargy of enchantment and break the spell
of Europe which held him content, amid the mellow
ripeness of her capitals and the tinted splendour of
her traditions.

He wrote frequently for a few months.  Then his
letters lagged.

Once his pretty Countess had warned him that, for
an American, Europe was merely the school-room but
his own country was the proper and only place for
creative labour.

He remembered this at intervals, a little uneasy, a
trifle conscious-stricken because he shrank from making
an end to preparation—because he still loitered,
disinclined to break the golden web and return to the
clear, shadowless skies and the pitiless sun of the real
world where he belonged, and where alone, he knew,
was the workshop for which he had been so leisurely
preparing.

Then the shock came—the bolt out of the blue.

The cablegram said:

.. vspace:: 2

I married Oswald Grismer this morning.

.. vspace:: 1

STEPHANIE.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI

.. vspace:: 2

He sailed in April.  When he sailed, he knew he
would not come back for many years, if ever.
His business here was done, the dream of
Europe ended.  The cycle of Cathay awaited him in
all its acrid crudity.

Yes, the golden web was rent, torn across, destroyed.
The shock to his American mind left nothing of the
lotus eater in him.  He was returning where he belonged.

Married!  Steve married!  To Oswald Grismer, who,
save as a schoolboy and later in college, was a doubtful
and unknown quantity to him.

He had never known Grismer well.  Since their
schoolboy differences, they had been good enough
friends when thrown together, which had been
infrequently.  He had no particular liking for Grismer, no
dislike.  Grismer had been a clever, adroit, amusing
man in college, generally popular, yet with no
intimacies, no close friends.

As for Steve, he never dreamed that Stephanie would
do such a thing.  It was so damnably silly, so utterly
unthinkable a thing to do.

And in his angry perplexity and growing resentment,
Cleland's conscience hurt as steadily as a toothache.
He ought to have been home long ago.  He should have
gone back at the end of his two years.  His father had
trusted him to look out for Steve, and, in spite of her
rather bumptious letters proclaiming her independence,
he should have gone back and kept an eye on her,
whether or not she liked it.

In his astonishment and unhappiness, he did not
know what to write her when the cablegram came hurtling
into his calm and delightfully ordered life and
blew up the whole fabric.

Sometimes, to himself, he called her a "little fool";
sometimes "poor little Steve."  But always he unfeignedly
cursed Grismer and bitterly blamed himself.

The affair made him sick at heart and miserable, and
ruined any pleasure remaining in his life and work.

He did not cable her; he wrote many letters and tore
all of them to bits.  It was beyond him to accept the
*fait accompli*, beyond him to write even politely, let
alone with any pretense of cordiality.

His resentment grew steadily, increased by
self-reproach.  What kind of man had Oswald Grismer grown
into?  What kind of insolence was this—his marrying
Steve——

"Damn his yellow soul, I'll wring his neck!" muttered
Cleland, pacing the deck of the Cunarder in the
chilly April sunshine.

But the immense astonishment of it still possessed
him.  He couldn't imagine Steve married.  *Why* had
she married?  What earthly reason was there?  It was
incredible, absurd.

Still in his mind lingered the image of the girl
Stephanie whom he remembered as he last had seen her.

Once or twice, too, thinking of that time, and
conjuring up all he could picture of her, he remembered
the delicate ardour of her parting embrace, the fragrant
warmth of her mouth, and her arms around his neck.

It angered him oddly to remember it—to think of
her as the wife of Oswald Grismer.  The idea seemed
unendurable; it threw him into a rage against this man
who had so suddenly taken Stephanie Quest out of his life.

"Damn him!  Damn him!" he muttered, staring out
over the wind-whipped sea.  "I'd like to twist his neck!
There's something queer about this.  I'll take her away
from him if I can.  I'll do everything I can to take
her away from him.  I want her back.  I'll get her back
if it's possible.  How can she care for Grismer?"

He had nobody, now, to return to; no home, for the
house was closed; no welcome to expect.

He had not written her that he was coming; he had
no desire to see her at the steamer with Grismer.  With
a youthful heart full of indefinable bitterness and
self-contempt that his own indifference and selfishness had
brought Steve and himself to such a pass, he paced the
decks day after day, making no acquaintances, keeping
to himself.

And one night the great light on Montauk Point
stared at him across leagues of unseen water.  He was
in touch again with his own half of the earth, nearing
the edges of the great, raw, sprawling Continent where
no delicate haze of tradition softened sordid facts;
where there reigned no calm and ordered philosophy of
life; where everything was in extremes; where
everything was etched sharply against aggressive
backgrounds; where there were no misty middle distances,
no tranquil spaces; only the roaring silences of deserts
to mitigate the yelling dissonance of life.

He saw the sun on the gilded tips of snowy towers
piled up like Alpine cliffs; the vast webs of bridges
stretching athwart a leaden flood; forests of masts
and huge painted funnels; acres of piers and docks;
myriads of craft crossing and recrossing the silvery
flood flowing between great cities.

On the red castle to the southwest a flag flew,
sun-dyed, vivid, lovely as a flower.

His eyes filled; he choked.

"Thank God," he thought, "I'm where I belong at last!"

And so Cleland came home.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII

.. vspace:: 2

It was late afternoon before Cleland got his
luggage unpacked and himself settled in the Hotel
Rochambeau, where he had been driven from the
steamer and had taken rooms.

The French cuisine, the French proprietor and personnel,
the French café in front, all helped to make his
home-coming a little less lonely and strange.  Sunlight
fell on the quaint yellow brick façade and old-fashioned
wrought iron railings, and made his musty rooms and
tarnished furniture and hangings almost cheerful.

He had not telephoned to Stephanie.  He had nothing
to say to her over the wire.  From the moment he
crossed the gang-plank the growing resentment had
turned to a curious, impotent sort of anger which
excited him and stifled any other emotion.

She had not known that he was coming back.  He
had made no response to her cablegram.  She could not
dream that he had landed; that he was within a stone's
throw of her lodgings.

The whole thing, too, seemed unreal to him—to find
himself here in New York again amid its clamour, its
dinginess, its sham architecture and crass ugliness!—back
again in New York—and everything in his life so
utterly changed!—no home—the 80th Street house still
closed and wired and the old servants gone or dead;
and the city empty of interest and lonely as a wilderness
to him since his father's death—and now Steve
gone! nothing, now, to hold him here—for the ties of
friends and clubs had loosened during his years abroad,
and his mind and spirit had become formed in other
moulds.

Yet here he knew he must do his work if ever he was
to do any.  Here was the place for the native-born—here
his workshop where he must use and fashion all
that he had witnessed and learned of life during the
golden hours through which he sauntered under the
lovely skies of an older civilization.

Here was the place and now was the time for
self-expression, for creative work, for the artistic
interpretation of the life and manners of his own people.

If he was to do anything, be anybody, attain distinction,
count among writers of his era, he knew that
his effort lay here—here where he was born and lived
his youth to manhood—here where the tension of
feverish living never relaxed, where a young, high-mettled,
high-strung nation was clamouring and fretting and
quarrelling and forging ahead, now floundering aside
after some will-o'-the-wisp, now scaling stupendous
moral heights, noisy, half-educated, half-civilized,
suspicious, flippant, bragging, sentimental, yet
iron-hearted, generous and brave.

Here, on the nation's eastern edge, where the shattering
dissonance of the iron city never ceased by day;
where its vast, metallic vibration left the night eternally
unquiet and the very sky quivering with the blows of
sound under the stars' incessant sparkle—here, after
all, was where he belonged.  Here he must have his say.
Here lay his destiny.  And, for the sake of all this which
was his, and for no other reason, was attainment and
distinction worth his effort.

All this good and evil, all this abominable turmoil and
futile discord, all this relentless, untiring struggle deep
in the dusty, twilight cañons and steel towers with
their thin skins of stone—all the passions of these
people, and their motives and their headlong strivings and
their creeds and sentiments, false or true or misguided—these
things were his to interpret, to understand, to employ.

For these people, and for their cities, for their
ambitions, desires, aspirations—for the vast nation of
which they formed their local fragment—only a native-born
could be their interpreter, their eulogist, their
defender, their apologist, and their prophet.  And for
their credit alone was there any reason for his life's
endeavour.

No cultured, suave product of generations of Europe's
cultivation could handle these people and these
themes convincingly and with the subtle comprehension
of authority.  Rod and laurel, scalpel and palm should
be touched only by the hand of the native-born.

His pretty Countess had said to him once:

"Only what you have seen, what you have lived and
seen others live; only what you detect from the
clear-minded, cool, emotionless analysis of your own people,
is worth the telling.  Only this carries conviction.
And, when told with all the cunning simplicity and skill
of an artist, it carries with it that authority which
leaves an impression indelible!  Go back to your own
people—if you really have anything to write worth
reading."

Thinking of these things, he locked his door on rooms
now more or less in order, and went out into the street.

It was too warm for an overcoat.  A primrose sunset
light filled the street; the almost forgotten specific
odour of New York invaded his memory again—an
odour entirely different from that of any other city.
For every city in the world has its own odour—not
always a perfume.

Now, again, his heart was beating hard and fast at
thought of seeing Stephanie, and the same indefinable
anger possessed him—not directed entirely against
anyone, but inclusive of himself, and her, and Grismer, and
his own helplessness and isolation.

The street she lived in was quiet.  There seemed to
be a number of studios along the block.  In a few
minutes he saw the number he was looking for.

Four brick dwelling houses had been made over into
one with studios on every floor—a rather pretty
Colonial effect with green shutters, white doorway, and
iron fence painted white.

In the quaint vestibule with its classic fanlight and
delicate side-lights, he found her name on a letter box
and pushed the electric button.  The street door swung
open noiselessly.

On the ground floor, facing him on the right, he
saw a door on which was a copper plate bearing the
names, "Miss Davis; Miss Quest."  The door opened
as he touched the knocker; a young girl in stained
sculptor's smock stood there regarding him inquiringly,
a cigarette between her pretty, clay-stained fingers.

"Miss——" he checked himself, reddening—"Mrs. Grismer,
I mean?" he asked.

The girl laughed.  She was brown-eyed, pink-cheeked,
compactly and beautifully moulded, and her poise and
movement betrayed the elasticity of superb health.

"She's out just now.  Will you come in and wait?"

He went in, aware of clay studies on revolving stands,
academic studies in unframed canvases, charcoal
drawings from the nude, thumb-tacked to the wall—the
usual mess of dusty draperies, decrepit and nondescript
furniture, soiled rugs and cherished objects of art.  A
cloying smell of plasticine pervaded the place.  A large
yellow cat, dozing on a sofa, opened one golden eye a
little way, then closed it indifferently.

The girl who had admitted him indicated a chair and
stepped before a revolving table on which was the
roughly-modelled sketch of a horse and rider.

She picked up a lump of waxy material, and, kneading
it in one hand, glanced absently at the sketch, then
looked over her shoulder at Cleland with a friendly,
enquiring air:

"Miss Quest went out to see about her costume.  I
suppose she'll be back shortly."

"What costume?" he asked.

"Oh, didn't you know?  It's for the Caricaturists'
Ball in aid of the Artists' Fund.  It's the Ball of the
Gods—the great event of the season and the last.
Evidently you don't live in New York."

"I haven't, recently."

"I see.  Will you have a cigarette?"  She pointed
at a box on a tea tray; he thanked her and lighted one.
As he continued to remain standing, she asked him
again to be seated, and he complied.

She continued to pinch off little lumps of waxy,
pliable composition and stick them on the horse.  Still
fussing with the sketch, he saw a smile curve her cheek
in profile; and presently she said without turning:

"Why did you speak of Stephanie Quest as
Mrs. Grismer?  *We* don't, you know."

"Why not?  Isn't she?"

The girl looked at him over her shoulder; she was
startlingly pretty, fresh and smooth-skinned as a child.

"Who *are* you?" she asked, with that same little hint
of friendly curiosity in her brown eyes;—"I'm Helen
Davis, Stephanie's chum.  You seem to know a good
deal about her."

"I'm James Cleland," he said quietly, "—her brother."

At that the girl's brown eyes flew wide open:

"Good Heavens!" she said; "did Steve expect you?
She never said a word to me!  I thought you were a
fixture in Europe!"

He sat biting the end of his cigarette, not looking at
her:

"She didn't expect me," he said, flinging the half-burned
cigarette into the silver slop-dish of the tea service.
"I didn't notify her that I was coming."

Helen Davis dropped one elbow on the modelling
table, rested her rounded chin in her palm, and bent her
eyes on Cleland.  Smoke from the cigarette between her
fingers mounted in a straight, thin band to the ceiling.

"So you are Steve's Jim," she mused aloud.  "I recognize
you now, from your photographs, only you're older
and thinner—and you wear a moustache....  You've
been away a long while, haven't you?"

"Too long," he said, casting a sombre look at her.

"Oh, do you feel that way?  How odd it will seem to
you to see Steve again.  She's such a darling!  Quite
wonderful, Mr. Cleland.  The artists' colony in New
York raves over her."

"Does it?" he said drily.

"Everybody does.  She's so amusing, so clever, so
full of talent and animation—like a beautiful and
mischievous thoroughbred on tip-toes with vitality and the
sheer joy of living.  She never is in low spirits or
depressed.  That's what fascinates everybody—her gaiety
and energy and high spirits.  I knew her in college and
she wasn't quite that way then.  Perhaps because she
hated college.  But she could be a perfect little devil if
she wanted to.  She can be that still."

Cleland nodded almost absently; his preoccupied gaze
travelled over the disordered studio and concentrated
scowlingly on the yellow cat.  He kept twisting the head
of his walking stick between his hands and staring at
the animal in silence while Helen Davis watched him.
Presently, and without any excuse, she walked slowly
away and vanished into some inner room.  When she
returned, she had discarded her working smock, and her
smooth hands were slightly rosy from a recent toilet.

"I'm going to give you some tea," she said, striking
a match and lighting the lamp under the kettle at his
elbow.

"Thanks, no," he said with an effort.

"Yes, you shall have some," she insisted, smiling in
her gay little friendly way.  "Come, Mr. Cleland, you
are man of the world enough to waive formality.  I'm
going to sit here and make tea and talk to you.  Look
at me!  Wouldn't you like to be friends with me?
Most men would."

He looked up, and his slightly drawn features relaxed.

"Yes," he said with a smile, "of course I would."

"That's very human of you," she laughed.  "Shall
we talk about Steve?  What *did* you think of that
cablegram?  Did you ever hear of such a crazy thing?"

He flushed with anger but said nothing.  The girl
looked at him intently over the steaming kettle, then
went on measuring out tea.

"Shall I tell you about it, or would you rather that
Steve told you?" she asked carelessly, busy with her
preparations.

"She is actually married to—Grismer—then?"

"Well—I suppose so.  You know him, of course."

"Yes."

"He *is* fascinating—in that unusual way of his—poor
fellow.  Women like him better than men do.  One
meets him everywhere in artistic circles; but do you
know, Mr. Cleland, I've always seemed to be conscious
of a curious sort of latent hostility to Oswald Grismer,
even among people he frequents—among men, particularly.
However, he has no intimates."

"If they are actually married," he said with an
effort, "why does Stephanie live here with you?"

"Oh, that was the ridiculous understanding.  I myself
don't know why she married him.  The whole affair
was a crazy, feather-brained performance——"  She
poured his tea and offered him a sugar biscuit, which
he declined.

"You see," she continued, curling up into the depths
of her rickety velvet arm-chair and taking her cup and
a heap of sugar biscuits into her lap, "Oswald Grismer
has been Steve's shadow—at her heels always—and I
know well enough that Stephanie was not insensible to
the curious fascination of the man.  You know how
devotion impresses a girl—and he *is* clever and good
looking.

"And that was all very well, and I don't think it
would have amounted to anything serious as long as
Oswald was the amusing, good-looking, lazy and
rich amateur of sculpture, with plenty of leisure to
saunter through life and be charmingly attentive,
and play with his profession when the whim suited him."

She sipped her tea and looked at Cleland meditatively.

"Did you know he'd lost all his money?"

"No," said Cleland.

"Oh, yes.  He lost it a year ago.  He has scarcely
anything, I believe.  He had a beautiful studio and
apartment, wonderful treasures of antique furniture;
he had about everything a rich young man fancies.  It
all went."

"What was the matter?"

"Nobody knows.  He took a horrid little stable
studio in Bleecker Street, and he lives there.  And
*that's* why Steve did that crazy, impulsive thing, I suppose."

"You mean she was sorry for him?"

"I *think* it must have been that—and the general
fascination he had for her—and his persistency and
devotion.  Really, I don't know, myself, how she came
to do it.  She did it on one of her ill-considered,
generous, headlong impulses.  Ask her.  All she ever told
me was that she had married Oswald and didn't know
how it was going to turn out, but had decided to keep
her own name for the present and continue to live with me."

"Do they see each other—much?" he asked.

"Oh, they encounter each other here and there as
usual.  He drops in here every day."

"Does she go—there?"

"I don't know," said the girl gravely.

He had set aside his tea, untasted.  She, still curled
up in her arm-chair, ate and drank with a delightfully
healthy appetite.

"Would you prefer a highball?" she enquired.  "I
could fix you one."

"No, thank you."  He rose and began to walk
nervously about the studio.

Her perplexed, brown eyes followed him.  It was
clear that she could not make him out.

Natural chagrin at a clandestine marriage might
account for his manner.  Probably it was that, because
Stephanie could not have meant anything more personal
and serious to him, or he could not have remained
away so long.

He stopped abruptly in his aimless promenade and
turned to Helen:

"Am I in the way?" he asked.

"My dear Mr. Cleland," she said, "we are a perfectly
informal community.  If you were in the way I'd say
so.  Also, I have a bed-room where I can retire when
Steve comes in.  Or you and she can go into her room
to talk things over."  She lighted another cigarette,
rose, strolled over to the wax horse, with a friendly
smile at him.

"I was just making a sketch," she said.  "I've a jolly
commission—two bronze horses for the Hispano-Moresque
Museum.  The Cid is on one, Saladin on the
other.  I was just fussing with an idea when you rang."

He came and stood beside her, looking at the sketch.

"I've a fine, glass-roofed courtyard in the rear of the
studio for my animal models—horses and dogs and any
beast I require," she explained.  "This sort of thing
comes first, of course.  I think I'll get Oswald to pose
for the Cid."

She stood contemplating her sketch, the cigarette
balanced between her fingers; then, of a sudden, she
turned swiftly around to confront him.

"Mr. Cleland, it *is* a dreadful and foolish and
irrational thing that Steve has done, and I know you are
justly angry.  But—she is a darling in spite of being a
feather-head sometimes.  You *will* forgive her, won't
you?"

"Of course.  After all, it is her business."

Helen sighed:

"You *are* angry.  But please don't lose interest in
her.  She's so loyal to you.  She adores you, Mr. Cleland——"

A key rattled in the lock; the door swung open; into
the dusky studio stepped a slender figure, charmingly
buoyant and graceful in the fading light.

"Helen, they're to send our costumes in an hour.
They are the most fascinating things——"

Stephanie's voice ceased abruptly.  There was a silence.

"Who is—*that*?" she asked unsteadily.

Helen turned and went quietly away toward her
bed-room.  Stephanie stood as though frozen, then
reached forward and pressed the electric button with a
gloved finger that trembled.

"Jim!" she whispered.

She stole forward, nearer, close to him, still incredulous,
her grey eyes wide with excitement; then, with a
little sobbing cry she threw both arms around his neck.

She had laughed and cried there in his arms; her
lovely head and disordered hair witnessed the passionate
ardour of her welcome to this man who now sat beside
her in her bed-room, her hands clasped in his, and all
her young soul's adoration in her splendid eyes.

"Oh," she whispered again and again, "—Oh, to
have you back, Jim.  That is too heavenly to believe.
You dear, dear boy—so good looking—and a little
older and graver——"  She nestled close to him, laying
her cheek against his.

She murmured:

"It seems too delicious to endure.  You do love me,
don't you, Jim?  We haven't anybody else in the world
except each other, you know.  Isn't it good—good to
have each other again!  It's been like a dream, your
absence.  You gradually became unreal—a dear,
beloved memory.  Somehow, I didn't think you'd ever
come back.  Are you happy to be with me?"

"Happier than you know, Steve——"  His voice
trembled oddly and he drew her into his arms: "Good
God," he said under his breath, "—I must have been
mad to leave you to your own devices so long!  I ought
to be shot!"

"What do you mean, Jim?"

"You know.  Oh, Steve, Steve, I can't understand—I
simply can not understand."

After a silence she lifted her head and rested her lips
softly against his cheek.

"Do you mean—my marrying Oswald?" she asked.

"Yes.  Why did you do such a thing?"

She bent her head, considering the question for a
while in silence.  Then she said calmly:

"There's one reason why I did it that I can't tell
you.  I promised him not to.  Another reason was that
he was very much in love with me.  I don't know exactly
what it is that I feel for him—but he does fascinate
me.  He always did, somehow.  Even as a boy——"

"You didn't know him as a boy!"

"No.  But I saw him once.  And I realize now that
I was even then vaguely conscious of an odd interest in
him.  And that time at Cambridge, too.  He had that
same, indefinable attraction for me——"

"You *are* in love with him then!"

"I don't know.  Jim, I don't think it is love.  I don't
think I know what love really is.  So, knowing this,
but being grateful to him, and deeply sorry——"

"Why?"

"I can't tell you why.  Perhaps I'll tell you
sometime.  But I was very grateful and sorry and—and
more or less moved—fascinated.  It's funny; there
are things I don't like about Oswald, and still I can't
keep away from him....  Well, so everything seemed
to combine to make me try it——"

"Try what?"

"Marrying him."

"What do you mean by 'trying it?'"

"Why, it's a trial marriage——"

"Good God!" he said.  "What do you mean?"

"I mean it's a trial marriage," she repeated coolly.

"You mean there was no—no ceremony?" he stammered.

"There wasn't any ceremony.  We don't believe in
it.  We just said to each other that we'd marry——"

"You mean you've—you've *lived* with that man on
such terms of understanding?" he demanded, white with
rage.

"I don't live with him.  I live here with Helen," she
said, perplexed.  "All I would consent to was a trial
marriage to see how it went for a year or two——"

"Do you mean that what you've done is legal?"

"Oh, yes, it's legal," she said seriously.  "I've found
that out."

"And—you know wh-what I mean," he said, stammering
in his anger; "Was that sufficient for you?  Do
you want me to speak plainer, Steve?  I mean, have
you—lived with him?"

She understood and dropped her reddening cheek on
his shoulder.

"*Have* you?" he repeated harshly.

"No....  I thought you understood.  It is only a
trial marriage; I've tried to explain that—make it
clear——"

"What loose-minded, unconventional Bohemians call
a 'trial marriage,'" he said, with brutal directness, "is
an agreement between a pair of fools to live as man and
wife for a while with an understanding that a formal
ceremony shall ultimately confirm the irregularity if
they find themselves suited to each other.  Is that what
you've done?"

"No."

He drew a deep, trembling breath of relief, took her
in his arms and held her close.

"My little Steve," he whispered, "—my own little
Steve!  What sort of trap is this he's led you
into?"

"No trap.  I *wanted* to try it."

"You *wished* it?"

"I was quite willing to try.  After a year or two, I'll
know whether I shall ever care to live with him."

"After a year or two!"

"Yes.  That was the understanding.  And then, if
I didn't wish to live with him, we can be very quietly
divorced.  It *was* a crazy thing to do.  But there wasn't
any real risk.  Besides——" She hesitated.

"Go on," he said.

"No, I can't.  If I don't fall in love with him, I
certainly shall never live with him.  So," she added calmly,
"there'll be no children to complicate the parting.  You
see I had some sense, Jim."

She lifted her head from his shoulder and smiled at him:

"It was just an escapade of sorts," she explained,
more cheerfully.  "It really doesn't mean anything yet,
and I fly around and have a wonderful time, and maybe
I'll take up sculpture with Helen, and maybe I'll try
the stage.  Anyway——" she pressed closer to him with
a happy sigh, "I've got *you* back, haven't I?  So what
do we care whether I'm his wife or not?"

He said, holding her closely embraced:

"Suppose some other man should fall in love with
you, Steve?"

"Oh!" she laughed.  "Plenty do.  Or say they do.
I'm nice to them, and they get along very well....
Your moustache is becoming to you, Jim."  She touched
it curiously, with one tentative finger.

"But suppose *you* should return another man's love
some day?"

"I haven't ever!" she said, laughing back into his
eyes.

"No, but suppose you did?  And found yourself tied
legally by a fool agreement to Oswald Grismer?"

"Oh.  I never considered that."

"Consider it, now!"

"It isn't likely to happen——"

"Consider it, all the same."

"Well—but I've never been in love.  But if it
happened—well—that *would* be a jolly mess, wouldn't it?"

"I should think so!  What would you do about it?"

"There wouldn't be anything to do except to wait
until my two years of trial marriage was up," she said
thoughtfully.

"You could divorce him before that."

"Oh, no.  I promised to give him two years."

"To sit saddled with this ridiculous burden for two
years?"

"Yes, I promised."

"Oh, Steve!  Steve!  What a muddle you have made
of things!  What good does it do you or him to have
this chain between you?  You've lost your liberty.
You're a legal wife without being one.  You've put
shackles on yourself for God knows what whim or caprice."

"But, Jim," she said, bewildered, "I *expect* to be his
wife, ultimately."

"What?"

"Of course.  I wasn't absolutely sure that I could
fall in love with him, that was all.  I have very little
doubt that I shall.  I like to be with him: I am never
bored when he is with me; our tastes are similar; our
beliefs are unconventional.  We suit each other
admirably.  It wasn't such a rash thing to do.  You see, it
is perfectly safe every way."

For a long while he sat beside her in silence.  She
had slipped out of his arms and now sat with one hand
lying across his, watching the enigmatic expressions
which flitted over his rather sombre and flushed features.

Finally he looked up:

"Steve?"

"Yes?"

"Suppose *I* fell in love with—you?"

"Oh, Jim!"  She began to laugh, then the mirth
faded in her grey eyes, and her lips grew quiet and
rather grave.

"*You?*" she said, half to herself.

"Do you remember some letters I once wrote you?"

"Yes."

"You wrote asking if I meant them to be love letters."

"Yes.  You answered very vaguely.  I think I frightened
you," she said, laughing.

"They *were* love letters," he said.  "I didn't happen
to know it; that is all.  I *was* in love with you then.
I didn't realize it; you did not believe it.  But now I
know it was so."

"How *could* you have been in love with me?" she
inquired, astonished.

"You asked me that in your letters.  I thought it
over and I didn't see how I could be, either.  I wasn't
much more than a boy.  Boys drift with the prevailing
tide.  The tide set away from home and from you....
Yet, I was in love with you once, Steve."

She bent her head and looked down gravely at her
slender hand, which lay across his.

"That was very dear of you," she murmured.

After a silence:

"And—you?" he asked.

"Do you mean, was I ever in love with you?"

"Yes."

"I—don't—know.  I loved your letters.  There
didn't seem to be any room in my heart for more
affection than it held for you.  I adored you.  I do now.
Perhaps, if you had come back——"

"I wish I had!"

"Do you?"  She lifted her eyes to him curiously.
"You know, Jim, I must be honest with you.  I never
did love anybody....  But, if you had come home—and
if you had told me that you cared for me—that
way——"

"Yes."

"Well, I was just a girl.  You had my affections.  I
could have been taught very easily, I think—to
care—differently——"

"And—now?"

"What?"

"Is it too late to teach you, Steve?"

"Why, yes.  Isn't it?"

"Why?"

"I'm married."

"It's a flimsy, miserable business!" he began angrily,
but she flushed and checked him with a hand against his
lips.

"Besides—I do care for Oswald—very deeply," she
said.  "Don't say painful things to me....  Don't
be sulky, Jim, dear.  This is disconcerting me
dreadfully.  We mustn't make anything tragic out of
it—anything unhappy.  I'm so contented to have you back
that I can't think of anything else....  Don't let's
bother about love or anything else!  What you and I
feel for each other is more wonderful than love.  Isn't
it?  Oh, Jim, I *do* adore you.  We'll be with each other
now a lot, won't we?  You'll take a studio in this
district, and I'll fly in at all hours to see you, and you'll
come in to see me and we'll do things
together—everything—theatres, dances, pictures, everything!  And
you will like Oswald, won't you?  He's really so nice,
poor boy!"

"All right," he muttered.

They rose; he took both her hands into his and looked
intently into her grey eyes:

"I won't spoil life for you," he said.  "I'll be near
you, now.  The old intimacy must be strengthened.
I've failed wretchedly in my responsibilities; I'll try
to make up for my selfishness——"

"Oh, Jim!  I don't think that way——"

"You are too generous.  You are too loyal.  You
are quite the most charming woman I ever knew, Steve—the
sweetest, the most adorable.  I've been a
fool—blind and stupid."

"You mustn't say such ridiculous things!  But it is
dear of you to find me attractive!  It really thrills
me, Jim.  I'm about the happiest girl in New York, I
think!  Tell me, do you like Helen?"

"Yes, she's nice.  Where are you dining, Steve?
Could you——"

"Oh, dear!  Helen and I are dining out!  It's a
party.  We all go to the ball.  But, Jim—do get a
costume of some sort and come to the Caricaturists' Ball!
Will you?  Helen and I are going.  It's the Ball of the
Gods—the last costume ball of the season, and it is
sure to be amusing.  Will you come?"

He didn't seem to think he could, but she insisted so
eagerly and promised to have an invitation at his hotel
for him by nine o'clock, that he laughed and said he'd go.

"Everybody artistic will be there," she explained,
delighted.  "You'll meet a lot of men you know.  And
the pageant will be wonderful.  I shall be in it.  So will
Helen.  Then, after the pageant, we'll find each
other—you and I!——"  She sighed: "I am too happy, Jim.
I don't want to arouse the anger of the gods."

She linked her arm in his and entered the studio.

"Helen!" she called.  "Jim is coming to the dance!
Isn't it delightful?"

"It is, indeed," said Helen, opening her door a little
and looking through the crack.  "You'd better tell him
what you're wearing, because he will never know you."

"Oh, yes, indeed!  Helen and I are going as a pair
of Burmese idols—just gold all over—you know——?"

She took the stiff attitude of the wonderful Burmese
idol, and threw back her slender hands—"This sort of
thing, Jim?  Tiny gold bells on our ankles and that
wonderful golden filigree head dress."

She was in wonderful spirits; she caught his arm and
hand and persuaded him into a two-step, humming the
air.  "You dance nicely, Jim.  You can have me
whenever you like——"

Helen called through the door:

"You're quite mad, Steve!  You've scarcely time to
dress."

"Oh, I must run!" she cried, turned to Cleland,
audaciously, offered her lips, almost defiantly.

"We're quite safe, Jim, if we can do *this* so
innocently."  She laughed.  "You adorable boy!  Oh, Jim,
you're mine now, and I'll never let you go away again!"

As he went out, he met Grismer, face to face.  The
blood leaped hotly in his cheeks; Grismer's golden eyes
opened in astonishment:

"Cleland!  By all the gods!" he said, offering his hand.

Cleland took it, looked into Grismer's handsome face:

"How are you, Grismer?" he said pleasantly.  And
passed on out of the front door.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII

.. vspace:: 2

Cleland dined by himself in the lively, crowded
café of the Hotel Rochambeau—a sombre, taciturn
young man, still upset by his encounter
with Grismer, still brooding impotent resentment
against what Stephanie had done.  Yet, in spite of this
the thrill of seeing her again persisted, filling him with
subdued excitement.

He realized that the pretty, engaging college girl
he had left three years ago had developed into an
amazingly lovely being with a delicately vigorous and
decisive beauty of her own, quite unexpected by him.
But there was absolutely no shyness, no awkwardness,
no self-consciousness in her undisguised affection
for him; the years had neither altered nor subdued her
innocent acceptance of their relationship, nor made her
less frank, less confident, or less certain of it and of the
happy security it meant for both.

In spite of her twenty-one years, her education, her
hospital experience, Stephanie, in this regard, was a
little girl still.  For her the glamour of the school-boy
had never departed from Cleland with the advent of his
manhood.  He was still, to her, the wonderful and
desirable playmate, the miraculous new brother, the
exalted youth of her girlhood; the beloved and ideal of
their long separation—all she had on earth that
represented a substitute for kin and family ties and home.
That her loyal heart was still the tender, impulsive,
youthful heart of a girl was plain enough to him.  The
frankness of her ardour, her instant happy surrender,
her clinging to him in a passion of gratitude and
delight, all told him her story.  But it made what she had
done with Grismer the more maddening and inexplicable;
and at every thought of it a gust of jealousy
swept him.

He ate his dinner scarcely conscious of the jolly
tumult around him, and presently went upstairs to his
rooms to rummage in one of his trunks for a
costume;—souvenir of some ancient Latin Quarter
revelry—Closerie des Lilas or Quat'z Arts, perhaps.

Under his door had been thrust an envelope containing
a card bearing his invitation, and Stephanie had
written on it: "It will all be spoiled if you are not there.
Don't forget that you'll have to dress as a god of sorts.
All other costumes are barred."

What he had would do excellently.  His costume of
a blessed companion of Mahomet in white, green and
silver, with its jeweled scimitar, its close-fitted body
dress, gorget, and light silver head-piece, represented
acceptably the ideal garb of the Lion of God militant.

Toward eleven o'clock, regarding himself rather
gloomily in the mirror, the reflected image of an
exceedingly good-looking Fourth Caliph, with the faint
line of a mustache darkening his short upper lip and
the green gems of a true believer glittering on casque
and girdle and hilt, cheered the young man considerably.

"If I'm not a god," he thought, "I'm henchman to
one."  And he twisted the pale green turban around his
helmet and sent for a taxicab.

The streets around the Garden were jammed.
Mounted and foot-police laboured to keep back the
curious crowds and to direct the crush of arriving vehicles
laden with fantastic figures in silks and jewels.
Arcades, portico, and the broad lobby leading to the
amphitheatre were thronged with animated merrymakers
in brilliant costumes; and Cleland received his
cab-call number from the uniformed starter and joined the
glittering stream which carried him resistlessly with it
through the gates and presently landed him somewhere
in a seat, set amid a solidly packed tier of
gaily-costumed people.

An immense sound of chatter and laughter filled the
vast place, scarcely subdued by the magic of a huge
massed orchestra.

The Garden had been set to represent Mount Olympus;
white pigeons were flying everywhere amid flowers
and foliage; the backdrop was painted like a blue
horizon full of rosy clouds, and the two entrances were
divided by a marble-edged pool in which white swans
sailed unconcerned and big scarlet gold-fish swam in
the limpid water among floating blossoms.

But he had little time to gaze about through the
lilac-haze of tobacco smoke hanging like an Ægean mist
across the dancing floor, for already boy trumpeters, in
white tunics and crowned with roses, were sounding the
flourish and were dragging back the iris-hued hangings
at either entrance.

The opening pageant had begun.

From the right entrance came the Greek gods and
heroes—Zeus aloft in a chariot, shaking his brazen
thunder bolts; Athene in helmet and tunic, clutching
a stuffed owl; Astarte very obvious, long-legged and
pretty; Mars with drawn sword and fiery copper
armour; Hermes wearing wings on temples and ankles and
skilfully juggling the caduceus, Aphrodite most
casually garbed in gauze, perfectly fashioned by her
Maker and rather too visible in lovely detail.

Eros, very feminine too, lacked sartorial protection
except for a pair of wings and a merciful sash from
which hung quiver and bow.  In fact, it was becoming
startlingly apparent that the artists responsible for the
Ball of All the Gods scorned to conceal or mitigate
the classical and accepted legends concerning them and
their costumes—or lack of costumes.

Fauns, dryads, nymphs, satyrs, naiads, bacchantes
poured out from the right entrance, eddying in snowy
whirlpools around the chariots of the Grecian gods;
and the influence of the Russian ballet was visible in
every lithely leaping figure.

Contemporaneously, from the left entrance, emerged
the old Norse gods: Odin, shaggy and fully armed;
Loki, all a-glitter with dancing flames; Baldin the
Beautiful, smirking; Fenris the Wolf; Frija, blond and
fiercely beautiful—the entire Norse galaxy surrounded
by skin-clad warriors and their blond, half-naked
mates.

The two processions, moving in parallel lines along
the north and south tiers of boxes, were overlapping
and passing each other now, led in a winding march by
trumpeters; and all the while, from either entrance new
bevies of gods and immortals were emerging—the deities
of Ancient Egypt moving stiffly in their splendid
panoply; the gods of the ancient Western World led
by the Holder of Heaven and Hiawatha, and followed
by the Eight Thunders plumed in white escorting the
Lake Serpent—a young girl, lithe and sinuous as a
snake and glittering from head to foot, with the serpent
spot on her forehead.

Ancient China, in bewildering silks, entered like a
moving garden of flowers; then India came in gemmed
magnificence led by the divine son of Suddhodana.

He bore the bow of black steel with gold tendrils—the
Bow of Sinhahânu.  He was dressed as the Prince
Siddhartha, in the garb of a warrior of Oudh.  Bow
and sabre betrayed the period—the epoch of his
trial against all comers to win the Sâkya girl Yasôdhara.

As he passed, Cleland, leaning forward, scanned the
splendid and militant figure intently; and recognized
Oswald Grismer under the glimmering dress of the
young Buddha militant.

To left and right of the youthful god advanced two
girls, all in relieved stiff gold from the soles of their
up-turned sandals to the fantastic pagoda peak of their
head-dresses.

They wore golden Burmese masks; their bodies to
the girdles were covered with open-work golden filigree;
from the fantastic pagoda-like shoulder-pieces gold
gauze swept away like the folded golden wings of
dragon-flies; golden bangles and bells tinkled on wrist
and ankle.

With slim hands uplifted like the gilded idols they
represented, the open eye painted in the middle of each
palm became visible.  Around them swirled a dazzling
throng of Nautch girls.

Suddenly they flung up their arms: the stiff gold
masks and body-encasements cracked like gilded
mummy cases and fell down clashing around their naked
feet, and from the cold, glittering chrysalids stepped
out two warm, living, enchantingly youthful figures,
lithe and supple, saluting the Prince Siddhartha with
bare arms crossed above their breasts.

To one, representing his mother, Maya, he turned,
laying the emblems of temporal power at her feet.  And,
in her, Cleland recognized Helen Davis.

But his eyes were for the other—the Sâkya girl
Yasôdhara in gold sari and chuddah, her body clasped
with a belt of emeralds and a girdle of the same gems
tied below her breasts.

The young Lord Buddha laid the living Rose of the
World in her hands.  She bent her head and drew it
through her breast-girdle.  Then, silk-soft, exquisite,
the Sâkya maid lifted her satin-lidded eyes, sweeping
the massed audience above as though seeking some one.
And Cleland saw that her eyes were lilac-grey; and
that the girl was Stephanie.

Suddenly the massed orchestras burst into an
anachronistic two-step.  The illusion was shattered; the
ball was on!  Assistants ran up and gathered together
the glittering débris and pushed chariot, papier maché
elephant and camel and palanquin through the two
entrances; god seized goddess, heroes nabbed nymphs; all
Olympus and the outlying suburban heavens began to
foot it madly to the magic summons of George Cohan.

Under the blaze of lights the throng on the dancing
floor swirled into glittering whirlpools and ripples,
brilliant as sunset on a restless sea.  The gaily costumed
audience, too, was rising everywhere and leaving seats
and stalls and boxes to join the dancing multitudes
below.

Before he descended, Cleland saw Grismer and
Stephanie dancing together, the girl looking up over
her shoulder as though still searching the tiers of seats
above for somebody expected.

Before he reached the floor he began to meet old
friends and acquaintances, more or less recognizable
under strange head-dresses and in stranger raiment.

He ran into Badger Spink, as a fawn in the spotted
skin of a pard, his thick hair on end and two little horns
projecting.

"Hello," he said briefly; "you back?  Glad to see
you—excuse me, but I'm chasing a little devil of a
dryad——"

He caught sight of her as he spoke; the girl shrieked
and fled and after her galloped the fawn, intent on capture.

Clarence Verne, colourless of skin in his sombrely
magnificent Egyptian dress, extended an Egyptian
hand to him—the hand he remembered so well, with its
deep, pictographic cleft between forefinger and thumb.

"When did *you* come back, Cleland?" he inquired in
that listless, drugged voice of his.  "To-day?  Hope
we'll see something of you now....  Do you know
that Nautch girl—the one in orange and silver?  She's
Claudia Gwynn, the actress.  She hasn't got much on,
has she?  Can the Ball des Quat'z beat this for an
unconcerned revelation of form divine?"

"I don't think it can," said Cleland, looking at a
bacchante whose raiment seemed to be voluminous
enough.  The only trouble was that it was also
transparent.

"Nobody cares any more," remarked Verne in his
drowsy voice.  "The restless sex has had its way.  It
always has been mad to shed its clothes in public.
First it danced barefooted, then it capered barelegged.
Loie, Isadora and Ruth St. Denis between 'em started
the fashion; Bakst went 'em one better; then society
tore off its shoulder-straps and shortened its
petticoats; and the Australian swimming Venus stripped
for the screen.  It's all right; I don't care.  Only it's
a bore to have one's imagination become atrophied from
disuse....  If I can find a girl thoroughly covered
I'd be interested."

He sauntered away to search, and Cleland edged
around the shore of the dancing floor, where the
flotsam from the glittering maelstrom in the centre had
been cast up.

Threading his way amid god and goddess, nymph
and hero, he met and recognized Philip Grayson, one of
his youthful masters at school—a tall, handsome figure
in Greek armour.

"This is nice, Cleland," he said cordially.  "Didn't
know you were back.  Quite a number of your old
school fellows here!"

"Who?"

"Oswald Grismer——"

"I saw him."

"Did you run across Harry Belter?"

"No," exclaimed Cleland, "is he here?"

"Very much so.  Harry is always in the thick of
things artistic.  How goes literature with you?"

"I came back to start things," said Cleland.  "How
does it pan out with you?"

"Well," said Grayson, "I write things that are taken
by what people call the 'better class' magazines.  It
doesn't seem to advance me much."

"Cheer up.  Try a human magazine and become a
best seller," said Cleland, laughing.

And he continued his search for Stephanie.

There was a crush on the floor—too many dancing
in the beginning—and all he could do was to prowl
along the side lines.  In a lower-tier box he noticed a
fat youth, easily recognizable as Bacchus.  His wreath
of wax grapes he wore rakishly over one eye; he sat
at a table with several thirsty dryads and bestowed
impartial caresses and champagne.  Occasionally he burst
into throaty song in praise of the grape.

"Harry Belter!" cried Cleland.

"Hey!  Who?" demanded Bacchus, leaning over the
edge of the box, his glass suspended.  "No!  It isn't
Jim Cleland!  I won't believe it!  It's only a yearned-for
vision come to plague and torment me in my old
age——!"  He got up, leaned over and seized Cleland
by his silken sabre-belt:

"Jim!  It *is* you!  To my arms, old scout——!"
embracing him vociferously.  "Welcome, dear argonaut!
Ladies!  Prepare to blush and tremble with
pleasurable emotion!" he cried, turning to his
attendant dryads.  "This is my alter ego, James
Cleland—my beloved comrade in villainy—my incomparable
breaker of feminine hearts!  You all shall adore him.
You shall dote upon him.  Ready!  Attention!  Dote!"

"I'm doting like mad," said a bright-eyed dryad,
looking down invitingly at the handsome young fellow.
"Only if he's a Turk I simply won't stand for a harem!"

"In the Prophet's Paradise," said Cleland, laughing,
"there's no marriage or giving in marriage.  Will you
take a chance, pretty dryad?  All the girls are on an
equal footing in the Paradise of Mahomet, and we
Caliphs just saunter from houri to houri and tell each
that she's the only one!"

"Saunter this way, please," cried another youthful
dryad, adjusting the wreath of water-lilies so that she
could more effectively use her big dark eyes on him.

Belter whispered:

"They're from the new show—'Can You Beat It!'—just
opened to record business.  Better pick one while
the picking's good.  Come on up!"

But Cleland merely lingered to pay his compliments
a few moments longer, then, declining to enter the box
and join Belter in vocal praise of the grape, and
eluding that gentleman's fond clutch, he dodged and slipped
away to continue his quest of the silken, slender Sâkya
girl somewhere engulfed amid all this glitter, surging,
beating noisily around him.

Frequently, as he made his devious way forward, men
and women of the more fashionable and philistine world
recognized and greeted him; he was constantly stopping
to speak to acquaintances of what used to be the
saner sets, renew half-forgotten friendships, exchange
lively compliments and gay civilities.

But he failed to detect any vast and radical difference
between the world and the three-quarter world.  The
area in square inches of bare skin displayed by a
young matron of his own sort matched the satin
nakedness of some animated ornament from the Follies.

As he stood surveying the gorgeous throng he
seemed to be subtlely aware of a tension, an occult
strain keying to the breaking point each eager,
laughing woman he looked at.  The scented atmosphere was
heavy with it; the rushing outpour of the violins was
charged with it; it was something more than temporary
excitement, more than the reckless gaiety of the
moment; it was something that had become part of these
women—a vast, deep-bitten restlessness possessing
them soul and body.

The aspiring quest for the hitherto unattainable,
the headlong hunt for happiness, these were human and
definite and to be comprehended: but this immense,
aimless, objectless restlessness, mental or spiritual,
whichever it might be, seemed totally different.

It was like a blind, crab-like, purposeless, sidling
migration in mass of the prehistoric female race—before
it had created the male for its convenience—wandering
out into and over-running the primeval wastes
of the world, swarming, crawling at random—not
conscious of what it desired, not knowing what it might
be seeking, aware only of the imperative urge within
it which set it in universal motion.  Only to weary,
after a few million years of subdivision and self-fertilization,
and casually extemporize the sterner sex.  And
settle again into primeval lethargy and the somnolent
inertia of automatic reproduction.

Watching the golden human butterflies whirling
around him swept into eddies by thunderous gusts of
music, he thought, involuntarily of those filmy winged
creatures that dance madly in millions and millions
over northern rivers and are swept in sparkling clouds
amid the rainbow spray of cataracts out into the
evening splendour of annihilation.

He met a pretty woman he knew—had thought that
he had known once—and reddened slightly at the
audacity of her Grecian raiment.  Her husband—a
Harvard man he had known—was with her, in eye-glasses
and a Grecian helmet—Ajax the Greater, he explained.

They lingered to exchange a word; she beat time to
the music with sandalled foot, a feverish brilliancy in
eyes and cheeks.

"The whole world," said Cleland, "seems strung too
tightly.  I noticed it abroad, too.  There's a tension
that's bound to break; the skies of the whole earth are
full of lightning.  Something is going to blow up."

"Hope it won't be the stock market," said the man.
"I don't get you, Cleland—you always were literary."

"He means war," said his wife, restlessly fanning her
flushed cheeks.  "Or suffrage.  Which *do* you mean,
Mr. Cleland?"

"You've got all you want—practically—haven't
you?" he asked.

"Practically.  It's a matter of a year or so—the vote."

"What will you do next?" he inquired, smiling.

"Heaven knows, but we've simply got to keep doing
something," she said.  "What a ghastly bore to attain
everything!  If you men really love us, for goodness'
sake keep on tyrannizing over us and giving us
something to fight for!"

She laughed and blew him a kiss as her husband
encircled her Grecian waist and steered her out into the
fox-trotting throng, her flimsy draperies fluttering like
the wind-blown tunic of a Tanagra dancing figure.

The stamp and jingling din of Nautch girls rang in
his ears as he turned away and looked out over the
shifting crowd.

Everywhere he recognized people he had met or heard
about, men eminent or notorious in their vocations,
actors, painters, writers, architects, musicians—men
of science, lawyers, promoters, officers of industry
commissioned and non-commissioned, the gayer element of
the stage were radiantly in evidence, usually in the
dancing embrace of Broad and Wall Streets; artistic
masculine worth and youth pranced proudly with
femininity of social attainment; the beautiful unplaced were
there in daring deshabille, captivating solid domestic
character which had come there wifeless and receptive.

Suddenly he saw Stephanie.  She was leaning back
against the side of the arena, besieged by a ring of
men.  Gales of laughter swept her brilliant entourage
of gods and demons, fauns and heroes, all crowding
about to pay their eager court.  And Stephanie,
laughing back at them from the centre of the three-fold
circle, her arms crossed behind her, stood leaning against
the side of the amphitheatre under a steady rain of
rose petals dropped on her by some young fellows in
the box above her.

Through this rosy rain, through the three-fold ring
of glittering gods, she caught sight of Cleland—met
his gaze with a soft, quick cry of delight.

Out through the circle of chagrined Olympians she
sprang on sandalled feet, not noticing these protesting
suitors; and with both lovely, rounded arms outstretched,
her jewelled hands fell into Cleland's, clasping
them tightly in an ecstacy of possession.

"I couldn't find you," she explained breathlessly.  "I
was so dreadfully afraid you hadn't come!  Isn't it all
magnificent!  Isn't it wonderful!  Did you see the
pageant?  Did you ever see anything as splendid?
Slip your arm around me; we can walk better together
in this crush——" passing her own bare arm confidently
over his shoulder and falling into step with him.

"I saw you in the pageant," he said, encircling with
his arm the silken body-vestment of her slender waist.

"Did you?  Did you see Helen and me come out of
our golden chrysalids?  Was it pretty?"

"Charming and unexpected.  You are quite the most
beautiful thing on the floor to-night."

"Really, Jim, do you think so?  You darling boy,
to say it!  I'm having a wonderful time.  How handsome
you are in your dress of a young oriental warrior!"

"I'm the fourth Caliph, Ali," he explained.  "I had
this costume made in Paris."

"It's bewitching, Jim.  You *are* good looking!—you
adorable brother of mine.  Do you like my paste
emeralds?  You don't think I'm too scantily clad, do you?"

"That seems to be the general fashion——"

"Oh, Jim!  There are lots of others *much* more
undressed.  Besides, one simply has to be historical and
accurate or one is taken for an ignoramus.  If I'm to
to impersonate the Sâkya girl, Yassôdhara, before she
became Lord Buddha's wife, I must wear what she
probably wore.  Don't you see?"

"Perfectly," he said, laughing.  "But you of the
artistic and unconventional guilds ought to leave the
audacious costumes to your models.  But, of course,
that's too much to ask of you."

"Indeed it is!" she said gaily.  "If some of us think
we're rather nicely made why shouldn't we dare a
little artistically—in the name of beauty and of
art? ... Oh, Jim!—it's the tango they're beginning.
*Will* you!—with *me*?"

They danced the exquisitely graceful measure together,
her little golden-sandalled feet flashing noiselessly
through the intricate steps, lingering, swaying,
gliding faultlessly in unison with his as though part
of his own body.

The fascinating rhythm of the Argentine music
throbbed through the perfumed air; a bright, whispering
wilderness of silk and jewels swayed rustling all
around them; bare arms and shoulders, brilliant lips
and eyes floated through their line of dreary vision;
figures like phantoms passed in an endless rosy chain
through the lustrous haze of motion.

They danced together whatever came; Stephanie,
like a child fearful of being abandoned, kept one slim
jewelled hand fast hold of his sleeve or girdle when
they were not dancing.  To one and all who came to
argue or present fancied prior claims she turned a deaf
ear and laughing lips, listening to no pleading, no
claims.

She threatened Harry Belter with the flat of her
palm, warning him indignantly when he attempted a
two-step, by violence; she closed her ears to Badger
Spink, who danced with rage in his goat-skins; she
waved away Verne in all his Egyptian splendour; she
let her grey eyes rest in an insolent stare at two of
Belter's dryads who encircled Cleland's waist with
avowed intent to make him their prisoner and dedicate
him to vocal praise of the vine.

Then there was a faint clash and flash of iridescence,
and the Prince Siddhartha confronted her,
golden-eyed, golden-skinned, golden-haired, magnificent
in his golden vestments.

"Oswald!" she cried.  "Oh, I am glad.  Jim!  You
and Oswald will be friends, won't you?  You're such
dears—you simply must like each other!"

They shook hands, looking with curious intentness
at each other.

"I've always liked you, Cleland," said Grismer gracefully.
"I don't think you ever cared for me very much,
but I wish you might."

"I have found you—agreeable, Grismer.  We were
friendly at school and college together——"

"I hope our friendliness may continue."

"I—hope so."

Grismer smiled:

"Drop in whenever you care to, Cleland, and talk
things over.  We've a lot to say to each other, I
think."

"Thanks." ... He looked hard at Grismer.  "All
right; I'll do it."

Grismer nodded:

"I've a kennel of sorts in Bleecker Street.  But you
might be interested in one or two things I'm working
on.  You see," he added with careless good humour,
"I'm obliged to work, now."

Cleland said in a low voice:

"I'm sorry things went wrong with you."

"Oh, they didn't.  It was quite all right, Cleland.
I really don't mind.  Will you really drop in some day
soon?"

"Yes."

Dancing began again.  Grismer stepped back with
the easy, graceful courtesy that became him, conceding
Stephanie to Cleland as a matter of course; and
the latter, who had been ready to claim her, found
himself disarmed in advance.

"Is it Grismer's dance, Steve?" he asked.

"I promised him.  But, Jim, I'm afraid to let you
go——"

They all laughed, and she added:

"When a girl gets a man back after three long years,
is it astonishing that she keeps tight hold of him?"

"You'd better dance with her, Cleland," said Grismer,
smiling.

But Cleland could not accept a gift from this man,
and he surrendered her with sufficient grace.

"Jim!" she said frankly.  "You're not going after
that dryad, are you?  She's exceedingly common and
quite shamelessly under-dressed.  Shall I introduce
you to a nice girl—or do you know a sufficient number?"

"You know," he said, laughing, "that I ought to
play my part of Fourth Caliph and go and capture a
pretty widow——"

"What!"

"Certainly," he said tranquilly; "didn't Ali take
prisoner Ayesha, the youthful widow of Mohammed?
I'll look about while you're dancing——"

"I don't wish you to!" she exclaimed, half vexed, half
laughing.  "Oswald, does he mean it?"

"He looks as though he does," replied Grismer,
amused.  "There's a Goddess of Night over there,
Cleland—very pretty and very unconcealed under a
cloud of spangled stars——"

"Oswald!  I don't wish him to!  Jim!  Listen to me,
please——!" for he had already started toward the
little brunette Goddess of Night.  "We have box seven!
Please remember.  I shall wait for you!"

"Right!" he nodded, now intently bent on displeasing
her; a little excited, too, by her solicitude, yet
sullenly understanding that it sprang from no deeper
emotion than her youthful heart had yet betrayed for
him.  No woman ever let a man go willingly, whether
kin or lover—whether she had use for him or not.

Stephanie, managing to keep him in view among the
dancers, saw the little Goddess of Night, with her
impudent up-tilted nose, floating amid her scandalously
diaphanous draperies in his arms through a dreamy
tango, farther and farther away from her.

Things went wrong with her, too; she dropped her
emerald girdle and several of the paste stones rolled
away; the silk of her body-vest ripped, revealing the
snowy skin, and she had to knot her gold sari higher.
Then the jewelled thong of her left sandal snapped and
she lost it for a moment.

"The devil!" she said, slipping her bare foot into
it and half skating toward the nearest lower-tier box.

"There he is over there," remarked Grismer, indicating
a regulation Mephistopheles, wearing a blood-red
jerkin laced with a wealth of superfluous points.
"Wait; I'll borrow a lace of him."

The devil was polite and had no objection to being
despoiled; and Grismer came back with a chamois thong
and mended her sandal for her while she sat in their
box and watched the tumult surging below.

He chatted gaily with her for a while, leaning there
on the box's edge beside her, but Stephanie had become
smilingly inattentive and preoccupied, and he watched
her in silence, now, curiously, a little perplexed by her
preoccupation.  For it was most unusual for her to
betray inattention when with him.  It was not like her.
He could not remember her ever being visibly uninterested
in him—ever displaying preoccupation or indifference
when in his company.

However, the excitement of seeing her brother again
so unexpectedly accounted for it no doubt.

The excitement and pleasure of seeing her—*brother*! ... A
slight consciousness of the fact that
there was no actual kinship between this girl and
Cleland passed through his mind without disturbing his
tranquillity.  He merely happened to think of it....
He happened to recollect it; that was all.

"Stephanie?"

"Yes."

"Shall we sit out this dance?  Your sandal string
will hold."

"I don't know," she said.  "Who is that dancing
with Helen?  Over there to the left——"

"I see her.  I don't know—oh, yes—it's Phil Grayson."

"Is it?  I wonder where Jim went with that
woman! ... I'm horribly thirsty, Oswald."

"Shall we have some supper?"

"Where is it?  Oh, down there!  What a stuffy
place!  It's too awful.  Couldn't you get something
here?"

He managed to bribe one perspiring and distracted
waiter, and after a long while he brought a tray
towering with salads, ices and bottles.

Helen and Philip Grayson came back and the former
immediately revealed a healthy appetite.

"Don't you want anything to eat, Steve?" she
inquired.  "This shrimp salad isn't bad."

"I'm not hungry."

"You seem to be thirsty," remarked Helen, looking
at the girl's flushed face and her half-filled wine glass.
"Where is Jim?"

"Dancing."

"With whom?"

"Some girl of sorts whom he picked up," said
Stephanie; and the pink flush in her face deepened
angrily.

"Was she worth it?" inquired Helen, frankly amused.

Stephanie's cheeks cooled; she replied carelessly:

"She had button eyes and a snub nose and her attire
was transparent—if that interests you."  She rested
her elbow on the edge of the box, supporting her chin
on her cupped palm.

They were dancing again.  Grayson came and took
out Helen; a number of men arrived clamouring for
Stephanie.  She finally went out with Verne, but not
liking the way he held her left him planted and returned
to the box where a number of hilarious young men had
gathered.

Harry Belter said:

"What's the trouble, Steve?  I never saw you glum
before in all my life!"

"I'm not glum," she said with a forced little laugh,
"I'm thirsty, Senior Bacchus!  Isn't that enough to
sadden any girl?"

Later Helen, returning from the floor, paused beside
Stephanie to bend over her and whisper:

"Harry Belter is behaving like a fool.  Don't take
anything more, Steve."

The girl lifted her flushed face and laughed:

"I feel like flinging discretion into the 'fire of
spring,'" she said.  "That's where most of these
people's clothing has disappeared, I fancy."  Excitement
burned in her pink cheeks and wide grey eyes, and she
stood up in the box looking about her, poised lightly
as some slim winged thine on the verge of taking
flight.

Grismer rose too and whispered to her, but she made
a slight, impatient movement with her shoulders.

"Won't you dance this with me?" he repeated, touching
her arm.

"No," she said under her breath.  "You annoy me, Oswald."

"What!"

"Please don't be quite so devoted....  I'm restless."

She turned and started to leave the box.  The others
were leaving too, for dancing had begun again.  But
at the steps she parted with the jolly little company,
they descending to the floor, she turning to mount the
steps alone.

"Where on earth are you going, Steve?" called back
Helen, halting on the steps below.

"I want to see the floor from the top gallery!"
replied Stephanie, without turning her head; and she
ran lightly upward, her bells and bangles jingling.

Half way up she turned her head.  She had not been
followed, but she saw Grismer below looking up,
watching her flight.  And she made no sign of recognition,
no gay gesture of amity and adieu; she turned her
back and sped upward through the clamour and hazy
brilliancy, turned into the first corridor, and vanished
like a firefly in a misty thicket.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX

.. vspace:: 2

At three in the morning the Ball of the Gods was
in full and terrific blast and still gathering
momentum.  A vast musical uproar filled the
Garden; the myriad lights glittered like jewels through
a fog; the dancing floor was a bewildering, turbulent
whirlpool of colour.

Few if any of the dancers had reached the point of
satiation; a number, however, had attained the state of
saturation.

As far as Cleland could see the only difference
between this and a more miscellaneous assemblage seemed
to be that the majority of people here knew how to
ignore unpleasant lapses in others and how to efface
themselves if surprised into accidental indiscretion.

With Lady Button-eyes on his arm he had threaded
his way into the supper-room, where the gods,
demi-gods and heroes were banqueting most riotously.

It was becoming very rapidly a dubiously mixed
affair; Bacchus, with his noisy crew, invaded the
supper-room and pronounced Cleland's snub-nosed,
button-eyed goddess "tray chick," and there arose
immediately a terrific tumult around her—gods and satyrs
doing battle for her; but she persisted in her capricious
fancy for Cleland.  He, however, remained in two
minds; one was to abandon Button-eyes, retire and find
Stephanie again, in spite of the ever-smoldering
resentment he felt for Grismer; the other was to teach
himself without loss of time to keep away from her; school
himself to do without her; preoccupy himself casually
and recklessly with anything that might aid in
obliterating his desire for her companionship—with this
snub-nosed one, for example.

The desire to see Stephanie remained, nevertheless,
sometimes fiercely importunate, sometimes sullenly
persistent—seemingly out of all proportion to any
sentiment he had ever admittedly entertained for her—out
of proportion, also, to his sulky resentment at the folly
she had committed with Oswald Grismer.

For, after all, if she ultimately married Grismer in
the orthodox way her eccentric pre-nuptial behaviour
was nothing more serious than eccentric.  And if she
didn't, then it meant annulment or divorce; and he
realised that nobody outside of the provinces paid any
attention to such episodes nowadays.  And nobody
cared what clod-hoppers thought about anything.

His button-eyed goddess had a pretty good soprano
voice and she was using it now, persuaded into a duet
by Belter.  Cleland looked at her sideways without
enthusiasm, undecided, irritated and gloomy.  She was
Broadway vulgarity personified.

Badger Spink dropped onto a chair on the other
side of him:

"Who's your transparent lady friend?" he inquired
lazily.  "She looks like a gutter-angel.  Who is the
depraved little beast?"

"I don't know—some actress, I believe—Sonia
something-or-other.  Do you want her?"

"Thanks.  What does she represent?  A Kewpie
behind a pane of glass?"

"She's a goddess of sorts, I believe.  This is getting
rather raw, isn't it, Spink?"

Spink yawned and gazed leisurely about him, the
satyr's horn emerging from his thick, wavy pompadour
hair, accentuating his clever, saturnine features.  His
expression was slightly Satanic always.

"Yes," he said, "it's turning out rather rough.
What do you think of this sort of thing in New York,
Cleland?  We're drifting toward Babylon.  That's the
trend since the dance craze swept this moral nation
off its moral feet into a million tango joints."

"There's something the matter with us, that's sure,"
said Cleland.  "This sort of thing doesn't belong in
the new world."

"It's up to our over-rated American women," sneered
Spink.  "Only a few years ago we were slobbering over
them, worshipping them, painting pictures of
'em—pictures influenced by the French naturalistic
school—a lot of cow-faced American females suckling their
young.  Everybody was yelling for the simple life,
summoning the nation back to nature, demanding that
babies be produced in every family by the dozen,
extolling procreation and lauding the American woman.
That's the sort of female we celebrated and pretended
to want.  Now, look what we've got!—a nation of
dancing dolls!  A herd of restless, brainless, aggressive,
impudent women proclaiming defiance and snapping
their fingers at us!

"I tell you there burns here in the Garden to-night
something more than the irresponsible gaiety of a lot
of artists and Philistine pleasure-seekers.  The world
is on the verge of something terrifying; the restlessness
of a universal fever is in its veins.  Our entire
human social structure is throbbing with it; every
symptom is ominous of social collapse and a complete
disintegration of the old order of civilization!"

"What's your other name, Spink?—Jeremiah?"
asked Cleland, laughing.

"No.  I'm merely on my favourite topic.  Listen to
me, my young friend; all England faces strikes and
political anarchy in Ireland and India; the restless sex
is demanding its rights in London and menacing the
Empire.  France, betrayed by one of the restless ones,
strangling in the clutch of scandal, is standing
bewildered by the roar of the proletariat; Russia seethes
internally, watching the restless Empress and her
accursed priest out of millions of snaky, Asiatic eyes;
Portugal has just fallen crashing into fragments
around a terrified Queen; China splits open from end
to end and vomits forth its dynasty on the tomb of
the dead Dowager; Austria watches for the death of
an old, old widower—an Imperial mummy long since
dead in mind and spirit.  Germany, who uses the lesser
sex for breeding only, stares stolidly out of pig-like
eyes at the Imperial litter of degenerates and defectives
dropped with stolid regularity to keep the sty-supply
of Hohenzollerns unimpaired.  Only radicals like
myself feel the cataclysmic waves deep under the earth,
symptomatic, ominous of profound and vital readjustments
already under way.

"And here in our once great Republic of the West,
the fever of universal unrest is becoming apparent in
this nation-wide movement for suffrage.  State after
state becomes a battle-ground and surrenders; accepted
standards are shattered, the old social order and
balance between the sexes—all the established formalism
and belief of a man-constructed status—totters as
door and gate and avenue and byway are insanely
flung open to the mindless invasion of the restless sex!
Don't stop me, Cleland; I am magnificent to-night.
Listen!  I tell you that political equality, equal
opportunity, absolute personal liberty are practically in
sight for women!  What more is left?  Conscious of
the itching urge of its constitutional inclination to fuss
and fidget, the restless sex, fundamentally gallinaceous,
continues to wander on into bournes beyond its ken,
hen-like, errant, pensively picking at the transcendentally
unattainable, but always in motion—motion as
mechanical and meaningless as the negative essence of
cosmic inertia! ... Now, I'm through with you,
Cleland.  Thanks for listening.  I don't think I want
your goddess, after all.  She looks too much like a
tip-up snipe!"

And he took himself off, yawning.

.. vspace:: 2

The rushing din of the orchestra far below came
up softened to Stephanie's ears, where she stood at the
rail of the topmost gallery and looked down into the
glimmering depths of the Ball of all the Gods.

Her jewelled fingers rested on the rail, her slender
body pressed against it; she stood with bent head,
gazing down into the vortex, pensive, sombrely
preoccupied with an indefinable anger that possessed her.

The corridor behind her was full of shadowy figures
scurrying to hazardous rendezvous.  She was vaguely
aware of encounters and pursuits; stifled laughter,
sudden gusts of whispering, hurried adieux, hasty
footfalls and the ghostly rustle of silks in flight.

She turned restlessly and went up into the corridor.
A dryad was performing flip-flaps there and a gale
of laughter and applause arose from her comrades
watching her in a semi-circle.

The Olympians, too, all seemed to have gathered
there for a frolic—Zeus, Hermes, the long-legged
Astarte, the amazingly realistic Aphrodite, and Eros,
more realistic still—all clasping hands and dancing a
ring-around-a-rosy while Bacchus and Ariadne in the
centre performed a breakdown which drew frantic
shouts of approval from the whirling ring.

Then, in this hilarious circle, Stephanie caught sight
of the snub-nose and transparent raiment of the button-eyed
Goddess of Night, and next her, hand clasping
hand, she recognized Cleland as another link in the
rapidly rotating ring.

Aphrodite and Eros, hand locked in hand, were
singing the song they had made so popular in "The
Prince of Argolis" early in the winter:

   |  "Mrs. Aphrodite
   |  Gave her pretty sonny
   |  Lots of golden curls
   |  But little golden money,
   |  Dressed him in a nightie!—
   |  (Listen to me, girls!)
   |  Love of golden curls
   |  Leads the world astray!
   |  (Listen to me, honey!)
   |  Love of golden money
   |  Acts the selfsame way!"
   |

Breathless with laughter the Grecian gods galloped
round and round in a dizzy circle, flushed faces flashed
past Stephanie, flying draperies and loosened hair
fluttered and streamed and glimmered in confused sequence
before her angry eyes.

Suddenly the mad dance broke up and flew into
fragments, scattering its reeling, panting devotees
into prancing couples in every direction.

And straight into this wild confusion stepped
Stephanie, her pretty eyes brilliant with wrath, her
face a trifle pale.

"Jim!"

He let go of Lady Button-eyes in astonishment and
turned around.

Stephanie said very coolly:

"If you're going to raise the devil, raise him with
me, please!"

Lady Button-eyes was not pleased and she showed
it by stamping, which alone had sufficiently fixed her
level if she had not also placed both hands on her hips
and laughed scornfully when Cleland took leave of her
and walked over to Stephanie.

"Where are the others?" he inquired, rather red at
being discovered with such a crew.  "You're not alone,
are you, Steve?"

"Not now," she said sweetly; and passed her left
arm through his and clasped her right hand over it.
"Now," she said with an excited little laugh, "I am
ready to raise the devil with you.  Take me wherever
you like, Jim."

The insulted gods gazed upon her with astonishment
as she lifted her small head and sent an indifferent
glance like an arrow at random among them.  Then,
not further noticing them, and absolutely indifferent
to the button-eyed one, she strolled leisurely out of
Olympus with her slightly disconcerted captive and
disappeared from their view along the southern corridor.
But once out of their range of vision her hot wrath
returned.

"It was abominable," she said in a low, tense voice,
"—your going off that way, when I told you the whole
evening would be spoiled for me without you!  I am
hurt and angry, Jim."

But his smouldering wrath also flickered into flame now.

"You had Grismer, didn't you!" he said.  "What
do you care whether I am with you or not?"

"What do you mean?  Yes, of course I had him.
What has that to do with *you*?"

He replied with light insolence:

"Nothing.  I'm not your husband."

His words fell like a blow: she caught her breath
with the hurt of them; then:

"Is that why you have avoided me?" she demanded
in a tone of such concentrated passion that the
unexpected flare-up startled him.  It surprised her, too:
for, all at once, in her heart something contracted
agonizingly, and a surge of furious resentment flooded
her, almost strangling speech.

"Why are you indifferent?  Why are—are you
unkind?" she stammered.  "I've just found you again
after all these years, haven't I?  What do other people
matter to us?  Why should Oswald interfere between
you and me?  You and I haven't had each other for
years!  I—I can't stand it—to have you
unkind—indifferent—to have you leave me this way when I want
you—so desperately——"

"I didn't leave you," he retorted sullenly.  "You
went away with—the man you married——"

"Don't speak of him that way!" she interrupted
hotly.  "Nobody speaks of that affair at all!"

"Why not?  You *did* marry him, didn't you?"

"What of it!" she flamed back.  "What has that to
do with you and me!  *Why* do you refer to it?  It's
my personal affair, anyway!"

He turned toward her, exasperated:

"If you think," he said, "that your behaviour with
Grismer means nothing to me, you'd better undeceive
yourself! ... Or I'll do it for you in a way you can't
mistake!"

"Undeceive me?" she repeated uneasily.  "How do
you mean?"

"By making a fight for you myself," he said, "by
doing my best to get you back!"

"I don't know what you mean, Jim," she repeated,
her grey eyes intent on his flushed face....  "Do you
believe you have been insulted by what I did?  Is that
what you mean?"

He did not answer.  They walked on, slowly pacing
the deserted corridor.  Her head was lowered now;
her lips a trifle tremulous.

"I—didn't suppose you'd take—what I did—*that*
way," she said unsteadily.  "I—respect and love you....
I supposed I was at liberty—to dispose of—myself.
I didn't imagine you cared—very much——"

Suddenly he freed his arm from her clasped fingers
and passed it around her waist; and she caught her
breath and placed her hand tightly over his to hold it
there.

"You adorable boy," she whispered, "am I forgiven?
And you *do* care for me, don't you, Jim?"

"Care for you!" he repeated in a low, menacing
voice.  "I care for nobody else in the world, Steve!"

She laughed happily, yielding confidently to his
embrace, responding swiftly and adorably and with a
frank unreserve that told a more innocent story
than his close caress and boyish heart on fire confirmed.

And, for the moment, she let him have his way, gaily
enduring and humorously content with a reconciliation
somewhat exaggerated and over-demonstrative on his part.

But presently his lips on her flushed face, on her
hair, on her throat, disconcerted her, and her own lips
parted in dismayed and laughing protest at an ardour
entirely new to her.

He merely kissed her fragrant mouth into silence,
looking steadily into her grey eyes now widening with
perplexed and troubled inquiry.

"I love you," he said.  "I want you back.  Now,
do you understand, Steve?  I love you!  I love you!"

Confused, crushed hotly in his embrace, she stared
blankly at him for one dizzy instant; then, in silence,
she twisted her supple body backward and aside, and
with both nervous hands broke loose the circle of his
arms.

They were both rather white now; her breath came
and went irregularly, checked in her throat with a
little sob at intervals.  She leaned back against the
wall, one jewelled hand against her breast, looking
aside and away from where he stood.

"I *told* you," he said, unsteadily.

She remained silent, keeping her gaze resolutely
averted.

"You understand now, don't you?" he asked.

She nodded.

Then he caught her in his arms again, and she
threw back her lovely head, looking at him with frightened
eyes, defending her lips with a bare, jewelled arm
across them.

He laughed breathlessly and kissed the partly
clenched fingers.

"Don't," she whispered, her grey eyes brilliant with
fear.

"Do you understand that I am in love with you, Steve?"

"Let me go, Jim——"

"*Do* you?"

"*Don't* kiss me—that way——"

"Do you believe me?"

"I don't want to!——"  Suddenly she turned terribly
white in his arms, swayed a moment against him.
He released her, steadied her; she passed one arm
through his, leaning heavily on him.

"Are you faint, Steve?" he whispered.

"A—little.  It's nothing.  The air here is stifling....
I'm tired." ... She dropped her head against
his shoulder.  Her lids were half closed as they
descended the steps, he guiding her.

It seemed to her an interminable descent.  She felt
as though she were falling through space into a
glittering, roaring abyss.  In their box sat Helen and
Grayson, gossiping gaily together and waiting for
another dance to begin.  Cleland warned Stephanie in
a whisper, and she lifted her head and straightened up
with an effort.

She said mechanically:

"I'm going home; I'm very tired."

Helen and Grayson rose and the former came toward
her inquiringly.

Stephanie smiled:

"Jim will take me back," she said.  "Don't let me
disturb your pleasure.  And tell Oswald I was very
sleepy....  And not to come to the studio for a day
or two.  Good night, dear."

She made a humorously tired little gesture of farewell
to Grayson also, and, taking Cleland's arm again,
sauntered with him toward the lobby.

"Get your overcoat and my wraps," she said in a
colourless, even voice.  "I have a car outside.  Here's
the call-check.  I'll wait over there for you."

.. vspace:: 2

Her car, a toy limousine, was ultimately found.
Cleland redeemed his overcoat and her wrap.  When
he came back for her she smiled at him, suffered him
to swathe her in the white silk cloak, and, laying her
dainty hand lightly on his sleeve, went out with him into
the lamp-lit grey of dawn.

"You are feeling better," he said as they seated
themselves in the limousine and the little car rolled
away southward.

"Yes.  It was the stifling atmosphere there, I suppose."

"It was horribly close," he assented.

They remained silent for a while.  Then, abruptly:

"Have I made you angry, Steve?" he asked.

She looked up and laughed:

"You adorable boy," she said.

"You don't mind if I'm in love with you?" he asked.

"I haven't any mind.  I can't seem to think....  But
I don't think you'd better kiss me until I collect my
senses again....  Please don't, Jim."

They became silent again until the car drew up
before her door.  She had two keys in her cloak pocket;
she paused to give the chauffeur an order, turning to
ask Cleland whether he didn't want the car to take
him to the Hotel Rochambeau.

"Thanks; it's only a step.  I had rather walk."

So the car drove away; Cleland opened the front
door for her, then her own studio door.  She felt
around the corner in the darkness and switched on the
electric bulb in a standing lamp.

"Good night, Steve," he said, taking her hand in
both of his.

"Good night....  Unless you care to talk to me
for a little while."

"It's four o'clock in the morning."

"I can't sleep—I know that."

He said in a low voice:

"Besides, I am very much in love with you.  I think
I had better go back."

"Oh....  Do you think so?"

"Don't you?"

"I told you that I haven't recovered enough sense to
think."

She crossed the threshold and walked into the studio,
dropping her cloak across a chair; and presently halted
before the empty fireplace, gazing into its
smoke-blackened depths.

For a few moments she stood there in a brown study—a
glittering, exquisite figure in the subdued light
which fell in tiny points of fire on gem and ring,
bracelet and girdle, and tipped the gilded sandals on her
little naked feet with sparks of living flame.

Then she turned her charming young head and looked
across at him where he stood on the threshold.

"What do you think?" she said.  "Ought you to go?"

"I ought to.  But I don't think I shall."

"No, don't go," she said with a little laugh.  "After
all, if we're not to remain brother and sister any longer,
there's a most fascinating novelty in your being here."

He came in and closed the door.  She made room
for him on the sofa and he flung his coat across her
cloak and seated himself.

"Now," she said, dropping one silken knee over the
other and clasping her hands around it, "how much
can we care for each other without being silly?  You
know I have a dreadful intuition that I'd better not
kiss you any more.  Not that I don't adore you as
much as I always did——"

She turned squarely around and looked at him out
of her lovely eyes:

"You took me by surprise.  I didn't understand.
Then, suddenly I lost my senses and became panicky.
I was scared stiff, Jim—you kissed me so many
times——"

He reddened and looked down.  Under his eyes her
bare foot hung in its golden sandal—an exquisite,
snowy little foot, quite perfectly fashioned to match
her hands' soft symmetry.

"If you loved me," he said, "you would not care
how many times I kissed you."

"But you kept on—and you kissed my eyes and
throat——"

"You wouldn't care what I did if you loved me."

"But they were unusual places to be kissed.  I was
scared.  Did you think me ridiculous?  It was rather
startling, you know.  It was such a complete novelty."

She admitted it so naïvely that he laughed in spite of
his chagrin.

"Steve," he said, "I don't know what to do about
it.  I'm falling more deeply in love with you every
moment; and you are merely kind and sweet and
friendly about it——"

"I'm *intensely* interested!" she said.

"Interested," he repeated; "yes, that describes it."

"A girl couldn't help being interested when a man
she had always adored as a brother suddenly takes her
into his arms and kisses her in unusual places," she
said, "—and does it a great number of times——"

"Probably you kept count," he said with boyish sarcasm.

She laughed outright:

"I wish I had.  It was a perfectly shameless
performance.  If you ever do it again I shall keep
count—out loud!"

"Is that all you'll do?"

"What else is there to do?" she inquired, smiling a
trifle uneasily.

"You might find it in your heart to respond."

"How can my heart hold any more of you than it
does and always has?" she asked with pretty impatience.

"*Can't* you love me?"

"I don't know how to any more than I do."

"But you did not find it agreeable when I kissed
you."

"I—don't know what I felt....  We always
kissed."  She began to laugh.  "I enjoyed *that*; but
I don't think you did, always.  You sometimes looked
rather bored, Jim."

"I'm getting well paid back," he said.

This seemed to afford her infinite delight; there was
malice in her grey eyes now, and a hint of pretty
mockery in her laughter.

"To think," she said, "that James Cleland should
ever become sentimental with poor little Stephanie
Quest!  What an unbending!  What condescension!
What a come-down!  Oh, Jim, if I've really got you
at last I'm going to raise the very devil with you!"

"You're doing it."

"Am I?  I hope I am!  I mean to torment you!
Why, when I think of the long, long years of childish
adoration and awe—of the days when I tagged after
you, grateful to be noticed, thankful when you found
time for me——"  She clapped her hands together
delightedly, enchanted with his glum and reddening face.
For what she said was the truth; he knew it, though
she did not realize how true it had been—and meant
merely to exaggerate.

"Also," she said, "you leave me quite alone for three
whole years when you could have come back at the
end of two!"

His face darkened and he bit his lip.

"You're quite right," he said in a quiet voice.  "A
girl couldn't very well fall in love with that sort of
man."

There was a silence.  She had been enjoying her
revenge, but she had not expected him to take it so
seriously.

He sat there with lowered head, considering, gnawing
at his under-lip in silence.  She had not intended
to hurt him.  She was inexperienced enough with him
to be worried.  His features seemed older, leaner, full
of unfamiliar shadows—disturbingly aloof and stern.

She hesitated—the swift, confused memory of an
hour before checking her for an instant, then she
leaned toward him, quite certain of what would
happen—silent and curious as he drew her into his arms.

She was very silent, too, listening to his impetuous,
broken avowal—suffering his close embrace, his lips
on her eyes and mouth and throat once more.  The
enormous novelty of it preoccupied her; the intense
interest in his state of mind.  Her curiosity held her
spellbound, too, and unresponsive but fascinated.

She lay very quietly in his arms, her lovely head
resting on his shoulder, sometimes with eyes closed,
sometimes watching him, meeting his eyes with a faint
smile.

Contact with him no longer frightened her.  Her
mind was clear, busy with this enormous novelty,
searching for the reason of it, striving to understand
his passion which she shyly recognized with an odd
feeling of pride and tenderness, but to which there was
nothing in her that responded—nothing more than
tender loyalty and the old love she had always given him.

The grey tranquillity of her eyes, virginal and
clear—the pulseless quiet of the girl chilled him.

"You don't love me, Steve, do you?"

"Not—as you—wish me to."

"Can't you?"

"I don't know."

"Is there any chance?"

She looked out across the studio, considering, and
her grey eyes grew vague and remote.

"I don't know, Jim....  I think that something has
been left out of me....  Whatever it is.  I don't
know how to love—fall in love—as you wish me to.  I
don't know how to go about it.  Perhaps it's because
I've never thought about it.  It's never occupied my
mind."

"Then," he burst out, "how in God's name did you
ever come to marry!"

She looked up at him gravely:

"That is very different," she said.

"Then you *are* in love with him!"

"I told you that he fascinates me."

"Is it *love*?" he asked violently.

"I don't know."

"You *must* know!  You've got a mind!"

"It doesn't explain what I feel for him.  I can't put
it into words."

He drew her roughly to him, bent over her, looked
into her eyes, and kissed her lips again and again.

"Can't you love me, Steve?  *Can't* you?" he stammered.

"I—want to.  I wish I did—the way you want
me to."

"Will you try?"

"I don't know how to try."

"Do your lips on mine mean nothing to you?"

"Yes....  You are so dear....  I am wonderfully
contented—and not afraid."

After a moment she released herself, laughed, and
sat up, adjusting her hair with one hand and resting
against his shoulder.

"A fine scandal if Helen should come in," she
remarked.  "It's odd to think of myself as married.  And
that's another thing, Jim.  It never occurred to me
until now, but I've no business to give myself up to
you as I have to-night."  She leaned forward on one
elbow, musing for a while, then, lifting her head with
a troubled smile: "But what is a girl to do when her
brother suddenly turns into her lover?  Must she
forbid him to kiss her?  And refrain from kissing
him?——"  She flung one arm around his neck
impulsively.  "I *won't* forbid you!  I would have to if
I were in love with you in the same way.  But I'm
not and I don't care what you do.  And whatever you
do, I adore anyway."

A key rattled in the lock; she sprang to her feet
and went toward the door.  Helen came in, and she
saw Grayson and Grismer standing in the hallway.

"Come in everybody!" she cried.  "Shall we all have
breakfast before we part?  Don't you think it would
be delightful, Phil?  Don't you, Oswald?  And you
know we could take up the rugs and dance while the
coffee is boiling.  Wait!  I'll turn on the
music-box!——"

Helen and Grayson deliberately began a tango;
Grismer came over to where Cleland was standing:

"They're still dancing in the Garden," he said
pleasantly.  "Did you and Stephanie get enough of it?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX

.. vspace:: 2

Cleland, being young, required sleep, and it
was not until noon that he awoke.

Cool-headed retrospection during tubbing
and dressing increased his astonishment at the manner
in which he had spent his first day in New York after
the years of absence.  For into that one day had been
crowded a whole gamut of experience and of sensations
that seemed incredible when he thought them over.

Every emotion that a young man could experience
seemed to have been called into play during that
bewildering day and night—curiosity, resentment,
apprehension, anger, jealousy, love, passion.  And their swift
and unexpected sequence had confused him, wrought
him up to a pitch of excitement which set every nerve
on edge.

He could not comprehend what had happened, what
he had experienced and said and done as he stood at
his window looking out into the sunshine of the quiet
street; and yet, just around the corner the girl who
was the cause and reason of it all lay still asleep, in
all probability.

Breakfast was served in his room and he ate it with
a perfectly healthy appetite.  Then he lighted a cigarette
and walked to the window again to stare silently
put across the sunny street and marshall his thoughts
into some semblance of order.

The aromatic smoke from his cigarette curled against
the window pane and he gazed absently through it at
the vague phantom of a girl's face which memory
evoked unbidden.

What had happened?  Was it really love?  Was
it anger, wounded amour-propre, jealousy?  Was it
resentment and disgust at the silly, meaningless thing
that one whom he had considered as his own kinswoman
had done in his absence?  Was it a determination to
tear her loose that had started the thing—an
unreasoning, impulsive attempt at vengeance, born of hurt
pride that incited him to get her back?  For the bond
between her and Grismer seemed to him intolerable,
hateful—a thing he would not endure if he could
shatter it.

Why?  Was it because he himself had fallen in love
with a girl whom, heretofore, he had regarded with
the tranquil, tolerant affection of a brother?  Was it
love?  Was there any other name for the impulse which
had suddenly overmastered him when he caught this
girl in his arms, confused, frightened, stunned her with
hot, incoherent declarations?  Had he even really
meant what he had said—not in the swift hurricane of
passion which had enveloped him like a flame when he
held her waist enlaced and the sweetness of her face
and throat and hair blinded him to everything else—but
in the cold after-light of retrospection did he now
mean what he had said last night?

Or had it all been due to the place and the hour—the
relaxing of convention in the shattering din of
music and laughter—the whirlwind of gaiety and
excitement—the girl's beauty—the sudden thrill of his
contact with her?  Was that what had accounted for
what he had done and said?—brute impulse loosed by
passion born out of nothing more noble than the
moment's mental intoxication—nothing more real than
ephemeral emotion, excitement, sheer physical
sensation?

It was not like him.  He realized that.  Hitherto
his brain had been in control of his emotions.  His
was a clear mind, normally.  Impulse seldom tripped
him.

He had never been in love—never even tried to
persuade himself that he had been, even when he had, in
his boyish loneliness in Paris, built for himself a
bewitching ideal out of a very familiar Stephanie and
had addressed to this ideal several reams of romantic
nonsense.  That had been merely the safety valve
working in the very full and lonely heart of a boy.

Even in the gay, ephemeral, irresponsible affairs
that occurred from time to time during his career
abroad—even when in the full tide of romantic adoration
for his mundane Countess, and fairly wallowing
in flattered gratitude for her daintily amused
condescension, did he ever deceive himself into believing he
was in love.

And now, in the lurid light of the exaggerated,
bewildering, disquieting events of the preceding day and
night, he was trying to think clearly and honestly—trying
to reconcile his deeds and words with what he
had known of himself—trying to find out what really
was the matter with him.

He did not know.  He knew that Stephanie had
exasperated him—exasperated him to reckless
passion—exasperated him even more by not responding to
that passion.  He had declared his love for her; he
had attempted to drive the declaration into her
comprehension by the very violence of reiteration.  The
tranquil, happy loyalty, which always had been his,
was all he evoked in her for all the impulsive vows
he made, for all his reckless emotion loosened with the
touch of her lips—so hotly ungoverned when her grey
eyes looked into his, honestly perplexed, sweetly
searching to comprehend the source of these fierce flames
which merely warmed her with their breath.

"It's a curious thing," he thought, "that a man,
part of whose profession is to write about love and
analyze it, doesn't know whether he's in love or not."

It was quite true.  He didn't know.  Accepted symptoms
were lacking.  He had not awakened thrilled with
happiness at the memory of the night before.  He
awoke dazed and doubtful that all these things had
happened, worried, searching in his mind for some
reason for his behaviour.

And, except that a man had taken her out of his
keeping, and that resentment and jealousy had incited
him to recover her, and, further, in the excitement of
the attempt, that he had suddenly found himself
involved in deeper, fiercer emotions than he had bargained
for, he could come to no conclusion concerning his
actual feeling for Stephanie.

.. vspace:: 2

He spent the day hunting for a studio-apartment.

About five o'clock he called her on the telephone;
and heard her voice presently:

"Have you quite recovered, Jim?  I feel splendid!"

"Recovered?  I was all right this morning when I
woke up."

"I mean your senses?"

"Oh.  Did you think I lost them last night, Steve?"

"Didn't you?"

Her voice was very sweet but there was in it a hint
of hidden laughter.

"No," he said shortly.

"Oh.  Then you really were in your right senses last
night?" she inquired.

"Certainly.  Were you?"

"Well, for a little while I seemed to have lost the
power of thinking.  But after that I was intensely,
consciously, deeply interested and profoundly
curious."  He could hear her laughing.

"Curious about what?" he demanded.

"About your state of mind, Jim.  The situation was
such a novelty, too.  I was trying to comprehend
it—trying to consider what a girl should do in such a
curious emergency."

"Emergency?" he repeated.

"Certainly.  Do you fancy I'm accustomed to such
novelties as you introduced me to last night?"

"What do you think about them now?"

"I'm slightly ashamed of us both.  We *were* rather
silly, you know——"

"*You* were not," he interrupted drily.

"Is that a tribute or a reproach?" came her gay
voice over the wire.  "I don't quite know how to take
it!"

"Reassure yourself, Steve.  You were most circumspect
and emotionless——"

"Jim!  That is brutal and untrue!  I was not circumspect!"

"You were the other, then."

"What a perfectly cruel and outrageous slander!
You've made me unhappy, now.  And all day I've been
so absolutely happy in thinking of what happened."

"Is that true?" he asked in an altered voice.

"Of course it's true!"

"You just said you were ashamed——"

"I was, very, very slightly; but I've been too happy
to be very much ashamed!"

"You darling!——"

"Oh!  The gentleman bestows praise!  Such a kind
gentleman to perceive merit and confer his distinguished
approval.  Any girl ought to endeavour to earn
further marks of consideration and applause from so
gracious a gentleman——"

"Steve, you tormenting little wretch, can't you be
serious with me?"

"I am," she said, laughing.  "Tell me what you've
been doing to-day?"

"Hunting for lodgings.  What have you been doing?"

"Watching Helen make a study of a horse out in
the covered court.  Then we had tea.  Then Oswald
dropped in and played the piano divinely, as he always
does.  Then Helen and I started to dress for dinner.
Then you called.  Where did you look for lodgings?"

"Oh, I went to about all the studio buildings——"

"Aren't you going to open the house?"

"No.  It's too lonely."

"Yes," she said, "it would be too lonely.  You and
I couldn't very well live there together unless we had
an older woman."

"No."

"So it's better not to open it until"—she laughed
gaily—"you marry some nice girl.  Then it will be
safe enough for me to call on the Cleland family, I
fancy.  Won't it, Jim?"

"Quite," he replied drily.  "But when I marry that
nice girl, you won't have far to go when you call on
the Cleland family."

"Oh, how kind!  You mean to board me, Jim?"

"You know what I *do* mean," he said.

"I wonder!  Is it really a declaration of serious and
respectable intentions?  But you're quite safe.  And
I'm afraid you know it.  Tell me, did you find an
apartment to suit you?"

"No."

"Why not come here?  There's a studio and apartment
which will be free May first.  Oh, Jim, please
take it!  If you say so I'll telephone the agent *now*!
Shall I?  It would be too heavenly if we were under
the same roof again!"

"Do you *want* me, Steve?  After—and in spite of
everything?"

"*Want* you?"  He heard her happy, scornful
laughter.  Then: "We're dining out, Jim; but come
to-morrow.  I'll telephone now that you'll take the
studio.  May I, Jim dear?"

"Yes," he said.  "And I'll come to you to-morrow."

"You angel boy!  I *wish* I weren't going out to-night.
Thank you, Jim, dear, for making me happy
again."

"*Are* you?"

"Indescribably.  I don't think you know what your
kindness to me means.  It makes a different person of
me.  It fills and thrills and inspires me.  Why, Jim, it
actually is health and life to me.  And when you are
unkind—it seems to paralyze me—check something in
my mind.  I can't explain——"

"Steve!"

"Yes?"

"Could I come in for a moment now?"

"I'm dressing.  Oh, Jim, I'm sorry, but I'm late as
it is.  You know I want you, don't you?"

"All right; to-morrow, then," he said in happy voice.

He had been sitting in his room for an hour,
thinking—letting his mind wander unchecked.

If he were not really in love with Stephanie, how
could a mere conversation over the wire with her give
him such pleasure?

The day, drawing to its close without his seeing
her, had seemed colourless and commonplace; but the
sound of her gay voice over the wire had changed
that—had made the day complete.

"I believe I *am* in love," he said aloud.  He rose
and paced the room in the dusk, questioning,
considering his own uncertainty.

For the "novelty"—as Stephanie called it—of last
night's fever had not been a novelty to her alone.
Never before had he been so deeply moved, so swept
off his feet, so regardless of a self-control habitual to
him.

Perhaps anger and jealousy had started it.  But
these ignoble emotions could not seem to account for
the happiness that hearing her voice had just given
him.

Even the voice of a beloved sister doesn't stir a
young man to such earnest and profound reflection as
that in which he was now immersed, indifferent even
to the dinner hour, which had long been over.

"I believe," he said aloud to himself, "that I'm
falling very seriously in love with Steve....  And if I
am, it's a rather desperate outlook....  She *seems*
to be in love with Grismer—damn him! ... I don't
know how to face such a thing....  She's married him
and she doesn't live with him....  She admits frankly
that he fascinates her....  There *are* women who
never love....  I seem to want her, anyway....  I
*think* I do....  It's a mess! ... Why in God's name
did she do such a thing if she wasn't in love with
him—or if she didn't expect to be?  Is she in love with
him?  She isn't with *me*....  I'm certainly drifting
into love with Steve....  Can I stop myself? ... I
ought to be able to....  Hadn't I better?"

He stood still, thinking, the street lamps' rays
outside illuminating his room with a dull radiance.

Presently he switched on the light, seated himself at
the desk, and wrote:

.. vspace:: 2

STEVE, DEAR:

.. vspace:: 1

I am falling in love with you very seriously and very
deeply.  I don't know what to do about it.

.. vspace:: 1

JIM.

.. vspace:: 2

He was about to undress and retire late that night
when a letter was slipped under his door:

.. vspace:: 2

You sentimental and adorable boy!  What is there to do?
The happiest girl in New York, very sleepy and quite ready
for bed, bids you good night, enchanted by your note.

.. vspace:: 1

STEVIE.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI

.. vspace:: 2

To have returned after three years abroad and
to have slipped back into the conventional life
of the circles to which he had been accustomed
in the city of his birth might not have been very easy
for Cleland.  To readjust himself among what was
unfamiliar proved easier, perhaps.  For his family circle
existed no longer; the old servants were gone; the house
had been closed for a long time now.

At his college club unfamiliar faces were already in
the majority, men of his own time having moved on
to the University, Union, Racquet and Knickerbocker,
leaving the usual residue of undesirables and a fresh
influx from his college.  And he was too young in
letters to be identified yet with any club which meant
anything except the conveniences of a hotel.

Among friend and acquaintances of his age there
had been many changes, too; much shifting and
readjustment of groups and circles incident to marriages
and deaths and the scattering migration ever in
progress from New York.

It was an effort for him to pick up the threads
again; and he did not make the effort.  It was much
simpler to settle down here in these quiet, old-time
streets within stone's throw of the artists' quarter of
the city where Stephanie lived—where a few boyhood
friends of artistic proclivities had taken up quarters,
where acquaintances were easily made, easily avoided;
and where the informalities of existence made life more
easy, more direct, and, alas, much more irresponsible.
Chelsea, with a conscious effort and a lurking smirk,
mirrored the Latin Quarter to the best of its ability.

It did pretty well.  There were more exaggerations,
more eccentricities, less spontaneity and less work in
Chelsea than in the Latin Quarter.  Too many of its
nomadic denizens were playing a self-conscious part;
too few of them possessed the intelligence and training
necessary for self-expression in any creative profession.
Otherwise, they were as emotional, as casual, as
unkempt, as vain, and as improvident as any rapin of
the original Latin Quarter.

Cleland met many of the elect even before he had
settled down in his new studio-apartment on the top
floor of the same building where Stephanie and Helen
lived.

The quarter was peppered with tea-rooms and
cafés and restaurants sufficiently cheap to attract
artistic youth.  Also, there reigned in that section of
the city a general and resolute determination to be
bohemian; a number of damsels errant and transplanted,
shock-headed youths cooked in their own quarters,
strolled about the streets in bed-room slippers, or
visited one another bare-headed and adorned with
paint-smeared smocks.

And there was, of course, much deviltry with cigarettes
and cheap claret in restaurant and café—frequent
outbursts of horse-play and song, especially if Philistine
visitors were detected in the vicinity.  And New
York French was frequently though briefly employed
as the limited medium for exchanging views on matters
important only to the inmates of Chelsea and its
purlieus.

"But Washington Square bohemians are a harmless,
friendly people," remarked Helen to Cleland one
morning late in May, when he stopped on his way out
to breakfast to watch her modelling a horse in clay.
"They're like actor-folk; they live in a world entirely
self-created which marvels at and admires and watches
them; they pose for its benefit, playing as faithfully
as they know how their chosen rôles—painter, writer,
critic, sculptor, composer.  Nobody in the outside real
and busy world notices them; but they think they're
under incessant and envious observation and they strut
happily through the little painted comedy of life,
living an unreal existence, dying undeceived.  The real
tragedy of it all they mercifully never suspect—the
utter lack of interest in them taken by real people."

She went on modelling, apparently amused by her
own analysis.

"Where is Stephanie?" he inquired, after a slight pause.

"Out somewhere with Oswald, I believe."

"It's rather early."

"They sometimes get up early and breakfast
together at Claremont," remarked Helen, working
serenely away.  The freckled livery-stable lad who held
the horse for her and occasionally backed him into the
pose again continued to chew gum and watch the pretty
sculptor with absorbed interest.

"I've got such an interesting commission," she said,
wetting down her clay with a huge and dripping sponge.
"It's for the new Academy of Arts and Letters to be
built uptown, and my equestrian figure is to be cast in
silver bronze for the great marble court."

"What is the subject?" he asked, preoccupied by
what she had told him about Stephanie, yet watching
this busy and efficient young girl who, with the sleeves
of her blue blouse rolled up, displaying her superb
young arms, stood vigorously kneading a double handful
of clay and studying the restless horse with clear
and very beautiful brown eyes.

"The subject?  'Aspiration.'  I made some sketches—a
winged horse taking flight upward.  A nude female
figure, breathless, with dishevelled hair, has just flung
itself upon the rearing, wide-winged Pegasus and is
sticking there like a cat to the back fence—hanging
on tooth and nail with one leg just over and the other
close against the beast's ribs, and her desperate fingers
in the horse's mane....  I don't know.  It sounds
interesting but it may be too violent.  But I've had that
idea—hope, aspiration, fear and determination clinging
to a furious winged animal that is just starting
upward like a roaring sky-rocket——"

She turned her head, laughing:

"Is it a rotten idea?"

"I don't know," he said absently.  "It's worth trying
out, anyway."

She nodded; and he went on about the business of
breakfast.  But had now no appetite.

There was one thing, Cleland soon found out, against
which he was helpless.  Stephanie frequented Grismer
at any hour of the day and evening that her fancy
prompted.

This perplexed him and made him sullen; but when
he incautiously started to remonstrate with her one
evening her surprise and anger flashed like a clear little
flame, and she explained very clearly what was the
essence of personal liberty, and that the one thing she
would not tolerate from him or anybody else was any
invasion of her freedom of thought and action.

Silenced, enraged, and humiliated at the rebuke he
had retired to his studio to sulk like Achilles—a sullen
mourner at the bier of love.  For he fully and firmly
determined to eradicate this girl from his life and
devote it to scourging the exasperating sex of which
she was a beautiful but baffling member.

The trouble with Stephanie, however, was that she
could not seem to see the tragedy in his life or
understand that a young man desired to suffer nobly and
haughtily and at his own leisure and convenience.

For there came a knock at his door after his second
day of absenting himself, and when he incautiously
opened it, she marched in and took him gaily into her
unembarrassed arms and bestowed upon his astonished
countenance a hearty, wholesome and vigorous smack.
Moreover, she laughed and jeered and tormented and
poked merciless fun at him until she had badgered and
worried and hectored and beaten the sulkiness out of
him.  Then she admonished him:

"Don't ever do it again!" she said.  "We are free,
you and I.  What we are to each other alone
concerns us, not what we may choose to do or be to
others."

"You don't care what I do, Steve," he said.

"I care what you do to me!"

"How I behave otherwise doesn't concern you?"

"No.  It would be an impertinence for me to meddle.
For," she added in smiling paraphrase:

   |  "If you are not nice to me
   |  What care I how nice you be—

to other girls?"

"Do you really mean that it wouldn't make any
difference to you what I do?  Suppose I take you at your
word and become enamoured of some girl and devote
myself to her?"

"You mean a nice girl, don't you?" she inquired.

"Any old kind."

She considered the matter, surprised.

"I couldn't interfere with your personal liberty,"
she concluded, "—whatever you choose to do."

"How would you feel about my frequenting some
pretty studio model, for example?"

"I haven't the least idea."

"It wouldn't affect you one way or the other, then?"

"It ought not to—provided you are always nice
to me."

"That," he exclaimed, "is a cold-blooded, fishy
creed!"

"That's the creed of tolerance, Jim."

"All right.  Live up to it, then.  And I'll try to,
too," he added drily.  "Because, sometimes when you're
off, God knows where, with Grismer, I feel lonely
enough to drift with the first attractive girl I come
across."

"Why don't you?" she asked, flushing slightly.

"The reason I haven't," he said, "is because I'm in
love with you."

She was standing with head bent, but now she looked
up quickly.

"You adorable infant," she laughed.  "What a child
you really are, after all!  Come," she added mischievously,
"let's kiss like good children and let the gods
occupy themselves with our future.  It's their business,
not ours.  I'm glad you think you're in love with me.
But, Jim, I'm in love with life.  And you're such an
important part of life that, naturally, I include you!"

She bent forward and touched his lips with hers,
daintily, deftly avoiding his arms, her eyes gay with
malice.

"No," she laughed, "not that, if you please, dear
friend!  It rumples and raises the deuce with my hair
and gown.  But we *are* friends again, aren't we, Jim?"

"Yes," he said in a low voice, "—if you can give
me no more than friendship."

"It's the most wonderful thing in the world!" she
insisted.

"You've read that somewhere."

"You annoy me, Jim!  It is my own conclusion.
There's nothing finer for anybody—unless they want
children.  And I don't."

Neither did he.  No young man does.  But what she
said struck him as unpleasantly modern.

.. vspace:: 2

He met Grismer here and there in the artistic channels
of the city; often in Stephanie's studio, frequently
in other studios, and occasionally amid gatherings at
restaurants, theatres, art galleries.

At first he had been civil but cool, avoiding any
tête-à-tête with his old school-fellow.  But, little by
little, he became aware of several things which slightly
influenced his attitude toward Grismer.

One thing became plain; the man had no intimates.
There was not a man Cleland met who seemed to care
very much for Grismer; he seemed to have no frank
and cordial friendships among men, no pals.  Yet, he
was considered clever and amusing where people gathered;
he interested men without evoking their personal
sympathy; he interested women intensely with his
unusual good looks and the light, elusive quality of his
intelligence.

Always amiably suave, graceful of movement, alert
and considerate of feminine fancies, moods and
caprices, he was welcomed everywhere by them in the
circles which he sauntered into.  But he was merely
accepted by men.

So, in spite of his resentment at what Grismer had
done, Cleland felt slightly sorry for this friendless man.
For Grismer's was a solitary soul, and Cleland, who
had suffered from loneliness enough to understand it,
gradually became conscious of the intense loneliness of
this man, even amid his popularity with women and
their sympathetic and sentimental curiosity concerning him.

But no man seemed to care for closer intimacy with
Grismer than a friendly acquaintanceship offered.
There was something about him that did not seem to
attract or invite men's careless comradeship or confidence.

"It's those floating golden specks in his eyes," said
Belter, discussing him one day with Cleland.  "He's
altogether too auriferous and graceful to be entirely
genuine, Cleland—too easy and too damned bland.
Poor beggar; have you noticed how shabby and shiny
he's getting?  I guess he's down and out for fair
financially."

Cleland had noticed it.  The man's linen was
visibly frayed.  His clothes, too, betrayed his meagre
circumstances, yet he wore them so well, and there
was such a courtly indifference in the man, that the
shabby effect seemed due to a sort of noble
carelessness.

Cleland had never called on Grismer.  He had no
inclination to do so, no particular reason except that
Grismer had invited him several times.  Yet, an uneasy
curiosity lurked within him concerning Grismer's
abode and whether Stephanie, always serenely
unconventional, ever went there.

He didn't care to think she did, yet, after all, the
girl was this man's legal wife, and there was no moral
law to prevent her going there and taking up her abode
if she were so inclined.

Cleland never asked her if she went there, perhaps
dreading her reply.

As far as that was concerned, he could not find
any of his friends or acquaintances who had ever been
in Grismer's lodgings.  Nobody even seemed to know
exactly where they were, except that Grismer lived
somewhere in Bleecker Street and never entertained.

At times, when Stephanie was not to be found, and
his unhappy inference placed her in Grismer's company,
he felt an unworthy inclination to call on Grismer
and find out whether the girl was there.  But the
impulse was a low one, and made him ashamed, and
his envy and jealousy disgusted him with himself.

Besides, his state of mind was painfully confused
and uncertain in regard to Stephanie.  He was in
love with her, evidently.  But the utter lack of
sentimental response on her part afforded his love for her
no nourishment.

He traversed the entire scale of emotions.  When
he was not with her he often came to the exasperated
conclusion that he could learn to forget her; when he
was with her the idea seemed rather hopeless.

The unfortunate part of it seemed to be that, like
his father's, his was a single-track heart.  He'd never
been in love, unless this was love.  Anyway, Stephanie
occupied the single track, and there seemed to be no
switches, no sidings, nothing to clear that track.

He was exceedingly miserable at times.

However, his mind was equipped with a whole
terminal full of tracks and every one was busy in the
service of his profession.

For a month, now, he had been installed in his
studio-apartment on the top floor.  He picked up on Fourth
and on Madison Avenues enough preciously rickety
furniture to make him comfortable and drive friends to
distraction when they ventured to trust themselves to
chair or sofa.

But his writing table and corner-chair were solid and
modern, and he had half a dozen things under
construction—a novel, some short stories, some poems
which he modestly mentioned as verses.

Except for the unexplored mazes in which first love
had involved him he was happy—exceedingly happy.
But, to a creative mind, happiness born of self-expression
is a weird, uncanny, composite emotion, made
up of ecstatic hope and dolorous despair and well
peppered with dread and confidence, cowardice and
courage, rage and tranquillity; and further seasoned
with every devilish doubt and celestial satisfaction that
the heart of a writer is heir to.

In the morning he was certain of himself.  He was
the captain of his destiny; he was the dictator of his
inspiration, equipped with the technical mastery that
his obedient thoughts dare not disobey.

By afternoon the demon Doubt had shaken his
self-confidence, and Fear peered at him between every line
of his manuscript, and it was a case of Childe Roland
from that time on until the pencil fell from his
unnerved fingers and he rose from his work satiated,
half-stunned, not knowing whether he had done well or
meanly.  Vaguely he realized at such moments that,
for such as he, a just appraisal of his own work would
never be possible for him—that he himself would never
know; and that what men said of it—if, indeed, they
ever said anything about his work—would never wholly
convince him, never entirely enlighten him as to its
value or its worthlessness.

That is one of the penalties imposed upon the
creative mind.  It goes on producing because it must.
Praise stimulates it, blame depresses; but it never
knows the truth.

.. vspace:: 2

Toward the end of May, one afternoon, Stephanie
came into his studio, seated herself calmly in his chair,
and picked up his manuscript.

"It's no good," he said, throwing himself on an
antique sofa which just endured the strain and no more.

She read for an hour, her grey eyes never leaving the
written pages, her pretty brows bent inward with the
strain of concentration.

He watched her, chin on hand, lying there on the sofa.

But the air was mild and languorous with the promise
of the coming summer; sunshine fell across the wall;
the boy dozed, presently, and after a while lay fast
asleep.

She had been gone for some time when he awoke.
As he sat up, blinking through the late afternoon
sunshine, a pencilled sheet of yellow manuscript paper
fluttered from his breast to the floor.

.. vspace:: 2

Jim, it is fine!  I mean it!  It is a splendid, virile, honest
piece of work.  And it is intensely interesting.  I'm quite
mad about it—quite thrilled that you can do such things.  It's
so masterly, so mature—and I don't know where you got your
knowledge of that woman, because she is perfectly feminine
and women think and do such things, and her motives are
the motives that animate that sort of woman.

As you lie there asleep you look about eighteen—not much
older than when I used to see you when you came home from
school and lay on your sofa and read Kipling aloud to me.
*Then* I was awed; you were a grown man to me.  *Now* you
are just a boy again, and I love you dearly, and I'm going
to kiss your hair, very cautiously, before I go downstairs.

I've done it.  I'm going now.

.. vspace:: 1

STEVE.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII

.. vspace:: 2

It happened one day late in May that Cleland,
desiring local accuracy of detail in a chapter of
his brand new novel, put on his hat and walked
to Washington Square and across it, south, into the
slums.

New leaves graced the trees in the park; spring
flowers bloomed around the fountain, and the
grass was rankly fragrant where it had just been
mowed.

But he left the spring freshness behind him when
he entered that sad, dingy, swarming region to the
south, where the only clean creature seemed to be the
occasional policeman in his new summer tunic, sauntering
aloof amid the noise and wretchedness and the foul
odours made fouler by the sunshine.

Cleland presently found the squalid street which he
wished to describe in convincing detail, and stood there
on the corner in the shelter of a tobacconist's awning
making preliminary mental notes.  Then, as he fished
out note-book and pencil, intent on professional
memoranda, he saw Grismer.

The man wore shabbier clothes than Cleland had ever
before seen him wear; he was crossing the filthy street
at his usual graceful and leisurely saunter, and he did
not see Cleland under the awning.

There was a chop-suey restaurant opposite, a shabby,
disreputable, odoriferous place, doubly repulsive in
the pitiless sunshine.  And into this sauntered Grismer
and disappeared.

The slight shock of the episode remained to bother
Cleland all the morning.  He kept thinking of it while
trying to work; he could not seem to put it from his
mind and finally threw aside his manuscript, took his
hat and stick, and went out with the intention of
lunching.

It was nearly lunch time, but he did not walk
toward the cream-coloured Hotel Rochambeau, with its
green awnings and its French flag flying.  He took the
other way, scarcely realizing what he meant to do until
he turned the corner into Bleecker Street.

He found the basement he was in search of presently;
two steps down, an area gate and bell encrusted
with rust, and a diseased and homeless cat dozing there
in patient misery.

"You poor devil," he said, offering a cautious
caress; but the gaunt creature struck at him and fled.

He rang.  Jangling echoes resounded from within.
Two negro wenches and a Chinaman surveyed him from
adjoining houses.  He could smell a sour stench from
the beer saloon opposite, where a fat German beast was
washing down the sidewalk with a mop.

"Hello, Cleland.  This is very nice of you.  Come
in!" said a pleasant voice behind him, and, as he turned,
Grismer, in shabby slippers and faded dressing-gown,
opened the iron wicket.

"I hadn't called," said Cleland a little stiffly, "—so I
thought I'd drop in for a moment and take you out
somewhere to lunch."

Grismer smiled his curious, non-committal smile and
ushered him into a big, whitewashed basement, with a
screen barring the further end and quite bare except
for a few bits of furniture, some plaster casts, and half
a dozen revolving tables on which stood unfinished
studies in clay and wax.

Cleland involuntarily glanced about him, then went
over and politely examined the studies in clay.

"I've a back yard, too," said Grismer, "where I work
in good weather.  The light in here isn't particularly
good."

For the wretchedness of his quarters he made no
further apology; he spoke in his easy, amiable way and
entirely without embarrassment, standing beside
Cleland and moving with him from one study to another.

"They're just as clever as they can be," said Cleland,
"—infernally clever, Grismer.  Are they commissions?"

"I'm sorry to say they are not," replied Grismer
with a smile.

"But a man who can do this work ought never to
want for commissions," insisted Cleland.

"I'm exceedingly glad you like my work," returned
Grismer pleasantly, "but as for orders——" he
shrugged—"when I didn't need them they came to me.  But,
Cleland, when the world learns that a man needs
anything it suddenly discovers that it doesn't need him!
Isn't it funny," he added good-humouredly, "that
prosperous talent is always in demand, always turning down
work which it has no time to do; but the same talent
on its uppers is universally under deep suspicion?"

He spoke lightly, impersonally, and without the
slightest trace of bitterness.  "Sit down and light one
of your own cigarettes," he said.  "I've only
pipe-tobacco, and you probably wouldn't care for it."

Cleland seated himself in the depths of a big,
threadbare arm-chair.

Grismer said with a smile:

"No use informing you that I'm obliged to live
economically.  Models are expensive; so is material.
Therefore, I live where I can afford both, and a roof
to cover them....  And do you know, Cleland, that
after all it doesn't matter much where one sleeps——"
he made a slight gesture toward the screen at the end
of the room.  "I used to think it did until I had to
give up a place of my own full of expensive and
beautiful things.

"But it really doesn't matter.  The main idea is to
be free—free of debt, free of expensive impedimenta
which cause one anxiety, free from the importunities
and restrictions of one's friends."  He laughed and
dropped one long leg over the other.

"I've niggers and Chinamen for neighbours.  They
cause me no inconvenience.  It's rather agreeable than
otherwise to sit here and work, or lounge about and
smoke, wondering whether a commission is already on
its way or whether it has not yet even taken shape in
the brain of some person unknown who is destined by
fate some day to exchange his money for my bronze or
marble....  It's an amusing game, Cleland, isn't
it?—the whole affair of living, I mean....  Not too
unpleasant, not too agreeable....  But if one's
heart-action were not involuntary and automatic, do you
know, if it lay with me I'd not bother to keep my heart
ticking—I'd be too lazy to wind it up."

He stretched himself out in his chair gracefully,
good-humoured, serenely amused at his own ideas.

"Did you have a good time abroad?" he inquired.

"Yes....  When you get on your feet you ought
to go to Paris, Grismer."

"Yes, I know."  He looked humorously at his well-shaped
feet stretched out before him in shabby slippers.
"Yes; it's up to my feet, Cleland.  But they're
a wandering, indifferent couple, inclined to indolence, I
fear....  Is your work getting on?"

"I'm busy....  Yes, I think it's taking shape."

He looked up at Grismer hesitatingly, frankly troubled.
"Grismer, we were school-mates....  I wouldn't wish
you to think me impertinent——"

"Go ahead, Cleland."

"Are you quite sure?"

"I'm sure of *you*," returned Grismer, with a singular
smile.  "I know you pretty well, Cleland.  I knew you
in school, in college....  We fought in school.  You
were civil to me at Harvard."  He laughed.  "I've
always liked you, Cleland—which is more than you can
say about me."

Cleland reddened, and Grismer laughed again, lightly
and without effort:

"It's that way sometimes.  I think that you are about
the only man I have ever really liked.  You didn't
know that, did you?"

"No."

"Well, don't let it worry you," added Grismer,
smiling.  "Go on and say what you were about to say."

"It was—I was merely wondering—whether you'd
take it all right if——"  He began again from another
angle: "I've a country place—up in the Berkshires—my
father's old place.  And I thought that a
fountain—if you'd care to design one——"

Grismer had been watching him with that indefinable
smile in his golden eyes, which perplexed men and
interested women, but now he rose suddenly and walked
to the barred windows and stood there with his back
turned, gazing out into the area.  After an interval
he pivoted on his heels, sauntered back and seated
himself, relighting his pipe.

"All right," he said very quietly.  "I'll do your
fountain."

Cleland drew a breath of relief.  "If you like," he
said, "come up with me to Runner's Rest in June and
look over the garden.  There ought to be a pool there;
there are plenty of springs on the mountain to feed
a fountain by gravity.  I think it would be fine to have
a pool and a fountain in the old garden.  Is it
understood that you'll do it for me?"

"Yes....  I don't wish to be paid."

"Good Lord!  You and I are professionals, Grismer,
not beastly amateurs.  Do you think I'd write for
anybody unless I'm paid for it?"

Grismer's eyes held a curious expression as they
rested on him.  Then his features changed and he
smiled and nodded carelessly:

"I'll do your fountain on your own terms.  Tell me
when you are ready."

Cleland rose:

"Won't you change your mind and lunch with me
somewhere?"

"Thanks, no."  Grismer also had risen, and the two
men confronted each other for a moment in silence.

Then Grismer said:

"Cleland, I think you're the only man in the world
for whom I have any real consideration.  I haven't
much use for men—no delusions.  But it always has
been different about you—even when we fought in
school—even when I used to sneer at you sometimes....
And I want, somehow, to make you understand that I
wish you well; that if it lay with me you should attain
*whatever* you wish in life; that if attainment depended
upon my stepping aside I'd do it....  That's all I
can say.  Think it over and try to understand."

Cleland, astonished, looked at him with unconcealed
embarrassment.

"You're very kind," he said, "to feel so generously
interested in my success.  I wish you success, too."

Grismer smiled:

"You *don't* understand me after all," he said
pleasantly.  "I was afraid you wouldn't."

"You are offering me your friendship, as I take it,"
said Cleland awkwardly.  "Isn't that what you meant?"

"Yes.  And other things...."

He laughed with a slight touch of malice in his
mirth:

"There's such a lot yet left unsaid between you and
me, which you and I must say to each other some day.
But there's plenty of time, Cleland....  And I shall
be very glad to design and execute a fountain for your
garden."

He offered his hand; Cleland took it, the embarrassed
flush still staining his face.

"Yes," he said, "there is a matter that I wish to talk
over with you some day, Grismer."

"I know....  But I think we had better wait a
while....  Because I wish to answer everything you
ask; and for the present I had rather not."

They walked slowly to the area gate and Grismer
unlocked it.

"I'm glad you came," he said.  "It's a bit lonely
sometimes....  I have no friends."

"When you feel that way," said Cleland, "drop in on me."

"Thanks."

And that was all.  Cleland went away through the
ill-smelling streets, crossed the sunny square, and
walked thoughtfully back to his own studio.

"He's a strange man," he mused, "—he was a strange
boy, and he's grown into a curious sort of man....
Poor devil....  It's as though something inside him
is lacking—or has been killed....  But why in God's
name did Steve marry him unless she was in love with
him? ... It must be....  And his pride won't let
him take her until he can stand on his own feet....
When I dig that pool I'll dig a pit for my feet....
A grave for a fool...."

He unlocked his studio and went in.

"I'm done with love," he said aloud to himself.

The jingle of the telephone bell echoed his words
and he walked slowly over to the table and detached
the receiver.

"Jim?"

"Is it you, Steve?"

"Yes.  Would you like some tea about five?"

"All right.  I've had no lunch and I'll be hungry."

"You know, Jim, I'm not going to provide a banquet
for you.  Why don't you go out and take lunch?"

"I forgot it.  I don't feel like work.  Shall I come
down and talk to you now?"

"I'm going out to take a dancing lesson in a few
moments.  I'll talk to you while I'm putting on my hat."

He said "All right," took his hat and stick and went
downstairs again.

She opened the door for him, offering him her cool,
slim hand, then she opened a hat-box and lifted from
it a hat.

"I believe I'll join the Russian ballet," she said.  "I
do dance very nicely.  You should hear what the ballet
master says.  And Miss Duncan and Miss St. Denis
watched me yesterday, and they were very complimentary
and polite."

"Nonsense.  It's good exercise, but it would be a
dog's life for you to lead, Steve.  Where is Helen?"

"Out hunting a model for her Pegasus.  She asked
me to pose for the mounted figure, but I haven't time.
I can fancy myself, in a complete state of nature,
scrambling onto some rickety old livery hack——"  She
threw back her head and laughed, then inspected
her new hat, and, facing the studio mirror, pinned it
to her chestnut hair.

"Do you like it, Jim?"

"Fine.  You make all hats look well."

"Such a nice, polite boy!  So well brought up!  But
unfortunately I heard you say the same thing to
Helen....  Where have you been, Jim?  I called you
up an hour ago."

"I went to see Grismer," he said, coolly ignoring her
perverse and tormenting humour.

"You did?  Bless your dear, generous heart!" cried
the girl.  "Do you know that if it were in me to be
sentimental over you, what you did would start me?
Continue to behave like a real man, dear friend, and
I'll be head over heels in love before I know it!"

"Why?" he asked, conscious again of her gaily
derisive mood and not caring for it.

"Because," she said, "you have acted like a man in
calling on Oswald, and not like a spoiled boy.  You
resented Oswald's marrying me.  You have been
sullen and suspicious and aloof with him since you came
back.  I know Oswald better than you do.  I know that
he has felt your attitude keenly, though he never
admitted it even to me.

"He is a man of few friends, admired but not well
liked; he is wretchedly poor, fiercely proud, sensitive——"

"What!"

"Did you think he wasn't?" she asked.  "He is painfully
sensitive; pitiably so.  I think women divine it,
and it attracts them."

"He hasn't the reputation of being very thin-skinned,"
remarked Cleland drily.

"The average man who is sensitive would die to
conceal it.  You ought to know that, Jim; it's your
business to dissect people, isn't it?"

She thrust a second pin through the crown of her
hat and adjusted it deftly.

"Anyway," she said, "you are a nice, polite boy to
go to see him, and you have made me very happy.
Good-bye!  I must run——"

"Have you lunched?"

"No, but I'm going to."

"With whom?" he asked incautiously.

"A man."

"You're usually just going out to lunch or dine with
some man," he said sullenly.

"I like men," she said, smiling at him.

"What you probably mean is that you like admiration."

"I do.  It's agreeable; it's sanitary; it's soothing.
It invigorates one's self-confidence and self-respect.
And it doesn't disarrange one's hair and rumple one's
gown.  Therefore, I prefer the undemonstrative admiration
of a man to the indiscreet demonstrations of a boy."

"Do you mean me?" he asked, furious.

But she ignored the question:

"Boys *are* funny," she said, swinging her velvet reticule
in circles.  "Any girl can upset their equilibrium.
All a girl has to do is to look at a boy sideways—the
way Lady Button-eyes looked at you yesterday
afternoon——"

"What!"

"At the Rochambeau.  And you got up and went
over and renewed your friendship with her.  Helen and
I saw you."

"I was merely civil," he said.

"So was she.  She fished out a card and wrote on
it.  *I* don't know what she wrote."

"She wrote her telephone call.  There isn't the
slightest chance of my using it."

Stephanie laughed:

"He certainly is the nicest, politest boy in all
Manhattan, and sister is very, very proud of him.
*Good*-bye, James——"

She offered her lips to him audaciously, bending
forward on tip-toe, both hands clasped behind her.  But
her grey eyes were bright with malice.

"Nice, polite boy," she repeated.  "Kiss little sister."

"No," he said gloomily, "I'm fed up on sisterly
kisses——"

"You insulting wretch!  Do you mean you *won't*?
Then you *shall*——!"

She started toward him, wrath in her eyes, but he
caught her wrists and held her.

"You're altogether too well satisfied with yourself,"
he said.  "You've no emotions inside your very lovely
person except discreet ones.  Otherwise, you've got the
devil inside you and it's getting on my nerves."

"Jim!  You beast!"

"Yes, I am.  What of it?  Beasts have emotions.
Yours have either been cultivated out of you or you
were born without any.  I'm glad I am part beast.  I'm
glad you know it.  The rest of me is human; and the
combination isn't a very serious menace to civilization.
But the sort of expurgated girl you are is!"

"Don't you think I'm capable of any deep emotions?"
she asked.  The smile had died on her lips.

"Maybe.  I don't know."

"Who should, if you don't?"

He shrugged:

"Your husband, perhaps."

"Jim!  I told you not to call him that!"

"Well, a spade is a spade——"

"Do you mean to be offensive?"

"How can that offend you?"

She released her wrists and shot a curious,
inexplicable look at him.

"I don't understand you," she said.  "You can be
so generous and high-minded and you can be so unkind
and insolent to me."

"Insolent?"

"Yes.  You meant it insolently when you spoke of
Oswald as my husband.  You've done it before, too.
Why do you?  Do you really want to hurt me?
Because you know he isn't my husband except by title.
He may never be."

"All right," he said.  "I'm sorry I was offensive.
I'm just tired of this mystery, I suppose.  It's a
hopeless sort of affair for me.  I can't make you love me;
you're married, besides.  It's too much for me—I can't
cope with it, Steve....  So I won't ever bother you
again with importunities.  I'll go my own way."

"Very well," she said in an even voice.

She nodded to him and went out, saying as she passed:

"There'll be tea at five, if you care for any."  And
left him planted.

Which presently enraged him, and he began to pace
the studio, pondering on the cruelty, insensibility and
injustice of that devilish sex which had created man as
a convenience.

"The thing to do," he said savagely to himself, "is
to exterminate the last trace of love for her, tear it
out, uproot it, trample on it without remorse——"

The studio bell rang.  He walked to the door and
opened it.  A bewilderingly pretty girl stood there.

"Miss Davis?" she inquired sweetly.  "I have an
appointment."

"Come in," said Cleland, the flush of wrath still on
his countenance.

The girl entered; he offered her a chair.

"Miss Davis happens to be out at the moment," he
said, "but I don't believe she'll be very long."

"Do you mind my waiting?" asked the pretty girl.

"No, I don't," he said, welcoming diversion.  "Do
you mind my being here?  Or are you going to put me out?"

She looked surprised, then she laughed very delightfully:

"Of course not.  Miss Davis and I have known each
other for a long while, and I owe her a great deal and
I am devoted to her.  Do you think I'd be likely to
banish a friend of hers?  Besides, I'm only one of her
models."

"A model?" he repeated.  "How delightful!  I also
am a model—of good behaviour."

They both laughed.

"Does it pay?" she inquired mischievously.

"No, it doesn't.  I wish I had another job."

"Why not take the one I've just left?"

"What was it?"

"I was dancing at the Follies."

"All right.  Will you try me out?"

"With pleasure."

"I'll turn on that music-box."

The girl laughed her enchanting little laugh,
appraised him at a glance, then turned her pretty head
and critically surveyed the studio.

"I believe," she said, "I'm to pose for Miss Davis
seated on a winged horse.  Isn't that exciting?"

"You'd be delightful on a winged horse," he said.

"Do you think so?"

"I suspect it.  What did you do in the Follies?"

"Nothing very interesting.  Have you seen the Follies?"

"You ought to know I haven't," he said reproachfully.
"Do you suppose I could have forgotten you?"

She rose and dropped him a Florodora curtsey.
They were getting on very well.  She glanced demurely
at the music box.  He jumped up and turned it on.
The battered disc croaked out a tango.

"Shall I take up those rugs?" he inquired.

"What on earth would Miss Davis say if she found
us dancing?"

"She isn't here to say anything.  *Shall* I?"

"Very well....  I'll help you."

They dragged the rugs aside.

The studio was all golden with the sun, now, and
the brilliant rays bathed them as she laid her gloved
hand in his and his arm encircled her waist.

She was a wonderful dancer; her supple grace and
professional perfection enchanted him.

From time to time he left her to crank up the music-box;
neither of them tired.  Occasionally she glanced
at her jewelled wrist-watch and ventured to voice her
doubts as to the propriety of continuing in the
imminence of Miss Davis's return.

"Then let's come up to my studio," he said.  "I've
a music-phone of sorts.  We can dance there until
you're tired, and then you can come down and see
Miss Davis."

She demurred: the music-box ran down with a squawk.

"Shall we take one more chance here?" he asked.

"No, it's too risky....  Shall I run up to your
place for just one little dance?"

"Come on!" he said, taking her hand.

They went out and he closed the door.  Then, hand-in-hand,
laughing like a pair of children, they sped up
the stairs and arrived breathless before his door, which
he unlocked.  And in another minute they were dancing
again while a scratched record croaked out a fox-trot.

"I *must* go," she said, resting one gloved hand on his
arm.  "I'd love to stay but I mustn't."

"First," he said, "we'll have tea."

"No!"

But presently they were seated on his desk, a plate
of sweet biscuits between them, their glasses of sherry
touching.

"Unknown but fascinating girl," he said gaily, "I
drink to your health and fortune.  Never shall I forget
our dance together; never shall I forget the charming
stranger who took tea with me!"

"Nor shall I forget you!—you very nice boy," she
said, looking at him with smiling intentness.

"Would it spoil if we saw each other again?"

"You know that such delightful encounters never
bear repetition," she answered.  "Now I'm going.
Farewell!"

She laughed at him, touched her glass with her lips,
set it aside, and slipped to the floor.

"Good-bye!" she said.  He caught her at the door,
and she turned and looked up gravely.

"Don't spoil it," she whispered, disengaging herself.

So he released her, and she stretched out her hand,
smiled at him, and stepped out.  The music-phone
continued to play gaily.

A girl who was coming upstairs saw her as she left
Cleland's studio; and, as the pretty visitor sped lightly
past her, the girl who was mounting turned and watched
her.  Then she resumed her ascent, came slowly to
Cleland's open door, stood there resting a moment as
though out of breath.

Cleland, replacing the rugs, glanced up and caught
sight of Stephanie; and the quick blood burnt his
face.

She came in as though still a trifle weary from the
ascent.  Neither spoke.  She glanced down at the two
empty wine glasses on his desk, saw the decanter, the
biscuits and cigarettes.  The music-phone was expiring
raucously.

"Who is that girl?" she asked in an even, colourless
voice.

"A girl I met."

"Do you mind telling me her name?"

"I—don't know it," he said, getting redder.

"Oh.  Shall I enlighten you?"

"Thank you."

"She's Mary Cliff, of the Follies.  I've seen her dance."

"Really," he said carelessly.

Stephanie leaned against the desk, resting one hand
on it.  An odd sense of mental fatigue possessed her;
things were not clear in her mind; she was not very
sure of what she was saying:

"I came up to say—that I'm sorry we quarrelled....
I'm sorry now that I came.  I'm going in
a moment....  You've already had tea, I see.  So
you won't care for any more."

After a flushed silence, he said:

"Did you have a successful lesson, Steve?"

"I've had two—lessons.  Yes, they were
quite—successful."

"You seem tired."

"No."  She turned and walked to the door.  He
opened it for her in silence.

"Good night," she said.

"Good night."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII

.. vspace:: 2

Cleland's unhappy interpretation of the
episode was masculine and therefore erroneous—the
interpretation of a very young man whose
reverence for the restless sex might require revision
some day or other unless he died exceedingly young.
For he concluded, now, that he had thoroughly
disgusted Stephanie Quest; first by his vulgar flirtation
with Lady Button-eyes, then by losing his temper and
admitting to her his own odious materialism; and,
furthermore and flagrantly, by his hideous behaviour
with a pretty girl whose name even he had not known
when he entertained her at his impromptu thé-dansant.

He saw himself quite ruined in the unemotional grey
eyes of a girl who, herself, was so coldly aloof from the
ignoble emotions lurking ever and furtively in the
masculine animal.

He had had little enough chance with Stephanie,
even when his conduct had been exemplary.  Now he
was dreadfully certain that his chances were less than
none at all; that he had done himself in.  What had he
to hope of her now?

To this unconventional yet proud, pure-hearted girl
had been offered the very horrid spectacle of his own
bad temper and reprehensible behaviour.  And,
although there had been no actual harm in it, *she* could
never, never understand or forgive it.  Never!

Her virginal ears had been insulted by the cynical
avowal of his own masculine materialism.  Of the earth,
earthy, he had vaunted himself in his momentary
exasperation—"of humanity, a shamelessly human example."

With her own incredulous, uncontaminated eyes she
had seen him pocket Lady Button-eye's telephone
number.  Her shrinking ears had heard the mutilated
record in his music-phone dying out in a tipsy two-step;
her outraged gaze had beheld a perfectly strange young
girl's gaily informal exit from his own bachelor
apartment, where sherry still stood in both glasses and the
rugs lay scattered in disorder against the wall.
Elimination was naturally the portion he had to expect.
And he gloomily schooled himself to endure annihilation.

According to his philosophy there was nothing else
on earth to do about it.  Doubtless she'd ultimately
forgive him, but her respect he couldn't hope for at
present; and as for any deeper sentiment, if ever there
had been any hope in his heart that he might one day
awaken it, now he knew it was wriggling in its
death-throes, making him, by turns, either frightfully
unhappy or resentfully reckless.

The hopeless part of it was that, unlike weaker
men, he had no desire to drown sorrow in any irregular
and unworthy fashion.

Many men of many minds turn to many things seeking
the anodyne in one form or another—the nepenthe
of forgetfulness, rarer than the philosopher's stone.

Neither wine nor the dreary quest for heart-ease
among frailer companions ever appeals to any but weak
minds.  And the boy, not knowing what to do, turned
to his work with a renewed energy resembling desperation.

It is the only hope for ultimate anesthesia.

Also, he took to prowling by night, being too
unhappy to remain in his studio so near to Stephanie.

He prowled about Broadway and Long Acre with
Badger Spink, whose restless cleverness and
self-absorption ended by wearying him; he prowled with
Clarence Verne one night, encountering that strange
sphinx by accident, and strolling with him at hazard
through the purlieus of Chelsea.  Both men seemed
deeply preoccupied with problems of their own, and
though they knew each other only slightly they
maintained the reticence of intimacy—an odd assumption,
as Cleland thought afterward.  Yet, one of them was
very sick for love, and the other very sick of it; and,
besides, there roved with them a third and unseen
companion, through the crooked, lamp-lit streets, whose
shrouded arm was linked in Verne's.  And perhaps that
accounted for the sombre silence which brooded
between these men in trouble.

Verne said at parting—and gazing absently at
nothing while he spoke:

"The tragedy of civilization—of what the world calls
civilization!—that is the most terrible of all, Cleland.
That is the real and only hell.  Not the ruthless
eruptions of barbarism; not the momentary resurgence of
atavistic violence—of red-blooded rapine and lust—but
the ordered, lawful, stealthy, subtle horrors of
civilization: they slay men's souls."

"I don't get you, Verne."

"No, Cleland.  But somebody else will—somebody
else will get me—very soon, now....  Good-bye."

A few days later Cleland prowled with Harry Belter,
intent upon supper somewhere in the outer marches of
the town.

For an episode had occurred that shook them both
with the most sobering and distressing jar that youth
experiences in fullest mental and physical vigour.

"I *don't* see how a man can kill himself," said Cleland.
"I don't see why he can't go somewhere else and
cure himself of his unhappiness.  Travel, change, new
faces——"

"Perhaps he wants to be rid of faces," muttered Belter.

"There are wonderful wildernesses."

"Perhaps he's too tired to admire 'em.  Perhaps he's
half dead for sleep."

"You talk as though you sympathized and understood, Harry."

"I do."

"*You*!  The indefatigable optimist!  You, the ever-welcome,
the gay consoler, the irrepressible spirit among us!"

"If I didn't play that rôle I'd do what Clarence
Verne did!"

"*What!*"

"Long ago," added Belter.

"For God's sake, why?  I never dreamed——"

"You were away, three years, having a good time
abroad, weren't you?  How should you know what
happened to others?"

"Did something happen to you, Harry?"

"It did.  If you wish to know exactly what, I'll tell
you what happened to me was a woman.  Now you
know something that nobody else knows—except that
demon and myself."

"But such things——"

"No.  Such things destroy, ultimately.  I'll die of
her, one day."

"Nonsense!"

But Belter, the jester, laughed a terrifying laugh
and sauntered into the open door of the restaurant
which they had walked a mile or two to find.

"It's a low pub," he remarked, "and suitable to my
mind."  They seated themselves at a cherry table.
One or two newspaper men nodded to Belter.  A
confidence man, whispering to a painted mulatto girl,
turned to scrutinize him; a ruffianly bar-keeper saluted
him cordially.

There was a grill glowing beyond the bar.  A waiter,
chewing a tooth-pick, came up and stood leaning on
their table with both hairy hands spread flat on the
polished top.

"Well, gents, what is it?" he asked hoarsely.

They gave their order.  Then Belter, leaning forward
and planting both elbows on the table, said in a
low voice:

"They call me a caricaturist, but, by God, Cleland,
I'm a realist!  I've learned more about women by
caricaturing them than I ever read in their smooth
countenances.  They *are* caricatures, in their secret
souls—every one of them; and when I exaggerate a weak point
and ignore everything but the essential character lines
and contours, by jingo, Cleland, I've discovered
'em—exposed 'em as they really are!—distorted caricatures
of human beings."

Cleland disagreed with him, gloomily, amazed at his
bitterness.

"No," said Belter, "if you tell the mere truth about
them they're a nuisance!  We don't understand 'em.
Why?  There's very little to understand and that's all
on the surface as plain as the nose on your face!—too
plain for us to notice.  And you writers explore
and dissect 'em, seeking deeps where there are shallows,
mysteries where there are facts, subtleties where
everything is obvious.  They haven't much mind, they have
few traits because they have precious little character.
They are not like humans; they resemble Fabre's
insects—strange, incomprehensible Martians, doing
things not from intelligence, not from reason, impulse,
desire, but merely from an inherited instinct that apes
intelligence, that parodies passion."

"What *have* they done to you, Harry?"

"Nothing, in years....  Because I won't let 'em.
But the spectacle of the world suddenly crawling with
women, all swarming restlessly over the face of the
globe, not knowing why or whither—it appalls me, Jim.
And we men continue flinging at them everything we
can think of to stop them, quiet them, and keep them
still—personal liberty, franchise, political opportunity,
professional and industrial chances—and still they
twist and wriggle and squirm and swarm over everything
restlessly, slowly becoming denatured, unsexed,
more sterile, more selfish, insolent, intolerable every
day.  They are the universal nuisance of the age; they
are slowly smothering us as shifting dunes threaten the
fertile plain——"

"For heaven's sake——"

"There's the unvarnished truth about woman," insisted
Belter.  "She's got the provocative câlinerie of
a cat; the casual insouciance of a sparrow; the nesting
and hatching instinct of the hen; the mindless jealousy
of a Pekingese.

"The creative mind that marries one of 'em is doomed
either to sterility or to anguish.  Their jealousy and
malice stultify and slay the male brain; there is no
arguing with them because they have no real mind to
appeal to, no logic, no reason.  Like the horrible
praying Mantis they suffer the embrace of the male and
immediately begin to eat him, commencing with the
head——"

Cleland began to laugh.  His mirth, unrestrained,
did not disturb Belter, who continued to eat his club
sandwich and wash it down with huge draughts of
Pilsner.

"Do you think I'd marry one of 'em?" he demanded
scornfully.  "Do you know what really happened to
Clarence Verne?"

"No."

"Well, he married a dainty little thing and expected
to continue earning two thousand dollars for every
magazine cover he designed.  And do you know what
happened?"

"No, I don't."

"I'll tell you.  The dainty little thing turned
jealous, hired a shyster who hired detectives to follow
Verne about and report to her what he did inside and
outside his studio.  She doped his food when she
thought he had a rendezvous; she had his letters stolen.
In his own world, any woman he found agreeable was
cut out by his wife; if, in the jolly and unconventional
fellowship of Bohemia, he ever stopped on the street
to chat with a pretty girl or took one, harmlessly, to
lunch or supper, or offered any of 'em tea in his studio,
her detectives reported it to her and she raised hell.

"It killed spontaneity, any gaiety of heart, any
incentive in Verne.  It embittered him, aged him,
strangled him.  Look at his work to-day!  Nothing
remains except the mechanical technique.  Look at the
man.  Dead in his bathroom.  Don't talk to me about
women."

"Why didn't he divorce her if he knew of all this she
was doing?"

"He had a little girl to think of.  After all, Verne
had lived his life.  Better snuff it out that way and
leave the child in decent ignorance of family
dissension....  And that was the matter with Clarence
Verne, Cleland.  And I tell you that into the heart of
every man who has been fool enough to marry, some
canker is eating its way.  There is not one woman in a
million with mind enough and humanity enough to keep
her husband's love—not one who knows enough to

   |  'Let him alone
   |  And he'll come home—'

Not one with the brains, mental resource, wisdom, to
mate without becoming a parasite.  And still, all over
the world the asses are solemnly asking each other, 'Is
marriage a failure?'  Bah!  The world makes me very
sick!"

They went to Verne's funeral a few days later.  The
widow was very pretty in her deep mourning.  Her
little girl was with her.

But the affair was not even a nine-days' gossip in
the artists' world.  Verne had stalked wistfully among
them for a few years, but had never been of them since
his marriage: he had lived at home in one of the
fashionable quarters, although his studio—and his
heart—were in Chelsea.

So his well-known magazine covers were missed more
than he was, and people soon ceased discussing him and
his fate; and in a month nobody remembered whether
it had been done with a razor or a revolver.  And very
few cared.

As for Cleland, he had never known Verne well, and
the damnation of his taking off affected him only
superficially.  Besides, busy men have little time to bother
about death; and Cleland was now extremely busy with
his novel, which began to take definite shape and
proportion under unremitting labour.

He now saw Stephanie much as usual; and the girl
did not seem seriously changed toward him in
behaviour.  Her spirits appeared to be high always; she
seemed to be always doing something interesting and
delightful, dining out, going to theatres—though the
choice was now limited, as many were already closed
for the summer—motoring out to the country, taking
her dancing and dramatic lessons, entertaining in
the studio.

It is true that he seldom or never saw Stephanie
alone now, but that seemed accidental, because he really
had been absorbed in his work and she was usually out
somewhere or other during the day.  But she appeared
to be cordial to him—just as full of gay malice and
light banter as ever—full of undisguised interest in the
progress of his work and delighted with his promise to
let her read the manuscript when it was typed and
before he submitted it to any publisher.

So all seemed to go serenely between them; he
resolutely told himself that he had given her up; she did
not appear to be aware of anything altered or
subdued in his cordiality toward her—apparently missed
nothing in his attitude that might once have been to
her significant of any deeper feeling.

Yet, once or twice, when a gay company filled her
studio, amid the chatter and music and movement of
dancers, he became aware of her level, grey eyes gravely
intent on him—but always the gravity he surprised in
them turned to a quick, frank smile when his gaze
encountered hers, and she always made him some pretty
signal of recognition across the animated scene.

As for Helen, he always got on delightfully with
that charming and capable girl.  There was something
very engaging about her, she was so wholesome, so
energetic, so busy, so agreeable to look at.

He had acquired a habit of dropping in on his way
out to lunch to watch her working on the sketches and
studies for "Aspiration;" but one day she forgot to
warn him and he blundered into the courtyard where,
on a white circus-horse, a lovely, slender, but rather
startling figure hid its face in its hands and desperately
attempted to make a garment of its loosened hair,
while an elderly female holding the horse's head cried
"Shoo!" and Helen hustled him out, a little perturbed
and intensely amused.

"I ought to have told you," she said.  "I wouldn't
mind, but even professional models object to anybody
except, occasionally, another artist."

"I'm sorry," he said.  "Please tell little Miss Eve that
I didn't mean to scare her."

They chatted for a few minutes, then Helen smilingly
excused herself and went back to her work, and Cleland
continued on his way to lunch, chagrined at his
stupidity.

"I wonder," he thought, "if that was my little
unknown dancing partner?  Now, she will think I've
'spoiled it all.'"

He was in masculine error again.  Disconcerted
beauty has the consolation that it is beautiful.
Otherwise, it remains merely outraged modesty; and
bitterness abides in its soul.

Helen, laughingly mentioning the affair to Stephanie,
still immensely amused at Cleland's distress and
apologetic blushes, added that the model, Marie Cliff, had
been sensible enough to appreciate the humour of it,
too.

"You mean," said Stephanie, coldly, "that she didn't
care."  And, not smiling, went on with her sewing.

"She's rather a refined type," said Helen, looking
curiously at the girl who, bent over her mending, was
plying her needle furiously.

Stephanie shrugged.

"Don't you think so, Steve?"

"No.  I think her typically common."

"How odd!  She's quite young, and she's really very
nice and modest—not the type of person you seem to
imagine——"

"I don't *like* her," interrupted Stephanie calmly.
But her slender fingers were flying, and she had set her
teeth in her under lip, which had trembled a little.

Helen, chancing to mention Cleland that night as
they were preparing for bed, was astonished at
Stephanie's impatient comment:

"Oh, Jim's quite spoiled.  I'm rapidly losing
interest in that young man."

"Why?" asked Helen, surprised.

"Because he runs about with queer people.  No man
can do that and not show it in his own manner."

"What people, Steve?"

"Well, with Lady Button-eyes for one.  With your
modest and bashful little model, for another."

"Does he?"  Then she began to laugh.  "I'm glad he
displays good taste, anyway!  The little Cliff girl is
charming."

"Isn't that rather a horrid and cynical thing to
say?" demanded Stephanie, flushing brightly.

"Why?  I think she's quite all right.  Let them play
together if they like.  It's none of my business.  Are
you, the high-priestess of tolerance, becoming
intolerant?" she added laughingly.

"No.  I don't care what he does.  But I should think
he'd prefer to frivol with one of his own class."

"It's a matter of chance," remarked Helen, brushing
out her curly brown hair.  "The beggar-maid or
Vere-de-Vere—it's all the same to a man if the girl is
sufficiently attractive and amusing."

"Amusing?" repeated Stephanie.  "That is a humiliating
rôle—to amuse a man."

"If a girl doesn't, men soon neglect her.  Men go
where they are amused.  Everybody does.  You do.  I
do.  Why not?"

Stephanie, still hotly flushed, shook out her beautiful
chestnut hair and began to comb it viciously.

"I don't see how a common person can amuse a well-born
man," she said.

"It's a reflection on us if we give them the opportunity,"
retorted Helen, laughing.  "But if we're not
clever enough to hold the men of our own caste, then
they'll certainly go elsewhere for their amusement."

"And good riddance!"

"But who's to replace them?"

"I can get along perfectly without men."

"Steve, you're talking like a child!  What happens
to be the matter with you?  Has anything gone
wrong?"

"Absolutely nothing——"  She turned sharply; her
comb caught in her hair and she jerked it free.
Perhaps that accounted for the sudden glint of tears in
her grey eyes.

Helen slipped her arm around her, but the girl's
rigid body did not yield and she kept her head
obstinately averted.

"Are you getting tired of your idiotic bargain with
Oswald?" asked Helen, gently.

"No, I am not!  *He* never bothers me—never gets
on my nerves—never is unjust—unkind——"

"Who is?"

"I don't know....  Men in general—annoy me—men
in—general."

"None in particular?"

"No....  It isn't very agreeable to know that one's
brother goes about with a shameless dancer from the
Follies."

"Are you sure he does?"

"Perfectly.  He gives her a party in his studio, too,
sometimes."

"But there's no harm in——"

"A party for *two*!  They drink—together."

"Oh."

"They drink and dance and eat, all by themselves!
They take up the rugs and turn on the music and—and
I don't know what they do!—I—d-don't know—I
don't—I don't——!"

Her head fell into her hands; she stood rigid, her
body shaken by emotions too unhappy, too new, too
vague for her youthful analysis.

"I—I can't bear to think of him that way——" she
stammered, "—he was so straight and clean—so
clean——"

"Some men drift a little—sometimes——"

"They say so....  I don't know.  I am too miserable
about him—too unhappy——"

She choked back a sob, and the slender hands that
covered her eyes slowly clenched.

Helen looked at her in consternation.  Girls don't
usually betray so much emotion over some casual
irregularity of a brother.

Stephanie pressed her clenched hands mutely against
her lids for a while, then, her lips still quivering, she
reached for her brush and began to groom her splendid
hair again.

And Helen, watching her without a word, thought to self:

"She behaves as though she were falling in love with
him....  She'd certainly better be careful.  The boy
is already in love with her, no matter how he acts....
If she isn't very, very careful she'll get into trouble
with him."

Aloud she said cheerfully:

"Steve, dear, I really think I'm clever enough to have
taken the measure of your very delightful brother.  And
I honestly don't believe it is in him to play fast and
loose with any woman ever born."

"He *is* doing it!"

"With whom?"

"That—Dancing girl——"

"Nonsense!  If it's an ephemeral romance, which I
don't believe, it's a gay and harmless one.  Don't worry
your pretty head about it, Steve."

After Stephanie was in bed she kissed her lightly,
smiled reassuringly, switched off the light and went to
her own room, slowly.

Very gravely she braided her hair before the mirror,
looking at her pale, reflected face.

Yet, though pale, it was still a fresh, wholesome,
beautiful face.  But the brown eyes stared sadly at
their twin brown images, and the girl shook her head.

For the nearest that Helen Davis had ever come to
falling in love was when Cleland first walked into her
studio.  She could have fallen in love with him
then—within the minute—out of a clear sky.  She realized it
after he had gone—not too deeply astonished—she,
who had never before been in love, recognized its
possibility all in a moment.

But she had learned to hold herself in check since
that first, abrupt and clear-minded recognition of such
a possibility.

Never by a word or glance had she ever betrayed
herself; yet his very nearness to her, at times, set her
heart beating, set a faint thrill stealing through her.
Yet her eyes always met his pleasantly, frankly,
steadily; her hand lay calm and cool in his when she
welcomed him or bade him good-bye.  Always she schooled
herself to withstand what threatened her, gave it no
food for reflection, no sustenance, no status, no
consideration.

Love came as no friend to her.  She soon realized
that.  And she quietly faced him and bade him keep
his distance.

She looked at herself again in the glass.  Her brown
eyes were very, very serious.  Then the smile glimmered.

"Quand même," she murmured gaily, and switched
off the light.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV

.. vspace:: 2

It was a warm day in early June and Cleland,
working in trousers and undershirt, and driven by
thirst to his tin ice-box, discovered it to be empty.

"Confound it," he muttered, and rang up Stephanie's
studio.  A maid answered, saying that Miss Quest had
gone motoring and Miss Davis had not yet returned
from shopping.

"I want to borrow a lump of ice," explained Cleland.
"I'll come down for it."

So he concealed his lack of apparel under a gay
silk dressing gown, picked up a pan, and went down,
not expecting to encounter anybody.

In the kitchenette, in the rear, the obliging maid gave
him a lump of ice.  Carrying it in one hand, aloft, as
an expert waiter carries a towering tray of dishes, and
whistling a gay air with great content—for his work
upstairs had gone very well that morning—he sauntered
out of the culinary regions, along the alley-like
passageway, into the studio.

And as he started for the door which he had left
ajar, a figure opened it from without and entered
hurriedly—a scared, breathless little figure, bare-footed,
swathed in a kimono and a shock of hair.

They stared at each other, astonished.  Both blushed
furiously.

"I simply can't help it," said the girl.  "I was
sitting on that horse waiting for Miss Davis, when a bee
or a horsefly or something stung him and he began to
rear and kick all around the court, and I slid off him
and ran."

They both laughed.  Cleland, clutching his pan of
ice, said:

"I seem doomed to run into you when I shouldn't.
I'm terribly sorry."

She blushed again and carefully swathed her waist
in the obi.

"You didn't mean to," she said.  "It was rather
startling, though."

"It was, indeed.  And now we're having another
unconventional party.  Shall I leave this ice here and go
out and quiet the nag?"

"He'll surely kick you."

"I'll take a chance——"  He set the pan of ice on
a table, girded up his dressing-gown, and went out into
the court.  The horse stood quietly enough now.  But
Cleland soon discovered a green-eyed horsefly squatting
on the wall and rubbing its forelegs together in
devilish exultation.

"I'll fix you," he muttered, picking up a lump of wet
clay and approaching with infinite caution.  He was a
good shot; he buried the bloodthirsty little demon
under a spatter of clay.  Then he went back for his ice.

"The deed is done," he said cheerily.  "It was a
horsefly, as you said....  Good-bye....  When are
we going to have another dance?"

"We'd better not," she said smilingly.  She had
seated herself on the sofa and had drawn her pretty,
bare feet up under her kimono.

"You won't let me give another party for you?" he
inquired.

"I ought not to."

"But *will* you?"

"I don't know.  This kimono party we're having
now seems sufficient for the present; and I think you'd
better go."

"Anyway," he said, "when a desire for innocent
revelling seizes you, you know where to go."

"Yes, thank you."

They laughed at each other.

"Good-bye, pretty stranger," he said.

"Good-bye, you nice boy!"

So he went away upstairs with his ice, and she stole
out presently and ventured into the courtyard
where the placid white horse stood as calmly as a cow.

And Stephanie, lying on her bed in her own room,
twisted her body in anguish and, hands clenched, buried
her face in her arms.

Helen, returning an hour later, and glancing into
Stephanie's bed-room as she passed, saw the girl lying
there.

"I thought you were motoring!" she exclaimed.

"The car is laid up," said Stephanie, in a muffled
voice.

"Oh.  Don't you feel well, Steve?"

"N-not very."

"Can I do anything?  Wait a moment——"  She
continued on to her bed-room, unpinned her hat, drew
on her working smock, and came slowly back, buttoning it.

"What's wrong, Steve?" she inquired.

"Nothing," said the girl, drearily.  "I'm just—tired."

"Why—you've been crying!" murmured Helen,
bending over her.  "What is making you so unhappy,
Steve?  Don't you wish to tell me?"

"N-no."

"Shall I sit here by you, dear?  I can work this
afternoon——"

"No....  It's nothing at all—truly it isn't."

"Had you rather be alone?"

"Yes."

Helen went slowly away toward the court where her
nag and its rider were ready for her.  Stephanie lay
motionless, dumb, wretched, her bosom throbbing with
emotions too powerful for her—yet too vague, too
blind, to enlighten her.

Unawakened to passion, ignorant of it, regardless
and disdainful of what she had never coped with, the
mental and spiritual suffering was, perhaps, the
keener.

Humiliation and grief that she was no longer first
and alone in Cleland's heart and mind had grown into
a sorrow deeper than she knew, deeper than she admitted
to herself.  All the childish and pettier emotions
attended it, mocking her with her own frailty—ignoble
jealousy, hard resentment, the primitive sarcasm born
of envy—the white flash of hatred for those to whom
this man turned for amusement—this man whom she
had adored from boyhood.

Why had he cast her out of the first place in his
heart and mind?  He had even told her that he was in
love with her.  Why had he turned to this shameless
dancer?

And to what others did he also turn to find
amusement when she did not know where he was?

Had it been her fault?  No.  From the very first
night that he had come back to her—in the very face
of her happiness to have him again—he had shown her
what kind of man he was—there at the Ball of All the
Gods—with that dreadful Goddess of Night.

She turned feverishly, tortured by her thoughts,
but neither they nor the hot pillow gave her any rest.
They stung her like scorpions, setting every nerve on
edge with something—anger, perhaps—something
unendurable there in the silence of her room.

And at last she got up to make an end of it, once
and for all.  But the preparations took her some
time—some cold water, brush and comb, and a chamois rag.

Cleland, now dressed for luncheon, humming a comic
song under his breath and contentedly numbering his
latest pencilled pages, heard the tap at his open door,
and looked up cheerfully, hoping for Marie Cliff, a
pre-prandial dance, and a pretty companion at luncheon.
Tragedy entered, wearing the mask of Stephanie
Quest.

"Hello!" he cried gaily, jumping up and coming toward
her.  "This is too delightful.  Are you coming
out to lunch with me, Steve?"

"Sit down a moment," she said.  But he continued
to stand; and she came over and stood beside his desk,
resting one hand on it.

And, after a moment, lifting her grey eyes to his:

"I have borne a great deal from you.  But there is
an insult which you have offered me to-day that I shall
not endure in silence."

"What insult?" he demanded, turning red.

"Making my studio a rendezvous for you and
your—mistress!"

He knew what she meant instantly, and his wrath
blazed:

"It was an accident.  I don't know how you heard
of it, but it was pure accident.  Also, that is a rotten
thing to say——"

"Is it!  You once told me that you prefer to call a
spade a spade!  Oh, Jim!—you were *clean* once.  What
have you done!"

"But it's a lie—and an absurd one!"

"Do you think that of me, too—that I tell lies?"

"No.  But you evidently believe one."

"It is too obvious to doubt——"  Her throat was
dry with the fierceness of her emotions and she choked
a moment.

"Who told you?"

"I was there."

"Where?"

"In my bed-room.  I had not gone out.  I heard the
maid tell you I was out motoring.  I meant to speak to
you—but you have been so—so unfriendly lately....
And then that woman came in!" ... Her grey eyes
fairly blazed.

"Why do you do this to me?" she cried, clenching
both hands.  "It is wicked!—unthinkable!  Why do
you hold me in such contempt?"

Her fierce anger silenced him, and his silence lashed
her until she lost her head.

"Do you think you can offer me such an affront in
my own studio because I am really not your sister?—because
your name is Cleland and mine is not?—because
I was only the wretched, starved, maltreated child
of drunken parents when your father picked me out of
the gutter!  Is that why you feel at liberty to affront
me under my own roof—show your contempt for me?
*Is* it?"

"Steve, you are mad!" he said.  He had turned very
white.

"No," she said, "but I'm at the limit of endurance.
I can't stand it any longer.  I shall go to-night to the
man I married and live with him and find a shelter
there—find protection and—f-forgetfulness——"  Her
voice broke but her eyes were the more brilliant and
dangerous for the flashing tears:

"I know what you and my aunt talked over between
you," she said.  "You discussed the chances of my
developing erratic, unscrupulous, morbid, immoral traits!
You were anxious for fear I had inherited them.
Probably now you think I have.  Think as you
please——!" she flashed out through her tears; "you
have killed every bit of happiness in me.  Remember it
some day!"

She turned to go, and he sprang forward to detain
her, but she twisted herself out of his arms and reeled
back against the desk.

Then he had her in his arms again, and she stared
at his white, tense face, all distorted by her blinding
tears:

"I love you, Steve!  That's all the answer I give
you.  That's my reply to your folly.  I never loved
anybody else; I never shall; I never can.  I am clean.
I don't know how it happens, but I *am*!  They lie who
tell you anything else.  I'm like my father; I care for
only one woman.  I'm incapable of caring for any
other.

"I don't know what I've done to you to make you
say such things and think them.  I consider you as
my own kin; I respect and love you like a kinsman.
But—God help me—I've gone further; I love you as
a lover.  I can't tear you out of my heart; I've tried
because I saw no hope that you ever could fall in love
with me—but I couldn't do it—I couldn't.

"If you go to the man you married I shall never love
any other woman.  That is the truth, and I know it, now!"

Her body was still rigid in his arms; her tense hands
lay flat on his breast as though to repulse him.

But there was no strength in them and they had
begun to tremble under the hard beating of his heart.

Her mouth, too, was quivering; her tear-wet eyes
looked mutely into his; suddenly her body relaxed,
yielded; and at his fierce embrace her hot mouth melted
against his.

"Steve," he stammered—"Steve—can you care for
me—in my way——?"

Under the deep-fringed lids her grey eyes looked at
him vaguely; her lips were burning.


"Steve——" he whispered.

Her slowly lifted eyes alone responded.

"Can you love me?"

Her eyes closed again.  And after a long while her
lips responded delicately to his.

"Is it love, Steve?" he asked, trembling.

"I don't know....  I'm so tired—confused——"

Her arms fell from his neck to his shoulders and she
opened her eyes, listlessly.

"I think it—must be," she said....  "I'm quite
sure it is!"

"Love?"

"Yes."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV

.. vspace:: 2

Cleland, tremendously thrilled and excited by
the first but faint response to his ardour which
he had ever obtained of Stephanie, but uncertain,
too, and almost incredulous as to its significance
and duration, retained sufficient common sense and
self-control to restrain him from pressing matters further.
For Stephanie seemed so listless, so confused, so
apparently unable to comprehend herself and these
new and deep emotions which threatened her, that he
forebore to seize what seemed to be an undue advantage.

They parted very quietly at her studio door; she
naïvely admitting physical fatigue, headache, and a
natural desire to be down in her darkened room; he
to return to his studio, too much upset to work or to
eat, later, when the dinner hour drew near.

However, he took his hat and stick and went down
stairs.  When he rang at her studio, Helen admitted
him, saying that Stephanie was asleep in her room and
had not desired any dinner.  So they chatted for a
while, and then Cleland took his departure and walked
slowly up the street toward the Rochambeau.  And
the first person he met on University Place was Marie
Cliff.

Perhaps it was the instinct to make amends to her
for the unjust inferences drawn to her discredit a few
hours before—perhaps it was the sheer excitement and
suddenly renewed hope of Stephanie that incited him.
Anyway, his gay greeting and unfeigned cordiality
stirred the lonely girl to response, and when they had
walked as far as the Beaux Arts, they were quite in
the mood to dine together.

She was grateful to be with an agreeable man whom
she liked and whom she could trust; his buoyant spirits
and happy excitement were grateful for somebody on
whom they could be vented.

In that perfumed tumult of music, wine, and dancing
they seated themselves, greeted cordially by Louis, the
courtly and incomparable; and they dined together
luxuriously, sometimes rising to dance between courses,
sometimes joining laughingly in a gay chorus sustained
by the orchestra, sometimes, with elbows on the
cloth and heads together, chattering happily of nothing
in particular.

Men here and there bowed to her and to him;
some women recognized and greeted them; but they
were having much too good and too irresponsible
a time together to join others or to invite approaches.

It was all quite harmless—a few moments' pleasure
without other significance than that the episode had
been born of a young man's high spirits and a young
girl's natural relief when her solitude was made gay
for her without reproach.

It was about eleven o'clock; Marie, wishing to be
fresh for her posing in the morning, reminded him
with frank regret that she ought to go.

"I wouldn't care," she said, "except that since I've
left the Follies I have to depend on what I earn at
Miss Davis's studio.  So you don't mind, do you,
Mr. Cleland?"

"No, of course not.  It's been fine, hasn't it?"

"Yes.  I've had such a good time!—and you are the
nicest of men——"

Her voice halted; Cleland, watching her with smiling
eyes, saw a sudden alteration of her pretty features.
Then he turned to follow her fixed gaze.

"Hello," he said, "there's Harry Belter.  Are you
looking at *him*?"

Her face had grown very sober; she withdrew her
gaze with a little shrug of indifference, now.

"Yes, I was looking at him," she said quietly.

"I didn't know you knew him."

"Didn't you? ... Yes, I used to know him."

He laughed:

"The recollection doesn't appear to be very pleasant."

"No."

"Too bad.  I like Belter.  He and I were at school
together.  He's enormously clever."

She remained silent.

"He really is.  And he is an awfully good fellow
at heart—a little pronounced, a trifle tumultuous
sometimes, but——"

She said, evenly:

"I know him better than you do, Mr. Cleland."

"Really!"

"Yes....  I married him."

Cleland was thunderstruck.

"I was only seventeen," she said calmly.  "I was
on the stage at the time."

"Good Lord!" he murmured, astounded.

"He never spoke of it to you?"

"Never!  I never dreamed——"

"*I* did.  I dreamed."  She shrugged her shoulders
again, lightly.  "But—I awoke very soon.  My dream
had ended."

"What on earth was the matter?"

"I am afraid you had better ask him," she replied
gravely.

"I beg your pardon; I shouldn't have asked that
question at all!"

"I didn't mind....  It is my tragedy—still.  But
let a man interpret it to men.  A woman would not
be understood."

"Are you—divorced?"

"No."

Cleland, still deeply astonished, looked across the
room at Belter.  That young man, very red, sat listening
to Badger Spink's interminable chatter—pretending
to listen; but his disturbed gaze was turned from
time to time on Marie Cliff; and became hideously stony
when it shifted to Cleland at moments without a sign
of recognition.

"Shall we go?" asked the girl in a low voice.

They rose.  A similar impulse seemed to seize Belter,
and he got up almost blindly and strode across the
floor.

Cleland, suddenly confronted at the door of the
cloak-room, from which Marie was just emerging, said:

"Hello, Harry," in a rather embarrassed manner.

"Go to hell," replied the latter in a low voice of
concentrated fury, and turned on his wife.

"Marie," he said unsteadily, "may I speak to you?"

"Certainly, but not now," replied the girl, who had
turned white as a sheet.

Cleland touched the man's arm which was trembling:

"Better not interfere," he said pleasantly.  "The
disgrace of a row will be yours, not your wife's."

"What are *you* doing with my wife!" whispered
Belter, his voice shaking with rage.

"I'll tell you, Harry.  I'm showing her all the respect
and friendship and sympathy that there is in me to
to show to a charming, sincere young girl....
You know the sort of man I am.  You ought to know
your wife but evidently you don't.  Therefore, your
question is superfluous."

Belter drew him abruptly back to the foot of the
stairs:

"If you're lying I'll kill you," he said.  "Do you
understand?"

"Yes.  And if you make any yellow scene here,
Harry, after I've taken your wife home, I'll come back
and settle you.  Do *you* understand? ... For God's
sake," he added coldly, "if you've got any breeding,
show it now!"

The tense silence between them lasted a full minute.
Then, very slowly, Belter turned toward the cloak-room
where, just within the door, his wife stood looking at
him.

His sanguine features had lost all their colour in
the greyish pallour that suddenly aged him.  He went
toward her; she made the slightest movement of recoil,
but faced him calmly.

"I'm sorry," he said in a voice like a whisper.  "I
am—the fool that you—think me....  I'll—take
myself off."

He bowed to her pleasantly, turned and passed
Cleland with his hat still in his hand:

"I'm sorry, Jim; I know you're all right; and
I'm—all wrong ... all wrong——"

"Come to the studio to-morrow.  Will you, Harry?"
whispered Cleland.

But Belter shook his head, continuing on his way to
the street.

"I'll expect you," added Cleland.  "Come about noon!"

The other made no sign that he had heard.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI

.. vspace:: 2

Stephanie was awake with the sparrows the
next morning, and her face betrayed not a trace
of the pallour and fatigue which had made Helen
a little anxious when she came into the studio after her
interview with Cleland.

"I never had such a sleep in my life!" she announced,
sauntering into Helen's room, already bathed and
dressed, when at last she heard the latter's bath
running.  "I feel about sixteen, Helen."

"You look it, dear.  What was the matter with you
last night?  Jim came about nine."

"Did he?" said the girl, turning to conceal a smile.
"What did you do to entertain him."

"Talked about you," said Helen, watching her where
she stood at the sunny window, absently pleating the
sash curtains between idle fingers.

"Was he edified?"

"He seemed to be.  When I changed the subject he
went away."

Stephanie, at the window, suddenly laughed outright,
but her back remained turned.

"Men are funny," she said.

"Women are funnier, Steve."

"What!  Are *you* a traitor to your sex?"

"Sometimes," said Helen, absently.  "I feel that my
sex betrays me—and a few others of my own mind."

Stephanie turned and looked at her, still laughing:

"Like the Kiltie," she said, "you complain that the
rest of the regiment is marching out of step with you."

"There's only a corporal's guard of us in step to
the music," smiled Helen....  "You're looking
radiant, Steve!  I've never seen you as enchanting."

"I feel like enchanting the world—like a sorceress all
ready for business....  This is a wonderful day,
Helen."

"What are your engagements?"

"Two lessons this morning....  I don't know
whether I'll go.  Luncheon with Oswald at Tinto's.
But it's so stuffy there in June, and the summer garden
is so grubby."

"You're not going, then?"

"I don't know.  I don't want to hurt his feelings,"
said the girl, reluctantly.

Helen sat up, flung off the bed clothes, and swung
her superb young body out of bed.

"My bath's running over.  Sit there and talk,
Steve——"

But Stephanie turned to the window, her lips still
edged with the same indefinable smile, and gazed at
space through the netted squares of sunshine.

Breakfast was served in the studio presently.  Helen
joined her in bathrobe and slippers, knotting the belt
around her waist.

"I'm wonderfully hungry," exclaimed Stephanie.

"It's more than you've been for several weeks, Steve."

Again the girl laughed, not meeting Helen's glance.

"What do you think of marriage?" she inquired
presently.  "I hope you haven't the very horrid ideas
of Harry Belter."

"What are Harry's ideas?"

"He says it's the curse of civilization," said
Stephanie, "and the invention of meddlesome and
superstitious imbeciles.  He says that the impulse
toward procreation is mechanical and involuntary, and
ought to be considered so without further personal
responsibility; and that the State should nourish and
educate whatever children were worth saving to
replenish the waste, and put the others out of the way."

"Harry," remarked Helen, "talks for talking's sake
very often."

"He's quite serious.  His ideas are revolting.  Never
have I known a man who is so savagely an iconoclast as
Harry Belter."

Helen smiled.

"Harry is a talker, dear.  He doesn't believe a word
of it.  Harry Belter is, by nature, a fat, happy, witty,
clever and very sentimental young man who also is so
overwhelmingly selfish that anything which happens to
annoy him he considers a cataclysmic catastrophe
involving the entire civilized world in ruin!"

"What!"

"Do you wish to know what really is the matter
with Harry Belter?  Shall I tell you what actually has
inspired this noisy iconoclast and moral anarchist with
the urge for talking?"

"I'd like to know."

"I'll tell you.  Three years ago he married a child
of seventeen and started to mould her to suit himself.
The only trouble was that she had a mind.  She knew
what she wanted to do and to be.  She could not
understand why this was incompatible with being his wife,
especially as he had won her by his loudly reiterated
advocation of personal liberty and the fundamental
necessity for the development of individualism."

"How do you know this?"

"She told me."

"When?"

"Three years ago."

"Who is she, Helen?"

Helen answered pleasantly, looking into the curious
grey eyes:

"Her name, on the stage, is Marie Cliff.  I have
known her a long while and I am very fond of her."

Stephanie, scarlet, winced under her faintly
humourous smile.

"They are divorced, then," she managed to say.

"No."

"Why not?"

"She has never given him any cause," said Helen,
slowly.  "No woman, of her own knowledge, can truly
say one word against her character; nor can any man.
She merely revolted at the tyranny he attempted, in
the guise of affection, of course.  She refused to be
deprived of the liberty to think and act as she chose.
She rejected the worn-out conventions with which he
attempted to chain her—this apostle of personal
freedom.  She cared for her profession—he married her
when she was on the stage—and she resolutely insisted
on her liberty to continue it.

"The result was a family smash—her return to the
stage.  And since then she has refused to accept a
penny from him and has supported herself by her
profession, and, sometimes, by posing for artists.

"And that is the real story of Harry Belter and
Marie Cliff.  So you can believe as much as you choose
of his views on matrimony."

After a flushed and painful silence, Stephanie said:

"Do you believe this to be true?"

"If one woman can judge and understand another,
what I have told you is true, Steve.  Long ago I won
the child's confidence.  She told me this quite frankly,
and in a manner which makes the truth of it
unmistakable....  We have become great friends, this little
dancer and I.  I don't think I ever knew a simpler
nature or a more transparently honest one....  And
that is why I was not worried at any little ephemeral
romance that might amuse the child with Jim Cleland....
I was too certain of them—*both*," she added,
looking calmly into the grey eyes that winced again
and fell under her serene gaze.

"I'm a rotten little beast," said Stephanie.

"You're very feminine."

"Oh, Helen, I'm not.  I'm a rotter.  I didn't know
it was in me.  I thought I was above such things——"

"Nobody is, Steve, until they make the effort.  High
thinking requires more than a natural generosity and
sympathy—more than innate sentiment.  It is an
attainment; and there is none without effort.  And
effort sometimes hurts."

"I want to speak to that girl when she comes in,"
said Stephanie.  "I never have; I've never noticed her
at all.  I shall ask her to tea."

Helen laughed:

"She'll be here pretty soon.  Of course you're not
supposed to know about Harry."

"Of course not.  But I'll make amends for my
incivility.  I *was* a beast!  But—it's confusing—and
hard for a girl to understand when a girl like that is
so unconventional with one's—one's——"

"Brother?" suggested Helen drily.

"Yes....  I'm terribly ashamed....  Does Jim know?"

"About Harry Belter?  No.  I don't think anybody does."

"What a sham that man is!" exclaimed Stephanie hotly.

"No.  He's a typical man, dear.  Some women yield,
some resist; that's all.  And the man never has the
slightest idea that he is tyrannizing.  If you tell him
that he'll be amazed and furious.  He'll point out to
you all the love and affection and solicitude and money
he's lavished on the object of his adoration; he'll
portray for you her obstinacy, her coldness, her shocking
ingratitude for benefits received.  He really believes
himself a martyr.

"Steve, man's idea is still that to the victor belong
the spoils.  We are the spoils of the chase, dear.  His
conventions were made to contain us in a sort of
game-preserve before capture; cage us after we are made
prisoner.  His laws fetter us; a misstep ruins us;
irregularities never impair him.  That is the ancient
view; that, still, is the secret view of man; that is his
inborn conviction regarding us and himself....  And,
very slowly, we are beginning his education."

"I didn't know you felt that way," said Stephanie.

"I do....  But if I were in love"—she laughed
gaily—"I'd be inclined to take my chances with this
monster I have painted for you."

"You *do* believe in marriage?"

"What else is there, dear?  Harry's piffle means
nothing except that a plucky girl has begun his education,
and it hurts.  I don't know what else there is to
take the place of marriage.  It's the parties to the
contract who don't understand its essence."

"What would you suggest?" inquired Stephanie
curiously.

"Education.  A girl should be brought up to master
some trade or profession.  She should support herself
by it.  She should never go to her husband
empty-handed and unable to support herself.

"If, then, under the mutual marriage contract, her
earning capacity be necessarily checked by child-birth,
and by the later and natural demands of progeny,
these alone should temporarily but only in part
interrupt her in the exercise of her trade or profession.
And he should pay for them.

"But she should have a life work to do; and so should
he, no matter how ample their means.  Domestic drudgery
must be done by others hired for the purpose, or
else by themselves, sharing alike.  In no other way
that I see can marriage remain endurable."

After a silence Stephanie said naïvely:

"I haven't any trade or profession."

"You are a graduate nurse."

"Oh.  I forgot.  That *is* comforting!"

"Also you are already married."

The girl looked up in a startled way, as though hearing
this information for the first time.  Helen gazed
gravely into the troubled grey eyes:

"Do you regret it, Steve?"

"I don't know.  I haven't had time to think about it."

"It's high time, isn't it?"

"Y-yes....  I've got to do a—a lot of thinking
some day, I suppose."  She gazed absently into space
for a few moments; then again the faintest of smiles
curved her lips and she bent her head and remained
very still, deep in reflection.

... "Did you wish to speak to Marie Cliff?" asked
Helen, breaking the prolonged silence.

The girl looked up, dim-eyed, confused:

"Yes."

"I think she just went into the court-yard."

Stephanie's wool-gathering wits returned; she
sprang up and walked swiftly out to the court, where
the white horse was just being led in and the pretty
dancer stood unpinning her hat.

She turned when Stephanie entered, and the girl went
up to her, smilingly, and offered her hand.

"Miss Davis will be here in a few moments," she
said.  "I thought I'd come and tell you."

"Thank you," said Marie Cliff, curiously.

"Also," said Stephanie, "I wanted to tell you how
very lovely you are on that horse.  I had a glimpse of
you last week, and you were too enchanting!  No
wonder Helen's study is so exquisite."

The little dancer flushed brightly.  Her gloved hand
still lay lifelessly in Stephanie's, who had retained it;
her childish eyes asked for the reason of this kindness
from a girl who had never noticed her.

Then, reading the unuttered question, Stephanie
blushed too:

"I'm not much older than you are," she said, "and
I'm not nearly as sensible.  I've been rude enough to
ignore you.  Could you forgive me and be friends?"

"Yes," said Marie Cliff.

That was all the explanation offered or asked.

"Will you come to tea at five?"

"I should like to."

"I'd love to have you.  And if it doesn't bore you,
would you tell me something about your very beautiful
profession?  You see, stage dancing fascinates me, and
I'm taking lessons and I've an inclination to become a
professional."

"I'd love to talk about it with you!" said Marie Cliff
impulsively.  "I'll tell you everything I know about it....
And I do know a little, because I have been on
the stage since I was a child."

"You're one now," said Stephanie, laughing, "—an
adorable one!"  And she bent and kissed the little
dancer on the lips.

"I'm glad we're friends," she said.  "Don't forget
five o'clock."

"N-no," said Marie Cliff unsteadily.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII

.. vspace:: 2

At five o'clock that afternoon Cleland, working
fiercely on his manuscript toward a climax he
had not planned for but which, suddenly but
logically developing, threatened with disaster his
leading lady and the young gentleman playing opposite,
heard a step on the threshold of his open door.

"Hello, Harry!" he said with a friendly but vague
wave of his pencil—for he had not stepped quite clear
of the story in which he had been living among people
never born—"I'd rather given you up.  Come in and
close the door."

"I couldn't keep away," said Belter hoarsely.
He came in and closed the door.  He looked even
more grey and haggard than he had the night before.

"I expected you this morning," said Cleland, stepping
clear of his story now, and looking very soberly
at his old school-friend.

"I didn't intend to come at all."  He seated himself
in the chair indicated.  "But I couldn't keep away."

"You look about all in."

"I didn't sleep."

Cleland got up, walked to the ice-box, knocked off a
bit of ice with a tack-hammer, and leisurely constructed
a highball.

"Here you are, Harry.  I can't; I'm working.
There are cigars by your elbow, cigarettes, too."

Belter looked vacantly at the iced bracer, then he
dropped both elbows on the edge of the desk and took,
his drawn face between his hands.

Cleland began to pace the studio.  Presently he
halted by Belter's chair.

"Hell," he said pleasantly, "cut out the tragedy!
It's good enough for my novel, where the poor devils I
write about have to do what I make 'em.  But you and
I are free to do what we choose."

"Yes....  And I've done it....  I've done what I
chose.  Where has it landed me, Cleland?"

He looked at the frosty glass, pushed it away from him:

"That was a sorry spectacle I made of myself last
night.  Can you beat that for degradation—a man who
has made a damnable failure of marriage, skulking at
his wife's heels to snap and snarl at any decent man
who is civil to her?"

"Don't talk so bitterly——"

"I'm indulging in a luxury, Cleland—the luxury of
truth, of honesty, of straight thinking....  I've been
bragging about it, celebrating it, extolling it for years.
But I never did any until last night."

"You're rubbing it in pretty hard, Harry.  A man
is bound to make mistakes——"

"*I'm* the mistake!  I realize it, now—as Verne
realized it.  That's why he did what he did.  You don't,
if you *are* right....  I never supposed I could behave
as rottenly as I did last night.  But it's been a long
strain....  You heard that rotten outbreak of mine
concerning women—the night we heard what Verne had
done?  Well, the strain was showing....  It broke
me last night...."

He lifted his head and looked intently at Cleland:

"It was the shock of seeing her in a public place
with another man.  I had never seen her with any other
man.  It's nearly three years, now, since I made a
damned ass of myself, and she very quietly went her
way leaving me to go mine....  And in all that time,
Cleland, there has not been a breath of suspicion against
her.  She has been in the lighter and more frivolous
shows almost continuously; but she has lived as
straight a life as any woman ever lived....  And I
know it....  And I knew it—cur that I was—when
I spoke to her as I did, and turned on you like a
rotter——"

He extended his hand and took hold of the iced glass,
but let it rest there.

"I've lied and lied and lied," he said, "to myself about
myself; to others about my estimate of women....
I'm just a four-flusher, Cleland.  The best of 'em are
better than our stars.  The remainder average as well
as we do....  Verne got what was coming to him....
And so have I, Cleland—so have I——"

"Wait a moment——"

"Wait?"  Belter laughed mirthlessly.  "All right.
I know how to wait.  Waiting is the best thing I do.
I've waited for nearly three years before I've told
myself the truth.  I've told it now, to myself, and to
you....  But it's too late to tell it to her."

"Do you think it is?"

Belter looked up in pallid surprise:

"Of course."

"I wonder," mused Cleland.

Belter's sunken gaze had become remote and fixed
again.  He said, half to himself:

"I couldn't let her alone.  I couldn't learn to mind
my own business.  I'd been bawling aloud my theories
for years, Cleland, but I couldn't apply them to her or
to myself.  I bragged about my mania for personal
liberty, for tolerance; I lauded the maxim of 'hands
off.'  But I couldn't keep my meddling hands off her;
I couldn't understand that she had the right to
personal liberty—freedom in the pursuit of happiness.
No; I tried to head her off, check her, stampede her
into the common corral whither all men's wives are
supposed to be driven—tried to rope her and throw her
and blindfold, hobble and break her to suit myself....
And, Cleland, do you know what happened?  I found
I had come upon a character, a mind, a personality
which would not endure the tyranny we men call
domestic affection....  That's what I discovered....
And I did not do the breaking.  No; she has accomplished
that.  And—here I am, to admit it to you....
And I think I'll go, now——"

Cleland walked slowly to the door with him, one arm
resting on his shoulder:

"I wish you'd tell her what you've told me, Harry."

"It's too late.  She wouldn't care, now."

"Are you very sure?"

"Do you think a man can use a woman the way I
have used her, and make her care a straw about what
I say to her now?"

Cleland said in a low voice:

"I can't answer you.  I don't understand women;
I write about them....  I have troubles of my own,
too.  So I can't advise you, Harry....  Are you
still in love with her?"

He said in a dead voice:

"I've always been.  It's done things to me.  I'll die
of it, one day.  But that's no argument."

"I don't know.  Tell her."

"It's no argument," repeated Belter.  "It's purely
selfish.  That's what I am—purely selfish.  I'm
thinking of myself.  I'm in love with her....  And she's
better off without me."

"All the same, I think I'd take a chance.  I think
I'd tell her.  After all, you owe her that much—whatever
she may choose to do about it."

"She doesn't care, now."

"Still, you owe it to her.  You're not a welcher,
you know."

They had reached the foot of the stairs.  Helen,
coming out of the enclosed court, met them face to
face; and they exchanged amiabilities there outside her
studio door.

"Come in and have some tea," she said.  "Harry,
you look ill.  Are you?  Anyway, a cup of tea won't
slay you in your tracks——" fitting her key to the
door all the while she was talking—"so come in like two
polite young men——"

The door swung open; they entered.

"Oho!" exclaimed Helen; "Steve must be here because
the kettle-lamp is lighted.  We'll have something
to nibble presently, I expect.  Find a chair, Harry,
and watch that kettle.  Jim, show him the cigarettes.
I'm going to take off this blouse and I'll be back with
Steve in a moment——"

She stopped short: Stephanie and Marie Cliff,
coming from the kitchenette, appeared at the further end
of the studio, the former bearing a big bowl of
strawberries, the latter a tray of little cakes.

Stephanie greeted the newcomers with an airy wave
of her hand; Marie Cliff promptly lost her colour; but
there was nothing to do except to advance, which she
continued doing, moving very close to Stephanie's
elbow.

The situation was going to be as awkward as the
people involved made it: Cleland, secretly aghast, came
forward to relieve Stephanie and Marie of their
burdens:

"If there isn't enough food for a party, I'll take
Harry and go," he said gaily.  "It isn't done—this
grasshopper-like invasion of your natural resources."

"Piffle," said Helen, "there's plenty."

Harry Belter, who had been standing in the middle
of the floor as though petrified, wrenched himself out
of his trance and put his legs in motion.  His face
was very red: he greeted Stephanie elaborately but
mutely; he bowed mutely to his wife.

She had managed to recover her self-control: a deep
flush invaded her pallour.  Then, under the eyes of
them all, very quietly she did a thing which confirmed
the admiration and respect of everybody there: she
extended her child-like hand to her husband, saying:

"It is nice to see you again, and I'm very sure that
there is enough tea for everybody."

Her hand lay in her husband's for an appreciable
moment; then he bent over it, lower, to conceal the
nervous working of his features—and touched it with
trembling lips—something he had never before done in
all his life—and passing, by the same token, out of
the free and arid desert of his folly, he rested, *sub
jugum*, beside the still waters of eternal truth.

Helen went on toward her room to shed her clay-stained
smock; Stephanie investigated the kettle which
was approaching the boiling point, and Cleland
deposited the provender on a neighbouring table.

"Keep away from them," whispered Stephanie, close
beside him—so close that the fragrance of her hair and
breath caressed his cheek.

"You darling," he motioned with his lips.

"Oh, dear!  Are we on *such* a footing!" she asked,
with a little quick-drawn breath of smiling dismay.

"Why not?" he said under his breath.  "You're
awake, now."

"Am I?"

"Are you not, dearest?"

"I—had a wonderful sleep last night," she said
perversely.  "I don't know whether I'm awake or not."

"Oh, Steve!——"

"I don't, I tell you!——" keeping her gaze smilingly
averted and very busy with kettle and tea-caddy....
"Where have you been all day?"

"I came down, but you had fled to your lesson.  Then
I had a date with H. Belter, but he didn't appear until
nearly five.  It was a strenuous interview."

She lifted her eyes to his, full of interested inquiry.

"Yes," he nodded; "he's found out he's an ass, and
he's in love with his wife.  If she can stand for him now,
after these three years, I think he'll make a better
husband than the average."

"She's a dear," murmured Stephanie.  "What a
painful situation!—but wasn't she dignified and sweet?
Oh, I do hope she cares enough for Harry to give him
another chance....  Are they amiable together over
there?  I don't want to turn around."

He cautiously surveyed the scene out of a corner
of his eye:

"She's seated beside the piano.  It's evident she
hasn't asked him to be seated.  They are horribly
serious.  He looks ten years older."

"We must let them alone.  Tea is ready, but I
sha'n't say so until they move....  What was it you
asked me, Jim?—whether I am awake? ... Do you
know that I believe I'm stirring in my slumbers
because—because, now and then—just for an instant—a
stab of contrition goes through and through me.  Do
you know why?  I have a glimmering of guilty misgiving
concerning this painful throb of conscience——"

She looked about her, searching among the paraphernalia
of the tea tray.  "Oh, the deuce!  I remember,
now, that we're out of lemons!  You have some, haven't
you?"

"Yes, I'll run up and——"

"I know where they are in your ice box.  I'll find
them——"

"What nonsense!  Wait!——"

She had started already; but swiftly as her light
feet sped he overtook her on the stairs; gathered her
into his arms, all pink and breathing rapidly:

"Steve—my darling!——"

"I thought you might do this....  I wanted to
see——"

"What?"

"Whether it could happen to me again—what I
experienced with you——"

There was a silence: her young lips melted against
his; lingered; her arms tightened around his neck.  And
the next instant she had freed herself, hot-cheeked,
disconcerted.

"Oh, it, was—quite true——" she stammered, resting
against the banisters with one hand pressed tightly
over her heart.  "My curiosity is satisfied....
*Please!*—Jim, dear—we ought to behave
rationally—oughtn't we?"

But she did not resist when he framed her face between
his hands; and she suffered his lips again, and
again her slight response and the grey eyes vaguely
regarding him shook his self-control.

"Will you try to love me, Steve?"

"I seem to be doing it."

"Is it really love, Steve?  Do you truly care for me?"

"Oh, dear, yes!" she said, with a quick-drawn breath
which ended in a quiet sigh, scarcely audible.  Then a
faintly humorous smile dawned in her eyes: "You're
changing, Jim.  You always were very wonderful to
me, but you also *were* mortal.  Now, you're changing;
you are putting on a glorious, iridescent immortality
before my eyes.  I'm quite bewildered—quite dazzled—and
my mind isn't very clear—especially when you
kiss me——"

"Are you making fun of me?"

"No, I'm not.  That's the way with the gods when
they start a love affair with a mortal girl.  Sometimes
she runs, but they always catch her or turn her
into a tree or a waterfall or something they can acquire
and fence in, and visit like a plot in a cemetery.  And
if she doesn't run away, then she just falls into a silly
trance with her Olympian lover, and somebody comes
along and raises the dickens with them both....  And
now I'd like to know what's going to happen to me?"

"You're going to try to fall in love with me first."

"Oh.  And then?"

"Marry me."

"Oh.  And what will old lady Civilization say?  I
told you somebody would raise the dickens!"

"Who cares?"

"I suppose I wouldn't care if I loved you enough."

"Will you try?"

"Oh, dear." ... She freed herself gracefully,
stepped back a stair lower, and leaned on the rail,
considering.

"Oh, dear," she repeated under her breath.  "What
a tangle! ... I don't know why I've let myself—care
for you—in your way.  I ought to stop it.  Could
you stand it?" she added naïvely.  And the reply in
his eyes scared her.

"Oh, this is serious!" she murmured.  "We've
gotten on much further than I realized....  I remember,
when you began to make love to me, I thought it
very sweet and boyish of you—to fall in love with your
own sister.  But I've begun to make love to you, now....
And I ought not to."

"Because you are married?" he asked under his breath.

"Oh, yes.  It won't do for me to make advances to you."

"When have you made any advances?"

"I came out here.  I wanted you to—kiss me.  Oh,
this isn't going to do at all.  I can see that,
now!——"  She framed her face in her hands and shook her head.
"Jim—dearest, dearest of men—it won't do.  I didn't
realize that I was caring for you in this way.  Why,"
she added, her grey eyes widening, "it is almost dangerous!"

"The thing to do," he said, reddening, "is to tell Oswald."

"I can't tell him!"

"You've got to, if you fall in love with me."

"Oh, Jim, it would be too heartless!  You don't know——"

"No, I don't!" he exclaimed impatiently, "and I think
it's time I did!  You can't be in love with two men at
the same time."

She blushed furiously:

"I—he never even touched my fingers with his lips!
And you—you take me into your arms with no more
hesitation than if I were a child....  I believe I've
behaved like one with you.  I'm old enough to be
ashamed, and I'm beginning to be."

"Is it because you're married?"

"Yes, it is!  I can't let myself go.  I can't let
myself care for—for what you do—to me.  I came out
here to give you the chance—ready to learn
something—desiring to.  I mustn't take any more
lessons—from you."

He said:

"I am going to tell Oswald that I care for you,
Steve."

To his astonishment, tears flashed in the grey eyes:

"If you do," she said, "it will be like killing
something that makes no resistance.  It—it's too
cruel—like murder.  I—I couldn't bring myself——"

"Why?  Did you marry him out of pity?"

She bit her lip and stood staring into vacancy, one
hand tightening on the stair-rail, the other worrying
her lips.

"I tell you," she said slowly, her gaze still remote,
"the only thing to do is to do nothing....  Because
I'm afraid....  I couldn't bear it.  I'd have to think
of it all my life and I—I simply couldn't endure it....
You mustn't ask me any more."

"Very well," he said coldly.  "And I think we'd
better go back to the studio——"

As he passed her he paused, waiting for her to precede
him.  She turned; her hand fell from the banisters
and hung beside her; but the slender fingers groped
for his, slipped among them, tightened, drawing him
partly toward her; and her left foot moved forward a
trifle, blocking his way and bringing them closely
confronted.

"I—love you," she faltered.  "And I don't know
what to do about it."

Crushed into his embrace she did not seem to know
any the more what she was going to do about it.  Her
flushed cheek lay hot against his; her hands moved
restlessly on his shoulders; she tried to think—strove
to consider, to see what it was that lay before her—what
she had to do about this matter of falling in love.
But her fast beating heart told her nothing; a listless
happiness invaded her; mind and body yielded to the
lethargy; thought was an effort, and the burden lay
with this wonderful being who held her in his
arms—who, once mortal—had assumed the magic of
immortality—this youthful god who was once a man—her
lover.

"It's got to come right somehow, my darling," he
whispered.

"Yes—somehow."

"You'll explain it some day—so that I shall
understand how to make it come right."

She did not answer, but her cheek pressed closer
against his.

.. vspace:: 2

When they entered the studio Helen, seated by the
tea table, rose with a gesture of warning:

"That child is in my room and Harry is with her.
They were standing together over there by the piano
when I came out of my room.  I saw at once that she
was on the verge of something—she tried to look at
me—tried to speak; and Harry didn't even make the
effort.  So I said, quite casually, 'It *is* frightfully close
in the studio, Marie.  But you'll find it cool in my
room.  Better lie down in there for a moment.' ... They're
in there.  I don't know what I hope, exactly.
She is such a dear....  Where on earth have you two
been?"

"On the stairs," said Stephanie.  "We started to
get something—what was it, Jim?  Oh, yes; there's
no lemon here——"

"Did you get any?"

"No; we just conversed."  She picked up a cake,
nibbled it, selected a strawberry and nibbled that, too.

The tea wasn't fresh, but she sipped it, sitting there
very silent and preoccupied with now and then a slow
side-glance at her lover, who was attempting to make
the conversation general.

Helen responded lightly, gaily, maintaining her part
in a new and ominous situation which had now become
perfectly recognizable to her.

For these two people on either side of her had
perfectly betrayed themselves—this silent, flushed girl,
still deep under the spell of the master magic of the
world—this too talkative, too plausible, too
absent-minded young man who ate whatever was handed to
him, evidently unaware that he was eating anything,
and whose eyes continually reverted to the girl.

The smile on Helen's lips was a little fixed, perhaps,
but it was generous and sweet and untroubled.  A man
sat at her elbow whom she could care for, if she let
herself go.  A girl sat on the other side who was
another man's wife, and who was already in love with
this man.  But the deep anxiety in Helen's heart was
not visible in her smile.

"What about that very tragic pair in my room?"
she asked at last.  "Shall we clear out and give them
the whole place to settle it in?  It's getting worse than
a problem play——"

She looked up; Oswald Grismer stood on the
threshold of the open door.

"Come in!" she said gaily.  "I'll give you tea in a
few minutes."

Grismer came forward, saluted her with easy grace,
greeted Stephanie with that amiable ceremony which
discloses closer intimacy, turned to Cleland with that
wistful cordiality which never seemed entirely confident.

"Oswald," said Helen, "there's a problem play being
staged in my bed-room."

"Marie Cliff and Harry Belter," explained Stephanie
in a low voice.

Grismer was visibly astonished.

"That's amusing," he said pleasantly.

"Isn't it?" said Helen.  "I don't know whether I'm
pleased.  She's such a little brick!  And Harry has
lived as he pleased....  Oh, Lord!  Men *are* queer.
People sneer at a problem play, but everybody ever
born is cast for some typical problem-play part.  And
sooner or later, well or badly, they play it."

"Critics talk rot; why expect more of the public?"
inquired Grismer.  "And isn't it funny what a row
they make about sex?  After all, that's what the world
is composed of, two sexes, with a landscape or marine
background.  What else is there to write about,
Cleland?"

The latter laughed:

"It merely remains a matter of good taste.  You
sculptors have more latitude than painters; painters
more than we writers.  Pathology should be used sparingly
in fiction—all sciences, in fact.  Like a clove of
garlic applied to a salad bowl, a touch of science is
sufficient to flavour art; more than that makes it reek.
Better cut out the art altogether if the science fascinates
you, and be the author of 'works' instead of mere books."

Stephanie, watching Cleland while he was speaking,
nodded:

"Yes," she said, "one could write fiction about a
hospital nurse, but not about nursing.  It wouldn't have
any value."

Grismer said:

"We're really very limited in the world.  We have
land and water, sun and moon and stars, two sexes,
love and hate to deal with.  Everything else is merely
a modification of these elemental fixtures....  It
becomes tiresome, sometimes."

"Oswald!  Don't talk like a silly pessimist," said
Stephanie sharply.

He laughed in his easy, attractive way and sat gently
swinging one long leg, which was crossed over the
other.

He said:

"There is in every living and articulated thing a
nerve which, if destroyed, destroys for its possessor a
certain area of interest in life.  People become
pessimists to that extent.

"But, where all the nerves converge to form the
vital ganglion, a stroke there means extermination."

"Apropos of what is this dissertation wished upon
us?" asked Stephanie with an uneasy smile.

"Did you ever see a paralyzed spider, Stephanie?—alive,
breathing, destined to live for weeks, perhaps, and
anyway until the wasp's egg under it hatches and
becomes a larva to devour it?

"Well, the old wasp required fresh meat for its
young, so, with her sting, she annihilated the nerve
controlling motion, laid her egg, certain that her progeny
would find perfectly fresh food when born.  But if she
had thrust that sting of hers a little higher—at the
juncture of skull and thorax—death would have taken
that spider like a stroke of lightning."

He laughed:

"So I say it's better to get the stroke of Fate in
the neck than to get it in any particular area and live
for a while a paralyzed victim for some creature
ultimately to eat alive."

There was a silence.  Helen broke it with pleasant
decision:

"This is *not* an appetizing conversation.  If anybody
wishes any the tea is ready."

There was enough daylight left in the studio so the
lamps remained unlighted.

"Do you suppose we ought to go out somewhere?"
asked Stephanie, "and leave the place to those two
poor things in there?  You know they may be too
unhappy or too embarrassed to come out and run the
gauntlet."

But Stephanie was wrong; for, as she ended,
Belter appeared at the end of the studio in the
fading light.  His young wife came slowly forward beside
him.  The strain, the tension, the effort, all were
visible, but the girl held herself erect and the man
fairly so.

There was tea for them—no easier way to mitigate
their ordeal.  Conversation became carelessly general;
strawberries and little cakes were tasted; a cigarette
or two lighted.

Then, after a while there chanced to fall a silence;
and the young wife knew that the moment belonged
to her.

"I think," she said in a distinct but still little voice,
"that we ought to go home.  If you are ready,
Harry——"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII

.. vspace:: 2

By the end of the first week in June Cleland was
in a highly excited state of mind in regard to
his infant novel, in which all the principals were
now on the edge of catastrophe.

"I don't know how they got there," he said nervously
to Badger Spink, who had dropped in to suggest himself
as illustrator in case any magazine took the story
for serial publication.

Spink's clever, saturnine features remained
noncommittal.  If Cleland turned out to be a coming man,
he wished to participate and benefit; if he proved a
failure he desired to remain pleasantly aloof.

For the only thing in the world that interested
Badger Spink was his own success in life; and he had
a horror of contaminating it by any professional
association with mediocrity or failure.

"What's your story about?" he inquired with that
bluntness that usually passed for the disinterested
frankness of good comradeship.

"Oh, it's about a writer of stories," said Cleland,
vaguely.

"He's the hero?"

"If you'd call him that.  What is a hero, Spink?
I never saw one in real life."

Spink squinted.  It was his way of grinning.

"Well, a literary hero," he said, "is one who puts it
over big on his first novel.  The country goes crazy
about his book, the girls go crazy over *him*, publishers
go panting after him waving wads; editors flag him
with fluttering cheques.  That's one sort of hero,
Cleland.  But he's a myth.  The real thing is a Charlie
Chaplin.  All the same, you'd better let your hero make
a hit with his novel.  If you don't, good night!"

Cleland's features became troubled:

"I suppose *his* book ought to make a hit to make *my*
book popular," he said.  "But as a matter of fact it
doesn't.  I'm afraid the character I've drawn is no
hero.  He's like us all, Spink; he writes a book; friends
flatter; critics slam; the public buys a number of
copies, and it's all over in a few weeks.  A punk
hero—what?"

"Very.  He won't get over with the young person,"
said Spink.  "In these days of the movie and the tango
nobody becomes very much excited over novels anyway;
and if you don't startle the country with your
hero's first novel—make it the sort that publishers
advertise as 'compelling' and 'a new force in literature'—well,
you'll get the hook, I'm afraid.  Listen to me:
work in the 'urge'; make it plain that there's not a
trace of 'sex' in your hero's book or in yours—or any
'problem' either.  Cheeriness does it!  That intellectual
eunuch, the 'Plain Peepul,' is squatting astride of the
winged broncho.  His range reaches from the Western
plains to the New England kitchen.  The odours of
the hired man and of domestic dishwater are his
favourite perfume; his heroines smirk when Fate jumps
upon them with hobnailed boots; his heroes are shaven
as blue as any metropolitan waiter and they all are
bursting out of their blue flannel shirts with muscular
development and abdominal prosperity.  That's the
sort, Cleland, if you want to make money!"  He
shrugged his shoulders.  "But of course if you don't,
well, then, go on and transmute leaden truth with your
imagination into the truer metal wrought by art.  If
there's a story in it, people will excuse the technical
excellence; if there isn't, they won't read it.  And
there you are."

They remained silent for a while, and Spink regarded
him shrewdly from moment to moment out of his
bright, bold eyes.  And he came pretty close to the
conclusion that he was wasting time.

"Did you ever make any success with your stuff!"
he inquired abruptly.

Cleland shook his head.

"Never heard anything from anything you've done?"

"Once," said Cleland, "a woman wrote me from a
hospital that she had read a novel I published in
England, when I was living in France....  She said it had
made her forget pain....  It's pleasant to get a
letter like that."

"Very," said Spink drily, "unless she meant your
book was an anodyne."  He laughed his abrupt, harsh
laugh and took himself off.

Belter, who haunted the studio now toward noon, so
that he could take his wife to luncheon, roared with
laughter when Cleland mentioned Spink's visit.

"When there's any rumour of a new man and a new
book, Spink's always certain to appear out of a
cloudless sky, like a buzzard investigating smoke for
possible pickings.  If you make good, he'll stick to you
like a burdock burr.  If you don't, he's too busy to
bother you.  So he's been around, has he?"

"Yes."

"Watch him, Cleland.  Spink is the harbinger of
prosperity.  He associates himself only with the
famous and successful.  He is clever, immensely
industrious, many sided, diversely talented.  He can write,
rehearse and stage a play for the Ten Cent Club; he
can draw acceptably in any medium; he can write
sparkling stuff; his executive ability is enormous, his
energy indefatigable.  But—that's the man, Cleland.
You'll have him at your elbow if you become famous;
you'll see only the back of his bushy head if you fail."

Cleland smiled as he ran over the pile of pencilled
pages on the desk before him, pausing here and there
to cross out, interline, punctuate.

"When Oswald Grismer was rich and promised so
well as a sculptor," said Belter, "Spink appeared as
usual out of a clear sky, alighted, folded his wings,
and hopped gravely beside Grismer until the poor devil
came his cropper.

"Now, he's always going somewhere in a hurry when
he encounters Grismer, but his 'How are you!  Glad
to see you!' en passant, is even more cordially effusive
than before.  For Badger Spink never wittingly makes
an enemy, either."

"Poor Spink.  He misses a lot," commented Cleland,
renumbering some loose pages.  "Tell me, Harry, how
are things going with you?"

Belter said, naïvely:

"When a man's quite crazy about his wife, everything
else goes well."

Cleland laughed:

"That sounds convincing.  What a little brick she
is!  I suppose you're lunching with her."

"Rather!"  He looked at his watch.  "God knows,"
he added, "I don't want to bore her, but it would take
a machine gun to drive me away....  I tell you,
Cleland, three years of what I went through leave scars
that never entirely heal....  I don't yet quite see how
she could forgive me."

"Has she?"

"I'm trying to understand that she has.  I *know* she
has, because she says so.  But it's hard to comprehend....
She's a very, very wonderful woman, Cleland."

"I can see that."

"And whatever she wishes, *I* wish.  Whatever she
desires to do is absolutely all right because she desires
it.  But, do you know, Cleland, she's sweet enough to
ask my opinion?  Think of it!—think of her asking
my opinion!—willing to consider my wishes after what
I've done to her!  I tell you no man can study faithfully
enough, minutely enough, the character of the
girl he loves.  I've had my lesson—a terrible one.  I
told you once that it was killing me—would end me
some day.  It would have if she had not held out her
hand to me....  It was the finest, noblest thing any
woman has ever done."

All fat men are prone to nervous emotion; Belter
got up briskly, but his features were working, and he
merely waved his hand in adieu and galloped off down
stairs to be in time to join his wife when she emerged
from her seance with the white circus horse in Helen's
outer workshop.

Cleland, still lingering with fluttering solicitude over
his manuscript, heard a step on the stair and
Stephanie's fresh young voice in gay derision:

"You're like a fussy old hen, Jim!  Let that chick
alone and take me somewhere to lunch!  I've had a
strenuous lesson and I'm starved——"

She dodged his demonstration, eluding him with
swift grace, and put the desk between them.

"No!  *No*!  I chanced, just now, to witness the
meeting of the Belters, and that glimpse of conjugal
respectability has stiffened my moral backbone....
Besides, I'm deeply worried about you, Jim."

"About me?"

"Certainly.  It fills me with anxiety that you should
so far degrade yourself as to attempt to kiss a
respectable married woman——"

She dodged again, just in time, but he vaulted over
the desk and she found herself imprisoned in his arms.

"I'll submit if you don't rumple me," she said.  "I've
such a darling gown on—be very circumspect,
Jim——"

She lifted her face and met his lips, retained them
with a little sigh, placing her gloved hands behind his
head.  They became very still, very serious; her grey
eyes grew vague under his deep gaze which caressed
them; her arms drew his head closer to her face.  Then,
very slowly, their lips parted, and she laid her hand
on his shoulder and drew his arm around her waist.

In silence they paced the studio for a while, slowly,
and in leisurely step with each other deeply preoccupied.

"Steve," he said, "it's the first week in June.  The
city will be intolerable in a fortnight.  Don't you think
that we ought to open Runner's Rest?"

"You are going up there with Oswald, aren't you?"
she asked, raising her eyes.

"Yes, in a day or two.  Don't you think we'd better
try to get some servants and open the house for the
summer?"

She considered the matter:

"You know I've never been there since you went
abroad, Jim.  I believe we would find it delightful.
Don't you?"

"I do, indeed."

"But—is it going to be all right—just you and I
alone there? ... You know even when we considered
each other as brother and sister there was a serious
question about our living together unless an older
woman were installed"—she laughed—"to keep us in
order.  It was silly, then, but—I don't know whether
it's superfluous now."

"Would Helen come?"

"Like a shot!  Of *course* that's the solution.  We
can have parties, too....  I wonder what is going to
happen to us."

"What!"

"To you and me, Jim....  It's becoming such a
custom—your arm around me this way; and that
secret and deliciously uneasy thrill I feel when I come
to you alone—and all my increasing load of guilt——"

"There's only one end to it, Steve."

"Jim, I *can't* tell him.  I'm *afraid*! ... Something
happened once....  I was scarcely eighteen——"  She
suddenly clung to him, pressing her face convulsively
against his shoulder.  He could feel the shiver
passing over her.

"Tell me," he said.

"Not now....  There doesn't seem to be any way
of letting you understand....  I was not yet eighteen.
I never dreamed of—of love—between you and me....
And Oswald fascinated me.  He does now.  He always
will.  There is something about him that draws me,
influences me, stirs me deeply—deeply——"

She turned, looked at him, flung one arm around his neck:

"Will you let me tell you this and still understand?
It's a—a different kind of affection....  But it's
deep, powerful—there are bonds that hold me—that I
can't break—dare not....  Always he was attractive
to me—a strange, sensitive, unhappy boy....  And
then—something happened."

"Will you tell me what?"

"Oh, Jim, it involves a question of honour....  I
can't betray confidence....  Let me tell you something.
Did you know that Oswald, ever since you and
he were boys together, cared more for your good
opinion than for anything else in the world?"

"That's strange."

"*He* is strange.  He has told me that, as a boy, one
of the things that most deeply hurt him was that he
was never invited to your house.  And I can see that
the fact that dad never took any notice of his father
mortified him bitterly."

"What has this to do with you and me, Steve?"

"A great deal, unhappily.  The seeds of tragedy
lay in the boy's soul of Oswald Grismer—a tender
sensitiveness almost girlish, which he concealed by
assertiveness and an apparent callous disregard of opinion;
a pride so deep that in the shock of injury it became
morbid....  But, Jim, deep in that unhappy boy's
soul lay also nobler qualities—blind loyalty, the
generosity that costs something—the tenderness that
renounces....  Oh, I know—I know.  I was only a girl
and I didn't understand.  I was fascinated by the
golden, graceful youth of him—thrilled by the deeper
glimpse of that mystery which attracts all women—the
veiled unhappiness of a man's secret soul....  That
drew me; the man, revealed, held me....  I have told
you that I never dreamed there was any question about
you.  I was obsessed, wrapped up in this man so
admired, so talented, so utterly misunderstood by all the
world excepting me.  It almost intoxicated me to know
that I alone knew him—that I alone was qualified to
understand, sympathize, advise, encourage, rebuke this
strange, inexplicable golden figure about whom and
whose rising talent the world of art was gossiping and
guessing all around me."

After a long silence he said:

"Is that all you have to tell me?"

"Nearly all....  His father died....  My aunt
died.  These facts seem unrelated.  But they were
not....  And then—then—Oswald lost his money....
Everything....  And I—married him....  There
was more than I have told you....  I think I may tell
this—I had better tell you, perhaps....  Did you ever
know that my aunt employed lawyers to investigate the
matter concerning the money belonging to Chiltern
Grismer's sister, who was my mother's mother?"

"No."

"She did.  I have seen Mr. Grismer at the hospital
once or twice.  He came to see my aunt in regard to
the investigation....  The last time he came, my aunt
was ill, threatened with pneumonia.  I saw him passing
through the grounds.  He looked frightfully haggard
and ill.  He came out of the infirmary where my aunt
was, in about an hour, and walked slowly down the
gravel path as though he were in a daze....  He died
shortly afterward....  And then my aunt died....
And Oswald lost his money....  And I—married him."

"Is that all you can tell me?"

After a silence she looked up, her lip quivering:

"All except this."  And she put her arms around
his neck and dropped her head on his breast.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIX

.. vspace:: 2

In reply to a letter of hers, Cleland wrote to
Stephanie the middle of June from Runner's Rest
in the Berkshires:

.. vspace:: 2

STEVE, DEAR:

.. vspace:: 1

The place is charming and everything is ready for you
and Helen whenever you care to come.  I had the caretaker's
wife and daughters here for several days' scrubbing and
cleaning woodwork, windows and floors.  They've put a
vacuum cleaner on everything else and the house shines!

As for the new servants, they seem the usual sort, unappreciative,
sure to quarrel among themselves, fairly efficient,
incapable of gratitude, and likely to leave you in the lurch if
the whim seizes them.  They've all come to me with complaints
of various sorts.  The average servant detests clean,
fresh quarters in the country and bitterly misses the smelly
and oily animation of the metropolitan slums.

But this unpretentious old place is very beautiful, Steve.
You haven't been here since you were a girl, and it will be a
surprise to you to find how really lovely are this plain old
house and simple grounds.

Oswald has made several sketches of the grounds, and is
making others for the pool and fountain.  He is anything but
melancholy; he strolls about quite happily with the eternal
cigarette in his mouth and an enormous rose-scented white
peony in his button-hole; and in the evening he and I light
a fire in the library—for the evenings are a trifle chilly
still—and we read or chat or discuss men and affairs most
companionably.  The occult charm in this man, of which you
are so conscious, I myself can perceive.  There seems to be,
deep within him, an inexplicable quality which appeals—something
latent, indefinable—something that you suspect
to be wistful, yet which is too sensitive, too self-distrustful
to respond to the very sympathy it seems to draw.

Steve, I have asked him to spend July with us.  He seemed
quite surprised and a little disconcerted by the invitation—just
as he seemed to be when I asked him to do the pool and
fountain.

He said he would like to come if he could arrange it—whatever
that may mean.  So it was left that way.

Do you approve?

It will be wonderful to see you here, moving in the
garden, standing out yonder on the lawn!—Steve, herself, in
her own actual and matchless person!—Steve in the flesh,
here under the green old trees of Runner's Rest....
Sometimes when I am thinking of you—and I think of practically
nothing else!—I seem to see you as you were when last here—a
girl in ribbons and white, dancing over the lawn with
her chestnut hair flying; or down by the river at the foot of
the lawn, wading bare-legged, fussing and poking about
among the stones; or lying full-length on the grass under the
trees, reading "Quentin Durward"—do you remember?  And
I used to take you trout-fishing to that mysterious Dunbar
Brook up in the forest, where the rush of ice-cold waters and
the spray clouding the huge round bowlders always awed
you and made you the slightest bit uneasy.

And do you remember the brown pools behind those bowlders,
where you cautiously dropped your line; and the sudden
scurry of a black shadow in the pool—the swift tug,
the jerk and spatter as you flung a speckled trout skyward
in mingled joy and consternation?

Runner's Rest has not changed.  House and barns need
paint; the garden requires your soft white hands to caress
it into charming discipline; the house needs you; the lawns
are empty without you; the noise of the river rippling on the
shoals sounds lonely.  The whole place needs you, Steve, to
make it logical.  And so do I.  Because all this has no
meaning unless the soul of it shows through.

When I am perplexed, restless, impatient, unhappy, I try
to remember that you have given me a bit of your heart;
that you realize you have mine entire—every atom of my
love, my devotion....  There must be some way for us....
I don't know what way, because you have thought it necessary
to leave me blind.  But I shall never give you up—unless
you find that you care more for another man.

And now to answer what you have said concerning you
and me.  I suppose I ought to touch what is, theoretically,
another man's.  Yet, you do not belong to him.  And you
have begun to fall a little in love with me, haven't you?  And
in this incomprehensible pact it was agreed that you retain
your liberty until you came to final decision within two
years.

I don't understand it; I can't feel that, under the strange
circumstances, I am unfair to you or to this strange and
unexplained enigma named Oswald Grismer.

As for my attitude toward him, I hope I am free of the
lesser jealousy and resentments.  I will not allow myself to
brood or cherish unworthy malice.  I am trying to accept
him, with all his evident and unusual qualities, as a man
I've got to fight and a man I can't help liking when I let
myself judge him honestly.

As for the flimsy, eccentric, meaningless, yet legal tie
which links you to him, I care nothing about it.  It's got to
be broken ultimately—if one can break a shadow without
substance.

How to do it without your aid, without knowledge of the
facts, without causing you distress for some reason not
explained, I don't know.  But sooner or later I shall have to
know.  Because all this, if I brood on it, seems a
nightmare—an unreal dream where I struggle, fettered, blindfolded,
against the unseen and unknown, striving to win my way
through to you.

That is about all I have to say, Steve.

.. vspace:: 2

Oswald has just come in with his drawings, to find me
writing to you.  He seems very cheerful.  His design is
delightful and quite in keeping with the simplicity of the
place—just a big, circular pool made out of native stone, and in
the centre a jet around which three stone trout are
intertwined under a tumbling spray.

It is charming and will not clash at all with the long, low
house with its shutters and dormers and loop-holes, and the
little stone forts flanking it.

Telegraph me what day and what train.  And tell Helen
you and she may bring your maid-of-all-work.

.. vspace:: 1

JAMES CLELAND, in love with you.

.. vspace:: 2

There was no need of a fire in the library that
evening at Runner's Rest.  The night was mild; a mist
bordered the rushing river and stars glimmered high
above it.

Every great tree loomed huge and dark and still, the
foliage piled up fantastically against the sky-line.
There was an odour of iris in the night; and silence,
save for the dull stamping of horses in the stable.

Cleland, deep in an arm-chair on the porch, became
aware of Grismer's tall shape materializing from the
fog about him.

"It's a wonderful place, Cleland," he said with a
graceful, inclusive gesture.  "All this sweet, vague
mystery—this delicate grey dark appeals to me—satisfies,
rests me....  As though this were the abode of
the Blessed Shades, and I were of them....  And the
rest were ended."

He seated himself near the other and gazed toward
the mist out of which the river's muffled roar came to
them in ceaseless, ghostly melody.

"Charon waits at every river, they say," he remarked,
lighting a cigarette.  "I fancy he must employ
a canoe down there."

"The Iroquois once did.  The war trail crossed there.
When they burned Old Deerfield they came this way."

"The name of your quaint and squatty old house is
unusual," said Grismer.

"Runner's Rest?  Yes, in the Indian wars before the
Revolution, the Forest Runners could find food and
shelter here.  The stone forts defended it and it was
never burned."

"You inherited it?"

"Yes.  It belonged to a Captain Cleland in those
remote days."

There was a long silence.  The delicately fresh
odour of grey iris became more apparent—a perfume
that, somehow, Cleland associated with Stephanie.

Grismer said in a pleasant, listless voice:

"You are a happy man, Cleland."

"Y-yes."

"Here, under the foliage of your forefathers,"
mused Grismer aloud, "you should rest contented that
the honour of an honourable line lies secure in your
keeping."

Cleland laughed:

"I don't know how honourable they were, but I've
never heard of any actual criminals among them."

"That's a great deal."  He dropped one lean, well-shaped
hand on the arm of his chair.  The cigarette
burned between his pendant fingers, spicing the air with
its aromatic scent.

"It's a great deal to have a clean family record,"
he said again.  "It is the greatest thing in the
world—the most desirable....  The other makes existence
superfluous."

"You mean dishonour?"

"Yes.  The stain spreads.  You can't stop it.  It
taints the generations that follow.  They can't escape."

"That's nonsense," said Cleland.  "Because a man
had a crook for a forebear he isn't a crook himself."

"No.  But the stain is in his heart and brain."

"That's morbid!"

"Maybe....  But, Cleland, there are people whose
most intense desire is to be respectable.  It is a ruling
passion, inherent, unreasoning, vital to their happiness
and peace of mind.  Did you know that?"

"I suppose I can imagine such a person."

"Yes.  I suppose such a person is not normal.  In
them, hurt pride is more serious than a wound of the
flesh.  And pride, mortally wounded, means to them
mental and finally physical death."

"Such a person is abnormal and predestined to
unhappiness," said Cleland impatiently.

"Predestined," repeated Grismer in his pleasant,
even voice.  "Yes, there's something wrong with them.
But they are born so.  Nobody knows what a mental
hell they endure.  Things that others would scarcely
notice they shrink from.  Their souls are raw, quivering
things within them that agonize over a careless
slight, that wither under disapproval, that become
paralyzed under an affront.

"Their fiercest, deepest, most vital desire is to be
welcomed, approved, respected.  Without kindness
they become deformed; and crippled pride does strange,
perverse things to their brain and tongue.

"There are such people, Cleland....  Predestined
... to suffering and to annihilation....
Weaklings ... all heart and unprotected nerves
... passing their brief lives in desperate and grotesque
attempts to conceal what they are....  Superfluous
people, undesirable ... foredoomed."

He dropped his cigarette upon the drenched grass,
whore it glimmered an instant and went out.

"Cleland," he said in a singularly gentle voice, "I
once told you that I wished you well.  You did not
understand.  Let me put it a little plainer....  Is
there anything I can do for you?  Is there anything I
can refrain from doing which might add to your contentment?"

"That's an odd thing to ask," returned the other.

"No.  It is merely friendship speaking—a very deep
friendship, if you can understand it."

"You're very kind, Grismer....  I don't know
quite how to take it—or how to answer.  There is
nothing that you can do for me—nothing one man could
ask of another——"

"Ask it, all the same."

"I can't."

"Then I'll offer it....  I give up—Stephanie—to
you."

The silence lasted a long time.  Neither man stirred.
Finally Cleland said in an altered voice:

"I can't ask it—unless she does, too.  I don't know
what to say to you, Grismer, except that no man ever
spoke more nobly——"

"*That* is enough.  If you really think it, that means
everything, Cleland....  And this is my chance to
tell you that when I—married her—I never dreamed
that it could ever be a question of you....  I don't
believe she did, either....  But it has become so.
That *is* the question, now....  And so I—step out."

"I—I tell you I can't accept—that way—unless she
asks it, too," stammered Cleland....  "After all, it's
got to be on a basis of her happiness....  I am not
*sure* that her happiness lies in my keeping.  I do not
know how much she cares for you—how deeply you are
engaged in her heart....  I can't find out....  I'm
like a blind man involved in a maze!"

"She cares for me," said Grismer in his low, pleasant
voice.  "We have been intimate in mind—close and
responsive, intellectually....  Sentimentally, too.
On her part a passionless loyalty to whatever in me
she believed appealed to her intelligence and imagination;
an emotional solicitude for what she discovered
in me that aroused her sympathy——"

He turned and looked at Cleland in the darkness:

"Hers is a tender heart, Cleland.  Impulse carries it
to extremes.  Injustice to another provokes quick
action from her; and nothing so sways her as her intense
sense of gratitude, unless it be her fear of wounding
others.

"I shall have to tell you more, some day.  If I do,
it will be more than I would do for anybody else
alive—the ultimate sacrifice of pride."

He rose and stood gazing out across the mist at a
far star above it, glimmering with dimmed brilliancy
all alone.

"It couldn't have been," he said, half to himself.  "I
always knew it.  Not that the thought of you ever
crossed my mind.  I knew it would come somehow.  It
simply couldn't be."

He turned to Cleland with a sudden laugh that
sounded light and natural:

"This is to be no tragedy.  It will disentangle itself
easily and simply.  I am very sure that she is in love
with you.  Tell her what I have said to you....
And—good night, old chap."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXX

.. vspace:: 2

Stephanie and Helen arrived, bringing a
mountain of baggage and the studio cat—an animal
evidently unacquainted with the larger freedom of
outdoors, and having no cosmic urge, for when
deposited upon the lawn it fled distracted, and remained
all day upon a heap of coal in the cellar, glaring
immovably upon blandishment.

"Oh!" cried Stephanie, standing on the lawn and
quite enchanted by the old place.  "It is simply too
lovely!  It's like a charming doll's house—it's so much
smaller than I remember it!  Helen, did you ever see
such trees!  And isn't the garden a dear!  Listen to
the noise of the river!  Did you ever hear anything as
refreshing as that endless rippling?  Where is Oswald,
Jim?"

"He went back to town this morning."

"How mean of him!"

"I tried to keep him," said Cleland, "but he insisted
that it was really a matter of business.  And, of course,
I had nothing more to say."

"Did he have a good time here?" asked Stephanie in
a guileless voice.  But she looked sideways at him.

"I think so, Steve.  He seemed carefree and vastly
contented to rove over the place.  I planned to go with
him after trout, but he preferred to prowl about the
lawn or smoke on the porch....  I am glad he came.
I have learned to like him very much."

"You're a dear!" she murmured under her breath,
her grey eyes fixed on him and full of a gay tenderness
tinged with humour.  "You always do the right thing,
Jim; you *are* right, that's the reason.  Do you wonder
that I'm quite mad about you?—I, who am all wrong."

"Who says you are all wrong?" he demanded, starting
toward her.  But she deftly avoided him, putting
the sun dial between them.  And, leaning on it with
both elbows, her face framed in her hands, she let her
eyes look gay defiance into his.

"I'm all wrong," she said.  "You don't know it, but
I am."

"Do you want to be punished?"

She laughed tormentingly, feeling delightfully secure
from his demonstrations there on the sunny lawn, with
Helen wandering about inspecting the flowers in the
garden, and the hired man unloading the luggage at the
side-door.

"Come on, Helen!" she called gaily.  "We can have
a bath; there's plumbing in the house, you know.
Where do you suppose that poor cat is hidden?"

Helen came from the garden with a blue pansy
between her lips, which she presently drew through
Cleland's lapel.

"A bribe, dear friend.  I wish to go fishing," she said.
"Stephanie has been telling me about her girlhood days
here with you, and how you took her on several sacred
occasions to a mysterious, dashing stream full of huge
bowlders—somewhere deep in the primeval woods——"

"The Dunbar brook, Jim," smiled Stephanie.
"Shall we go fishing in the morning?  I'm not going
to spend all my time fussing with domestic problems."

"The cares of housekeeping sit lightly on her,"
remarked Helen, as they all strolled toward the porch.
"What if the new servants are slack and wasteful?
Being a man you wouldn't know; being Steve, she
doesn't worry.  I see that it's going to devolve on me.
Is it possible to run two baths in this house at the same
time?"

"Is it?" inquired Stephanie of Cleland.  "I forget."

"Yes," he replied, "if you don't draw too much hot
water."

"Take yours first, Helen," she said.  "I'll sit in this
cool library and gossip with Jim for a while."

She unpinned her hat and flung it on a sofa, untied
a large box of bonbons, and careless of her charmingly
disordered hair, vaulted to a seat on the massive centre
table—a favourite perch of hers when a young girl.

Helen lingered to raid the bonbons; Cleland immediately
began his pet theme:

"Why do Americans eat candy?  Because the nation
doesn't know how to cook!  The French don't stuff
themselves with candy.  There isn't, in Paris, a
candy-shop to the linear mile!  That's because French
stomachs, being properly fed with properly and deliciously
cooked food, don't crave candy.  But in a country
noted for its wretched and detestable bread——"

"Oh, you always say that," remarked Stephanie.
"Some day I'll go over and find out how much truth
there is in your tirades.  Meanwhile, I shall consume
candy."

"When you go over," he said, "you'll go with me."  His
voice was low.  Helen had strolled into the "best
room" and was standing there with a bitter chocolate
between her fingers, contemplating the old-time furniture.

"When I go over to Paris," said Stephanie airily, "I
shall invite whom I choose."

"Who will it be?"

"Oh, some agreeable young man who isn't too bossy,"
she returned airily.  "Somebody who doesn't try to
place me in a day nursery while he goes about and has
his fling.  But, of course, that doesn't mean you.
You've had your fling, haven't you?"

"Not too violently," he said.

"That is your story.  But I think I'll investigate it
when I go over, and tell you what I've found out when
I return."

Helen finished her chocolate and came back.
"Where the dickens is that unhappy cat, do you
suppose?" she inquired.

"Oh, she'll turn up at dinner-time," Cleland
reassured her.  "Do you know where your room is,
Helen?"

"How should I?" returned that young lady, "—never
having been in the house before——"

"Dear, forgive me!" cried Stephanie, jumping from
her perch and passing one arm around Helen's shoulders.

They went away together, the former waving a saucy
adieu to Cleland behind her back, without turning.  She
did not return.

So he concluded to get himself into fresh flannels,
the late afternoon having grown very warm and
promising a close and humid evening.

But when he descended again from his room, he
found nobody except the cat, who, sadly disfigured by
coal-dust, advanced toward him with amiable intention.

"Very fine, old girl," he said, "but you need a bath,
too."  So he rang and sent for some butter, dabbed a
little on the cat's nose; and in ten seconds she had
begun a thorough and minute toilet, greatly to
Cleland's edification.

"Keep it up," he said, much interested, watching
the pink tongue travelling over the fur, and the velvet
paw scrubbing away industriously.  "Good old cat!
Go to it!  Take the whole course—massage, shampoo,
manicure, whiskers ironed!  By Jove, you're coming
out brand new!"

The cat paused to blink at him, sniff for a moment
some faint perfume of distant cooking, unnoticed by his
less delicate nostrils, then she settled down to the
business in hand.  And when a cat does that she feels
that she is entirely at home.

Not until a maid announced dinner did the two girls
appear, both arrayed in that filmy and dainty flyaway
apparel suitable only to youth and freshness.

"We had naps," remarked Stephanie shamelessly,
and with a slightly malicious humour in her smile, for
she knew that Cleland had expected her to return for
the ten-minutes' gossip she had suggested.

He shrugged:

"You should see your cat!  She's polished within an
inch of her life——"

A loud mew by his chair announced the regenerated
animal's advent.

Stephanie fed it with odd morsels from time to time,
and cautioned the waitress to prepare a banquet for
it after dinner.

It was still daylight when they strolled out into the
garden.  The tree-clad eastern ridge was all ruddy in
the rays of a declining sun; the river dull silver save in
pools where pearl and pink tints tinged the stiller
water.  Birds were very noisy, robins gallantly
attacking a gay carol which they always found
impossible to vary or bring to any convincing musical
conclusion; song sparrows sweetly monotonous; an
exquisite burst of melody from a rose-grosbeak high on
a balsam-tip above the stream; the rushing twitter of
chimney swifts sweeping by, mounting, fluttering,
sheering through the sunset sky.

Helen, pausing by the sun-dial, read aloud what was
chiselled there, black with encrusted lichens.

"Who wrote this?" she asked curiously.

"Some bandit of the back-woods, some wilderness fur
trader or ruthless forest runner—with murder on his
soul, perhaps.  I don't remember now.  But my father
made a note of the story."

She read the straggling lines again, slowly:

   |    "But for ye Sunne no one would heed Me—
   |  A senseless Stone;
   |    But for ye Sunne no one could rede Me
   |  Save God alone.
   |    I and my comrade Sunne, together,
   |  Print here ye hours
   |    In praise of Love and pleasant weather
   |  And Youth and flowers."
   |

"How odd and quaint," she mused, "—and what
straggling, primitive, illiterate letters these are,
chiselled here in this black basalt.  Fancy that gaunt,
grim, buck-skinned runner emerging from the wilderness
into this solitary settlement, finding shelter and
refreshment; and, in his brief hour of rest and idleness,
labouring to leave his record on this old stone!"

"His was a poet's soul," said Cleland, "—but he
probably took an Iroquois scalp when unobserved, and
skinned living and dead impartially in his fur transactions."

"Some degenerate son of honest English stock, I
suppose," nodded Helen.  "Yet, he had the simplicity
of the Cavalier verse-makers in his gracious heart....
Well, for his sake——"

She laid a June rose on the weather-ravaged dial.
"God rest him, anyway!" she added lightly.  "There's
a devil in every one of us."

"Not in you, darling," cooed Stephanie, enlacing her
waist.  "If there ever was, he's dead."

"I wonder." ... She glanced deliberately at Cleland,
then smiled:

"There was a bully romance I read in extreme youth,
in which an old swashbuckler was always exclaiming:
'Courage!  The devil is dead!'  And since I have
realized that I, also, harboured a devil, the memory of
that cheery war-cry always puts me on my mettle to
slay him....  It's a good fight, Jim," she added,
serenely.  "But a really good fight is never finished, you
know.  And it's better to end the story with, 'so they
lived to fight happily ever after,' than to announce that
the problem is solved, the romance ended for eternity."

In the pink dusk she picked her way over the dewy
grass toward the porch, saying carelessly that her
ancient bones resented dampness.

Stephanie, resting against the sun-dial, inhaled the
sweetness of the iris and spoke of it.

"The flowers are lilac-grey, like your eyes," he said.
"The scent expresses you to me—faintly sweet—a
young, fresh, delicate odour—*you*—in terms of perfume."

"*Such* a poet! ... But you know one never should
touch the petals of an iris....  The indiscreet
imprint remains."

"Have I left any imprint?"

"I should say you had!  Do you suppose my mind
isn't busy most of the time remembering your—imprints?"

"Is it?"

"Does it comfort you to know it?  Nobody else ever
pawed me."

"A nice way to put it!" he remarked.

She shrugged:

"I don't know how it was I first permitted it—came
to endure it——"  She lifted her grey eyes deliberately,
"—invited it ... because I came to expect it—wish
for it——"  She bit her lip and made a quick
gesture with clenched hand.  "Oh, Jim, I'm no good!
Here I am married, and as nonchalantly unfaithful to
my vows as you care to make me——"

She turned abruptly and walked across the lawn
toward the willows that fringed the stream, moving
leisurely, pensively, her hands linked behind her back.
He rejoined her at the willows and they slowly entered
the misty belt of trees together.

"If you knew," she said, "what a futile, irresolute,
irresponsible creature I am, you wouldn't waste real
love on me.  There's nothing to me except feminine
restlessness, mental and physical, and it urges, urges,
urges me to wander frivolously in pursuit of God knows
what—*I* don't!  But always my mind is a traveller
impatient to go a-gypsying, and my feet beat the devil's
tattoo——"

She sprang from the pebbles to a flat river stone
projecting from the shore and stood poised, looking
out across the rushing water at the mist curling there
along the crests of little hurrying waves.  A firefly
drifted through it; above, unseen, night-hawks called
persistently.  She turned her head toward him expectantly.

There was room enough on the rock and he stepped
to her side.

"I'm like that water," she said, "making a futile
noise in the world, dashing and rippling along without
any plan of my own, any destination.  When I'm honest
with myself, I know that it isn't the intellectual
desire for self-expression that keeps me restless; it's
merely and solely the instinct to ripple and bubble and
dance and flow out under the stars and sunsets and
dawns—and go sparkling and swirling and glimmering
purposelessly away out into the world at
random....  And *that's* all there is to Stephanie
Quest!—if you really desire to know—you very romantic
and foolish boy, who think yourself in love with
her!"

She looked up and laughed at his sober face.

"Dear novelist," she said, "it's common realism, not
romantic fiction, that has *us* in its clutches.  We're
caught by the commonplace.  If life were only like one
of your novels, with some definite beginning, an artistic
plot full of action running toward a properly planned
climax!—but it isn't!  It begins in the middle and ends
nowhere.  And here's another trouble with real life;
there aren't any villains.  And that's fatal to me as
your heroine, Jim, for I can't be one unless I'm
furnished with a foil."

"Steve," he said, "if you are not everything that my
mind and heart believe you to be, the time is past when
it makes any difference to me what you are."

She laughed:

"Oh, Jim, is it really as serious as that?  Can you
stand for a mindless, purposeless girl of unmoral and
nomadic proclivities who really hasn't a single gift—no
self to express, no creative or interpretive talent—with
nothing but an inordinate, unquiet curiosity to
find out everything there is to find out—a mental
gypsy, lazy, self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, irresponsible——"

He began to laugh:

"All that is covered by one word—'intelligent,'" he
said.  "You're just human, with a healthy intellect and
normal inclinations."

"Oh, dear, you're so dreadfully wrong.  I'm a
fraud—nice to look at and to stroll with——"

She turned and stepped across to the pebbled shore.
He followed.  She bent her head and, not looking at
him, drew his arm around her waist and held it there
with one hand across his.

"I'm desperately in love," she said, "but I'm a
sham—agreeable to caress, pliant, an apt pupil—pretty
material for a sweetheart, Jim—but for nothing more
important." ... They walked slowly along the shore
path down stream under the silver willows, his arm
enlacing her supple figure, her slow, deliberate steps in
rhythm with his.

After a while he said in a low voice:

"Dear, you and I have already come a long way on
the blossoming path together.  I believe it is written
that we travel it together to the end.  Don't you want
me *always*, Steve?"

"Yes," she sighed, pressing her hand over his at her
waist.  "I do want you, always....  But, Jim—I'm
not what you think me.  I ran rather wild while you
were away.  Liberty went to my empty head.  I didn't
seem to care what I did.  The very devils seemed to be in
my heels and they carried me everywhere at random——"

"Nonsense!"

"Oh, they did!  They landed me in a dreadful pickle.
You know they did.  And now here I am, married, and
falling more desperately in love every minute with the
other man.  *You* can't really love such a fool of a girl!"

"It makes no difference," he said, "I can't go on
alone, now."

She pressed her cheek against his shoulder:

"You need not.  You can always have me when you wish."

"You mean—just this way?"

"Yes....  How else——"  She looked up at him;
he suddenly stopped in the path, her next step brought
her around facing him, where she halted, encircled by
his arm.  After a moment's silence, she rested her
clasped hands on his shoulder, looking very seriously
into his eyes.

"How else?" she repeated in a half-whisper.

"Divorce."

"No, dear."

"Either that or—we can go away somewhere—together——"

The dryness of his throat checked him, and her clear
eyes looked him through and through.

"Either you or I," he said, "have got to tell Oswald
how matters——"

"We can't, Jim."

"Tell him," he continued, "that we are in love with
each other and need to marry——"

"Oh, Jim—my dear—dearest, I can't do that!"

"It's true, isn't it?" he demanded.

She did not answer for a while.  Then she unclasped
his hands, which had been resting on his shoulder, and
slipped one arm around his neck:

"Yes, it is true; I want to marry you.  But I
can't....  So—so won't this way do?" she said.
"You can always have me this way."

He kissed her lifted lips.

"No, it won't do, Steve.  I want all that you are, all
that you have to give the man you love and marry, all
that the future holds of beauty and of mystery for us
both....  I want a home with you, Steve; I want
every minute of life with you, waking and sleeping....
I love you, Steve....  And because I do love you I
dare tell you that I am falling in love with our future,
too—in love with the very thought of—your children,
Steve....  Dear, I think that I am like my father.
I love only once.  And once in love, there is nothing else
for me; no other woman, no recompense if you fail me,
no cure for me."

They both were deadly serious now; his face was
quiet but set in firm and sober lines; she had lost much
of her colour, so that the grey eyes with their dark
lashes seemed unusually large.

"I *can't* marry you," she said, drawing his head
nearer.  "Do you think for one moment that I would
deny you anything you asked of me if it were in my
power to give?"

"Will you not tell me why?"

"I'm not free to tell you....  Oh, Jim!  I adore
you—I do love you so—so deeply.  I'm married.  I'm
sorry I'm married.  But I can't help it—I can't get
out of it—it scares me even to think of trying——"

"What hold has that man——"

"No hold.  There's something else—something sad,
terrible——"

"I'll take you, anyway," he said in a low, tense voice.
"He will have his remedy."

"How, Jim?  Do you mean that you wish me to defy
opinion with you?  You wouldn't let me do that, would
you, dear?  I'd do it if you asked, but you wouldn't
let me, would you?"

"No."  He had lost his head for a moment; that was
all; and the ugly threat had been wrenched out of him
in the confusion of a tortured mind struggling against
it knew not what.

"Jim," she asked under her breath, "would you really
*let* me?"

"No," he said savagely.

"I knew you wouldn't."

Her arm slipped from his neck and again she clasped
both slender hands, rested them on his shoulder, and
laid her cheek against them.

"It wouldn't help me out of this pickle if we
misbehaved," she said thoughtfully.  "It wouldn't solve the
problem....  I suppose you've taken me seriously as
an apostle of that new liberty which ignores
irregularities—doesn't admit them to be irregular.  That's why
you said what you did say, I fancy.  I've talked enough
modern foolishness to have you think me quite
emancipated—quite indifferent to the old social order, the old
code of morals, the old dogmas, the ancient and
orthodox laws of community and individual conduct....
Haven't you supposed me quite capable of sauntering
away unconventionally with the man I love, after the
ironical and casual spectacle of marriage which I have
afforded you?"

"I don't know," he said bitterly.  "I don't know what
I have thought....  There will never be anybody
except you.  If I lose you I lose the world.  But between
you and me there is a deeper tie than anything less
than marriage could sanction.  We couldn't ever do
that, Steve—let the world go hang while we gave it an
extra kick for each other's sakes."

"Because," she whispered, "dad's roof was ours.  For
his honour, if not for our own, we could not affront the
world, dear....  Not that I don't love you enough!"
she added almost fiercely.  "I do love you enough!  I
don't care whether you know it.  Nothing would
matter—if there were no other way—and if I were free to
take the only way that offered.  Do you suppose I'd
hesitate if it lay between taking that way and losing you?"

She turned and began to pace the path excitedly,
cheeks flushed and hands clenching and unclenching.

"What do I care about myself!" she said.  She
snapped her fingers: "I don't care *that*, Jim, when your
happiness is at stake!  I'd go to you, go with you,
love you, face the world undaunted.  I care nothing
about myself.  I know myself!  What am I?  *You* know!"

She came up close to him, her face afire, her grey
eyes brilliant.

"You know what I am," she repeated.  "You and
dad did everything to make me like yourselves.  You
took me out of the gutter——"

"Steve!"

"You took me out of the gutter!" she repeated excitedly.
"You cleaned the filth from me, gave me shelter,
love;—you educated me, made me possible, strove to
eradicate the unworthy instincts and inclinations which
I might have inherited.  My aunt told me.  I know
what dad did for me!  Why shouldn't I adore the
memory of your father?  Why shouldn't I love his son?
I do.  I always have.  I didn't dream that you ever
could offer me a greater love.  But when I understood
that it was true—when I realized that it was really
love, then I stepped into your arms because you held
them out to me—because you were your father's son
whom I had loved passionately all my life in one way,
and was willing to learn to love in any way you asked
of me—Jim!—my brother—my lover——"

She flung herself into his arms, choking, clinging to
him, struggling to control her voice:

"I am nothing—I am nothing," she sobbed passionately.
"Why should not all my gratitude and loyalty
be for your father's son?  What is so terrible to me is
that I can't give myself!  That I can't throw myself at
your feet for life.  To marry you would be too heavenly
wonderful!  Or, to snap my fingers in the world's face
for your sake—dearest—that would be so little to do
for you—so easy.

"But I can't.  Your father—dad—would know it.
And then the world would blame him for ever harbouring
a gutter-waif——"

"Steve, dearest——"

"Oh, Jim," she stammered, "I haven't even told you
how those inherited traits have raised the deuce with
me.  I've got in me all the low instincts, all the indolence,
the selfish laziness, the haphazard, irresponsible,
devil-may-care traits of the man who was my own father!"

"Steve——!"

"Let me tell you!  I've got to tell you.  I can't keep
it any longer.  It was something in Oswald that
appealed to that gypsy side of me—awoke it, I think.
The first time I ever saw him, as a boy, and under
disagreeable circumstances, I felt an odd inclination for
him.  He was *like* me, and I sensed it!  I told you that
once.  It's true.  Something in him appealed to the
vagabond recklessness and irresponsibility latent in
me—the tendency to wander, the indolent desire to
drift and explore pleasant places....  After you
went abroad I met him.  I wrote you about it.  I liked
him.  He fascinated me.  There was something in
common—something common in common between us....
I went to his studio, at first with Helen, and also when
others were there.  Then I went alone.  I didn't care,
knowing there was really no harm in going, and also
being at the age when defiance of convention is more
or less attractive to every girl.

"He was fascinating.  He was plainly in love with
me.  But that means nothing to a girl except the subtle
excitement and flattery of the fact.  But he was what I
wanted—a fellow vagabond!

"Every time I came into town I went to his studio.
My aunt had no idea what I was up to.  And we did
have such good times, Jim!—you see he was successful
then, and he had a wonderful studio—and a car—and
we ran out into the country and then returned to
take tea in his studio....  And, Jim, it was all
right—but it was not good for me."

She clasped his arm with both of hers and rested
her head on his shoulder; and went on talking in a
steadier and more subdued voice:

"I didn't write you about it; I was very sure you
wouldn't approve.  And my head was stuffed full of
modernism and liberty and urge and the necessity for
self-expression.  I felt that I had a perfect right to
enjoy myself....  And then came trouble.  It always
does....  Oswald's father, Chiltern Grismer, came to
the hospital one day, terribly wrought up and looking
ghastly.

"My aunt had gone to New York to consult a
specialist, but he asked for me, and I came down to the
private reception room.  I was a graduate nurse then.
Oh, Jim!—it was quite dreadful.  He seemed to be
scared until he saw that I was.  Then he was fearfully
harsh with me.  He told me that my aunt was about to
begin suit against him to recover some money—a great
deal of money—which my aunt pretended I should
have inherited from my grandmother, Mr. Grismer's
sister.

"He said we were two adventuresses and that he
would expose me and my unhappy origin—all that
horror of my childhood——"

A sob checked her; she rested in his arms, breathing
fast and irregularly; then, recovering self-control:

"I was bewildered.  I told him I didn't want his
money.  But there was in his eyes a terror which I
could see there even when he was upbraiding and
threatening me most violently.  I didn't know what to do; I
wanted to go back to my ward, but he followed me and
held the door closed, and I had to listen to the terrible,
shameful things he said about my mother's mother and
my own mother and myself....  Well—just as he
was about to leave, my aunt entered....  I was in
tears, and Mr. Grismer's face was all twisted and
contorted with rage, as I thought; but it remained so,
white and distorted, as though something had broken
and he couldn't recover the mobility of his features.  I
heard what my aunt said to him—I didn't want to hear
it.  I cried out, protesting that I didn't wish any of
his money....  He went away with his face all
twisted...."

"What did your aunt say to him?"

"I can't tell you, dear.  I am not at liberty to tell
you....  And after all, it doesn't matter....  He
died—suddenly—a week later....  My aunt was ill
at the time and I was with her....  A letter was
handed to her by an orderly.  It was from
Mr. Grismer....  From a dead man!  What she read in it
seemed to be a terrific shock to her.  She was sick and
weak, but she got out of bed and telephoned to her
attorneys in New York....  I was frightened....
It was a most dreadful night for us both....
And ... and my aunt died of it, I think—the shock
and her illness combined....  She died a week
later....  I took our studio with Helen....  I saw
Oswald every day.  He had inherited a great deal of
money.  We went about....  And, Jim, the very
devil was in me to roam everywhere with him and see
things and explore the part of the world we could cover
in his touring car.  All the gypsy instinct born in me,
all the tendency to irresponsible wandering and idle
pleasure suddenly seemed to develop and demand
satisfaction....  Oswald was a dear.  He was in love with
me; I knew it.  He didn't want to go on those
escapades with me; but I bullied him into it....  And it
got to a point beyond all bounds; the more recklessly
we went about the keener my delight in risking
everything for the sake of unconventional amusement.
Twice we were caught out so far from New York that
he had to drive all night to get into town.  And then,
what was to be expected happened: our car broke down
when it meant a night away from the studio with
Oswald.  And the very deuce was to pay, too, for in the
Ten Eyck Hotel at Albany we ran into friends—girls
I knew in school and their parents—friends of dad's!

"Oh, Jim, I was panic-stricken.  We *had* to stay
there, too.  I—there was nothing to do but present
Oswald as my husband....  That was a terrible night.
We had two rooms and a connecting parlour.  We
talked it over; I cried most of the time.  Then I wrote
out that cablegram to you....  Oh, Jim, he is a dear.
You don't know him as I do.  He knew I didn't love him
and he was in love with me....  Well, we had to do
something.

"He went out to the Fort Orange Club and got a
man he knew.  Then, with this man as witness, we told
each other that we'd marry each other....  Then
Oswald went away with his friend and I didn't see him
again until next day, when he called for me with the
car....  And that is all there was of my marriage....
And now," she sobbed, "I'm in love with
you and I—I——"  She broke down hopelessly.  He
drew her close to him, holding her tightly.

"There is m-more," she faltered, "but I c-can't tell it.
It's c-confidential—a matter of honour.  I want to be
what dad and you expect of me.  I do want to be
honourable.  That is why I can't tell you another
person's secret....  It would be dishonourable.  And
even if I told you, I'd be afraid to ask him for my
freedom——"

"You mean he would not let you divorce him?"

"Oh, no, I *don't* mean that!  That is the terrible
part of it!  He would give me my freedom.  But I
don't want it—that way—not on the—not on such
terms——"

They walked slowly toward the house together, she
leaning on him as though very tired.  Ahead of them
a few fireflies sparkled.  The rushing roar of the river
was in their ears all the way to the house.

Helen had retired, leaving a note for them on the
library table:

.. vspace:: 2

Forgive me, but I've yawned my head off—not because
you two lunatics are out star-gazing, but because I'm in my
right mind and healthily fatigued.  Put the cat out before
you lock up!

.. vspace:: 1

\H.

.. vspace:: 2

Stephanie laughed, and they hunted up the cat,
discovered her asleep in the best room, and bore her out
to the veranda.  Then Cleland locked up while Stephanie
waited for him.  Her tears had dried.  She was a
trifle pale and languid in her movements, but so lovely
that Cleland, already hopelessly in love with her, fell
deeper as he looked at her in this pale and unfamiliar
phase.

Her grey eyes returned his adoration sweetly, pensively
humourous:

"I'm in rags, emotionally," she said.  "This loving
a young man is a disturbing business to a girl who's
just learned how....  Are you coming upstairs?"

"I suppose so."

"You'll sleep, of course?"

"Probably not a wink, Steve."

"I wonder if I shall."

They ascended the old staircase together in silence.
At her door she held out her hand; he kissed it,
released the fingers, but they closed around his and she
drew him to her.

"What *shall* I do?" she said.  "Tell me?"

"I don't know, dearest.  There seems to be nothing
you can do for us."

She bent her head thoughtfully.

"Anything that dishonours me would dishonour you
and dad, wouldn't it, Jim?"

"Yes."

She nodded.

"You understand, don't you?  I count myself as
nothing.  Only you count, Jim.  But I can't marry
you.  And I can't go to you otherwise without betraying
both dad and you.  It isn't a question of my being
married and of loving you enough to disregard it.  I
do.  But you and dad require more than that of the
girl you made one of your own race.  I am loyal to
what you both expect of me....  Good night,
dear....  There doesn't seem to be any way I can
make you happy.  The only way I can show my love
and gratitude to dad and you is to retain your
respect ... by being unkind—Jim—my dearest—dearest——"

She closed her eyes and gave him her lips, slipped
swiftly out of his arms and into her room.

"Oh, I'm desperately in love," she said, shaking her
head at him as she slowly closed the door.  "I'm going
to get very, very little sleep, I fear....  Jim?"

"Yes."

"You know," she said, "Helen is a charming, clever,
talented, beautiful girl.  If you are afraid my
behaviour is going to make you unhappy——"

"Steve, are you crazy?"

"Couldn't you fall in love with her?"

"Do you want me to try?"

There was a silence, then Stephanie shook her head
and gently closed her door.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXI

.. vspace:: 2

In July Stephanie asked Harry Belter and his wife
to spend a week at Runner's Rest.  They arrived,
the husband a vastly modified edition of his
former boisterous, careless, assertive self—a subdued
young man now, who haunted his wife with edifying
assiduity, moving when she moved, sitting when she sat,
tagging faithfully at her dainty heels as though a
common mind originated their every inclination.

Philip Grayson, who had been asked with them, told
Helen that the Belters had bored him horribly on the
journey up.

"You know," he said, "Harry Belter used to be at
least amusing, and Marie Cliff was certainly a sparkling
companion.  But they seem to have no conversation
except for each other, no interests outside of each other,
and if a fellow ventures to make a remark they either
don't listen or they politely make an effort to notice him."

"You can't blame them," smiled Helen, "after three
years of estrangement, and in love with each other all
the while."

She was seated under a tree on the edge of the woods,
half way up the western slope behind Runner's Rest.
Grayson lay among the ferns at her feet.  The day had
turned hot, but up there in the transparent green
shadows of the woods a slight breeze was stirring.

"Estranged all that time, and yet in love," repeated
Helen, sentimentally, spreading out a fern frond on her
knees and smoothing it.  "Do you wonder that they
lose no time together?"

Grayson, sprawling on his stomach, his handsome
face framed in both hands, emitted a scornful
laugh.

"You're very tender-hearted, theoretically," he said.

The girl looked up, smiled:

"Theoretically?" she inquired.  "What do you mean, Phil?"

"What I say.  Theoretically you are tender-hearted,
sympathetic, susceptible.  But practically——"  His
short laugh was ironical.

"Practically—what?" demanded the girl, flushing.

"Practically, you're just practical, Helen.  You're
nice to everybody, impartially; you go about your
sculpture with the cheerful certainty of genius;
nothing ever disconcerts you; you are always the cool,
freshly gowned, charmingly poised embodiment of
everything lovely and desirable—wonderful to look at,
engaging and winsome to talk to—and—and all marble
inside!"

"Phil!  You unpleasant wretch!"

"Therefore," he said deliberately, "when you
sentimentalize over the Belters and how they loved each other
madly for several years after having bounced each
other, your enthusiasm leaves me incredulous."

"The trouble with every man is this," she said; "any
girl who doesn't fall in love with him is heartless—all
marble inside—merely because she doesn't flop when he
expects it.  He gives that girl no credit for warm
humanity unless she lavishes it on him.  If she doesn't,
she's an iceberg and he sticks that label on her for
life."

Grayson sat up among the ferns and gathered his
legs under him:

"It isn't because you don't care for me," he said,
"but I tell you, Helen, you're too complete in yourself
to fall in love."

"Self-satisfied?  Thanks!"  But she still did not
believe he meant it.

"You are conscious of your self-sufficiency," he said
coolly.  "You are beautiful to look at, but your mind
controls your heart; you do with your heart what you
choose to do."  He added, half to himself: "It would be
wonderful if you ever let it go.  But you're far too
practical and complacent to do that."

"Let what go?"

"Your heart.  You really have one, you know."

The pink tint of rising indignation still lingered on
her cheeks; she looked at this presumptuous young man
with speculative brown eyes, realizing that for the first
time in his three years' sweet-tempered courtship he had
said something unpleasantly blunt and virile to
her—unacceptable because of the raw truth in it.

This was not like Phil Grayson—this sweet-tempered,
gentle, good-looking writer of a literature which
might be included under the term of belles lettres—this
ornamental young fellow whose agreeable devotion
she had come to take for granted—whose rare
poems pleased her critical taste and flattered it when
she saw them printed in the most exclusive of periodicals
and hailed effusively by the subtlest of critics.

"Phil," she said, her brown eyes resting on him with
a curiosity not free from irritation, "is this really what
you think I am—after all these years of friendship?"

"It really is, Helen."

Into her hurt face came the pink tint of wrath again;
but she sat quite still, her head lowered, pulling fronds
from the fern on her lap.

"I'm sorry if you're offended," he said cheerfully,
and lighted a cigarette.

Helen's troubled face cooled; she tore tiny shreds of
living green from the fern; her remote eyes rested on
him, on the blue hills across the valley, on the river
below them, sparkling under the July sun.

Down there, Marie Belter, with her red parasol, was
sauntering across the pasture, and Harry paddled faithfully
beside her, fanning his features with his straw hat.

"There goes Marie and Fido," said Grayson, laughing.
"Good Lord!  After all, it's a dog's life at any
angle you care to view it."

"*What* is a dog's life?" inquired Helen crisply.

"Marriage, dear child."

"OK.  Do you view it that way?"

"I do....  But we dogs were invented for it.  After
all, I suppose we prefer to live our dogs' lives to any
other—we human Fidos——"

"Phil!  You never before gave me any reason to
believe you a cynical materialist.  And you have
been very unjust and disagreeable to me.  Do you
know it?"

"I'm tired of running at your heels, I suppose....
A dog knows when he's welcome....  After a while the
lack of mutual sympathy gets on his nerves, and he
strays by the roadside....  And sometimes, if lonely,
the owner of another pair of heels will look behind her
and find him paddling along....  That's the life of
the dog, Helen—with exceptions like that cur of Bill
Sykes.  But the great majority of pups won't stay
where they're lonely for such love as they offer.  For
your dog must have love....  The love of the human
god he worships.  Or of some other god."

He laughed lightly:

"And I, who worship a goddess for her divine genius
and her loveliness—I have trotted at her heels a long,
long time, Helen, and I'm just beginning to understand,
in my dog's heart, that my divinity does not
want me."

"I—I *do* want you!"

"No, you don't.  You haven't enough emotion in
you to want anybody.  You're too complete, too
self-satisfied, too intellectual, too clever to understand a
heart's desire—the swift, unselfish, unfeigned,
uncalculated passion that makes us human.  There's
nothing to you but intellect and beauty.  And I'm fed up!"

The girl rose, flushed and disconcerted by his brutality.
Grayson got up, bland, imperturbable, accepting
her departure pleasantly.

She meant to go back all alone down the hillside;
that was evident in her manner, in her furious
calmness, in her ignoring the tiny handkerchief which he
recovered from the moss and presented.

She was far too angry to speak.  He stood under
the trees and watched her as she descended the hillside
toward the house, just visible below.

Down she went through the heated wild grass and
ferns, stepping daintily over gulleys, avoiding jutting
rocks, down, ever down hill, receding farther and
farther from his view until, a long way below him, he saw
her halt, a tiny, distant figure shining white and
motionless in the sun.

He waited for her to move on again out of sight.
She did not.

After a long while he saw her lift one arm and beckon
him.

"Am I a Fido?" he asked himself.  "Damn it,
I believe I am."  And he started leisurely down hill.

When he joined her where she stood waiting, her
brown eyes avoided his glance and the colour in her
cheeks grew brighter.

"If you believe," she said, "that my mind controls my
heart, why don't you make it an intellectual argument
with me?  Why not appeal to my reason?  Because I—I
am intelligent enough to be open to conviction—if
your logic proves sounder than—mine."

"I can't make love to you logically.  Love doesn't
admit of it."

"Love *is* logical—or it's piffle!"

"I don't know how to make intellectual love."

"You'd better learn."

"Could you give me a tip?" he asked timidly.

Then Helen threw back her pretty head and began
to laugh with that irresponsible, unfeigned,
full-throated and human laughter that characterized the
primitive girl when her naïve sense of humour was
stirred to response by her lover of the cave.

For Helen had caught a glimpse of this modern
young caveman's intellectual brutality and bad temper
for the first time in her life, and it was a vital
revelation to the girl.

He had whacked her, verbally, violently, until, in her
infuriated astonishment, it was made plain to her that
there was much more to him than she had ever reckoned
with.  He had hurt her pride, dreadfully, he had
banged her character about without mercy—handled
her with a disdainful vigour and virility that opened
her complacent brown eyes to a new vision and a new
interpretation of man.

"Phil," she murmured, "do you realize that you were
positively common in what you said to me up on that hill?"

"I know I was."

"You told me——" a slight shudder passed over her
and he felt it in the shoulder that touched his—"you
told me that you—you were 'fed up!'"

"I *was*!"

"And you, a poet—a man with an almost divine
facility of language——"

"Sure," he said, grinning; "I'm artist enough to
know the value of vulgarity.  It gives a wonderful
punch, Helen—once in a lifetime."

"Oh, Phil!  You horrify me.  I didn't understand
that you are just a plain, every-day, bad-tempered,
brutal, selfish and violent man——"

"Dearest, I am!  And thank God you are woman
enough to stand for it....  Are you?"

They had reached the house and were standing on the
porch now, her hands restlessly twisting in his
sun-browned grasp, her pretty head averted, refusing to
meet his eyes.

"Are you?" he repeated sternly.

"Am I, what?  Oh, Phil, you hurt me—my rings
hurt——"

"Then don't twist your fingers.  And answer me;
are you woman enough to stand for the sort of
everyday human man that you say I am?  *Are* you?"

She said something under her breath.

"Did you say yes?" he demanded.

She nodded, not looking at him.

Before he could kiss her she slid out of his grasp
with a low exclamation of warning, and, looking
around, he beheld the Belters, arm-in-arm,
approaching across the lawn.

"Fido!" he muttered, "damn!"  And he followed his
divinity into the house.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXII

.. vspace:: 2

Helen kept her own council as long as the
Belters remained at Runner's Rest, but as soon
as they had departed she went to Stephanie's
room and made a clean breast of it.

"What on earth do you suppose has happened to
me, Steve?" she demanded, standing by the day-bed on
which Stephanie was stretched out reading a novel and
absorbing chocolates.

"What?" asked Stephanie, lifting her grey eyes.

"Well, there's the very deuce to pay with Phil Grayson.
He isn't a bit nice to me.  He isn't like himself.
He bullies me."

"Why do you let him?"

"I—don't know.  I resent it.  He's entirely too bossy.
He's taken possession of me and he behaves abominably."

"Sentimentally?"

"Yes."

"But you don't have to endure it!" exclaimed Stephanie,
astonished.

"If I don't submit," said Helen, "I shall lose him.
He'll go away.  He says he will."

"Well, do you care what Phil Grayson does?" demanded
Stephanie, amazed.

Then that intellectual, capable, intelligent and superbly
healthy girl flopped down on her knees by
Stephanie's day-bed and, laying her lovely head on the pillow,
began to whimper.

"I—I don't know what's the matter with me," she
stammered, "but my mind is full of that wretched man
every minute of the day and half of the night.  He is
absolutely shameless; he makes love to me t-tyranically.
It's impossible for a girl to keep her reserve—her
d-dignity with a m-man who takes her into his arms and
k-kisses her whenever he chooses——"

"What!" cried Stephanie, sitting bolt upright and
staring at her friend.  "Do you mean to tell me that
Phil is *that* sort of man?"

"I didn't think so, either," explained Helen.  "I've
known him for ages.  He's been so considerate and
attentive and sweet to me—so gentle and self-effacing.
I thought I could c-count on him.  But a girl can't tell
anything about a man—even when he's been an old and
trusted friend of years."

"What are you going to do about it?" asked Stephanie,
blankly.

"Do?  I suppose I'll go on doing what he wishes.  I
suppose I'll marry him.  It looks that way.  I don't
seem to have any will power....  It's such an odd
sensation to be bullied."

"Are you in love with him?"

"I don't know.  I suppose I am.  It makes me simply
furious....  But I guess I am, Steve....  If he'd
behaved as agreeably and pleasantly as he always had
behaved I should never have cared for him except in a
friendly way.  He always has paid his courtship to me
in the nicest way....  It was quite ideal, not
disturbing, and we exchanged intellectual views quite
happily and contentedly....  And then, suddenly
he—he flew into a most frightful temper and he told me
that he was '*fed up*!'  My dear, can you imagine my
rage and amazement? ... And then he told me what
he thought of me—oh, Steve!—the most horrid things
ever said about a girl he said to me!  I was breathless!
I felt as though he had beaten me and dragged me about
by my hair....  And then—I don't know how it
happened—but I w-waited for him, and we walked home
together, and I understood him to say that I'd got
to love him if I were a human girl....  And I
am....  So—it's that way now with us....  And
when I think about it I am still bewildered and furious
with him....  But I don't dare let him go....
There *are* other girls, you know."

Stephanie lay very still.  Helen rose presently,
turned and walked slowly to the door.  There she
paused for a moment, then turned.  And Stephanie
saw in her brown eyes an expression entirely new to her.

"Helen!  You *are* in love with him!" she said.

"I'm afraid I am....  Anyway, I shall not let him
go until I am quite certain....  It's abominable that
he should have made of me a thing with which I never
have had any patience—a girl whose heart has run
away with her senses.  And *that's* what he has done to
me, I'm afraid."

Stephanie suddenly flushed:

"If he has," she said, "you ought to be glad!  You
are free to marry him if you love him, and you ought
to thank God for the privilege."

"Yes.  But what is marriage going to do to my
work?  I never meant to marry.  I've been afraid to.
What happens to a girl's creative work if her heart is
full of something else—full of her lover—her
husband—children, perhaps—new duties, new cares! ... I
didn't *want* to love this man.  I loved my work.  It
took all of me.  It's the very devil to have a thing like
this happen.  It scares me.  I can't think of my work
now.  It bores me to recollect it.  My mind and heart
are full of this man!—there's no room in it for anything
else....  What is this going to do to my career?
That's what frightens me to think about....  And I
can't give up sculpture, and I *won't* give up Phil!  Oh,
Steve, it's the very deuce of a mess—it really is.  And
you lie there eating chocolates and reading piffle, and
you calmly tell me to thank God that I am free to
marry!"

Stephanie's clear grey eyes regarded her:

"If you're any good," she said, "your career will
begin from the moment you fell in love.  Love clears the
mind wonderfully.  You learn a lot about yourself
when you fall in love....  I learned that I had no
talent, nothing to express.  That's what love has done
for me.  But you will learn what genius really means."

Helen came slowly back to where the girl was lying.

"You *are* in love, then," she said gently.  "I was
afraid."

"I am afraid, too."

They looked at each other in silence.

"Do you ever mean to live with Oswald?" asked Helen.

"Not if I can avoid it."

"Can you not?"

"Yes, I can avoid it—unless the price of immunity is
too heavy."

"I don't understand."

"I know you don't.  Neither does Jim.  It's a rather
ghastly situation."

"You are not at liberty to explain it, are you?"

"No."

Helen bent and laid her hand on Stephanie's hair:

"I'm sorry.  I knew you were falling in love.  There
seemed to be no help for either of you."

"No, no help.  One can't help one's heart's inclinations.
The only thing we can control is our behaviour."

"Steve, are you unhappy?"

"I'm beginning to be....  I didn't think I would
be—it's so wonderful....  But the seriousness of love
reveals itself sooner or later....  A girl begins to
understand....  All we want is to give, if we're in
love....  It's tragic when we can't."  She turned her
face abruptly and laid one arm across her eyes.

Helen sank to her knees again and laid her cool face
against Stephanie's flushed cheek.

"Darling," she said, "there must be some way for you."

"No honourable way."

"But that marriage is a farce."

"Yes.  I made it so....  But Oswald cares for me."

"Still?"

"Yes....  He is a very wonderful, generous, unhappy
man; proud, deeply sensitive, tender-hearted, and
loyal.  I can not sacrifice him.  He has done too much
for my sake....  And I promised——"

"What?"

"I promised him to give myself as long a time as he
wished to learn whether I could ever come to love
him."

"Does he know you are in love?"

"No."

"What would he do if he knew?"

Stephanie began to tremble:

"I—don't know," she stammered, "—he must never
think that I am in love with Jim.....  It would
be—dreadful—terrible——"

She sat up, covering her face with both hands:

"Don't ask me!  Don't talk about it!  There are
things I can't tell you—things I can't do, no matter
what happens to me—no matter whether I am
unhappy—whether Jim is——"

"Don't cry, darling.  I didn't mean to hurt you——"

"Oh, Helen!  Helen!  There's something that
happened which I can't ever forget.  It terrifies me.
There's no way out of this marriage for me—there's no
way!  No way!" she repeated desolately....  "And
I'm so deeply in love—so deeply—deeply——"

She flung herself on her face and buried her head in
her arms.

"Just let me alone," she sobbed.  "I can't talk about
it.  I—I'm glad you're happy, dear.  But please go
out, now!"

Helen rose and stood for a moment looking down at
the slender figure in its jewelled kimono and its tumbled
splendour of chestnut hair.  Then she went out very
quietly.

On the porch her audacious young man and Cleland
were smoking and consulting time-tables, and she gave
the former a swift glance which questioned his
intentions.  He seemed to comprehend, for he said:

"It's Jim.  He's been talking to Oswald on the long
distance wire, and he's going down to town to see the
model that Oswald has made."

"Are *you* going, too?" she asked.

"Not until you do," he said boldly.

Helen blushed furiously and glanced at Cleland, but
he had not paid them any attention, apparently, for he
rose with an absent air and went into the house.

"Steve!" he called from the foot of the stairs.  "I'm
going to town to-night, if you don't mind."

There was no answer.  He ran lightly up the stairs
and glanced through her door, which was partly open.
Then he went in.

She did not hear him, nor was she aware of his presence
until she felt his questioning hand on her tumbled
hair.  Then she turned over, looked up into his anxious
face, stretched out her arms to him in a sudden passion
of loneliness and longing, and drew him convulsively
to her breast with a little sob of surrender.  And the
next instant she had slipped through his arms to the
floor, sprung to her feet, and now stood breathing
fast and unevenly as he rose, half dazed, to confront
her.

"Jim," she said unsteadily, "I had better go back.
I'm losing my head here with you—here under dad's
roof.  Do you hear what I say?  I can't trust myself.
I can't remain here and tear dad's honour to shreds
just because I've gone mad about you....  I'm going back."

"Where?"

"To Oswald."

"What!"

"It's the only safety for us.  There's no use.  No
hope, either.  And it's too dangerous—with no outlook,
no possible chance that waiting may help us.  There's
not a ghost of a chance that we ever can marry.  That
is the real peril for us....  So—I'll play the
game....  I'll go to him now—before it's too
late,—before you and I have made each other wretched for
life—and before I have something still worse on my
conscience!"

"What?"

"My husband's death!  He'll kill himself if I let you
take me away somewhere."

After a silence he said in a low voice:

"Is *that* what you have been afraid of?"

"Yes."

"You believe he will kill himself if you divorce him?"

"I—I am certain of it."

"Why are you certain?"

"I can't tell you why."

He said coolly:

"Men don't do that sort of thing as a rule.  Weak
intellects seek that refuge from trouble; but his is not
a weak character."

"I won't talk about it," she said.  "I've told you
more than I ever meant to.  Now you know where I
stand, what I fear—his death!—if I dishonour dad's
memory and go away with you.  And if I ask divorce,
he will give it to me—and then kill himself.  Do you
think I could accept even you on such terms as these?"

"No," he said.

He looked at her intently.  She stood there very
white, now, her grey eyes and the masses of chestnut
hair accentuating her pallour.

"All right," he said, "I'll take you to town."

"You need not."

"Won't you let me?"

"Yes, if you wish....  When you go downstairs,
tell them to send up my trunks.  Tell one of the maids
to come."

"You can't go off this way, to-night.  You've two
guests here," he said in a dull voice.

"You will be here."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Oswald called me on the long distance wire an hour
ago.  He has asked me to go to town and look at the
sketch he has made for the fountain.  I said I'd go."

She dropped to the couch and sat there with grey
eyes remote, her shoulders, in their jewelled kimono,
huddled under her heavy mass of hair.

"Stay here for a while, anyway," he said.  "There's
no use taking such action until you have thought it
over.  And such action is not necessary, Steve."

"It is."

"No.  There is a much simpler solution for us both.
I shall go abroad."

"What!" she exclaimed sharply, lifting her head.

"Of course.  Why should you be driven into the arms
of a husband you do not love just because you are
afraid of what you and I might do?  That would be a
senseless proceeding, Steve.  The thing to do is to rid
yourself of me and live your life as you choose."

She laid her head on her hands, pressing her forehead
against her clenched fingers.

"That's the only thing to do, I guess," he said in his
curiously colourless voice.  "I came too late.  I'm
paying for it.  I'll go back to Paris and stay for a while.
Time does things to people."

She nodded her bowed head.

"Time," he said, "forges an armour on us all....
I'll wait until mine is well riveted before I return.
You're quite right, Steve....  You and I can't go on
this way.  There would come a time when the intense
strain would break us both—break down our
resolution and our sense of honour—and we'd go away
together—or make each other wretched here....
Because there's no real happiness for you and me without
honour, Steve.  Some people can do without it.  We
can't.

"We might come to think we could.  We might take
the chance.  We might repeat the stale old phrase
and try to 'count the world well lost.'  But there would
be no happiness for you and me, Steve.  For, to
people of our race, happiness is composite.  Honesty is
part of it; loyalty to ideals is another; the world's
respect, the approval of our own hearts, the recognition
of our responsibility to the civilization that depends on
such as we—all these are part of the only kind of
happiness that you and I can understand and
experience....  So we must give it up....  And the best
way is the way I offer....  Let me go out of your
life for a while....  Live your own life as you care
to live it....  Time must do whatever else is to be done."

The girl lifted her dishevelled head and looked at him.

"Are you going to-night?"

"Yes."

"You are not coming back?"

"No, dear."

She dropped her head again.

There was a train at four that afternoon.  He took
a gay and casual leave of Helen and Grayson, where
he found them reading together in the library.

"Will you be back to-morrow?" inquired the latter.

"I'm not sure.  I may be detained for some time,"
said Cleland carelessly.  And went upstairs.

Stephanie, frightfully pale, came to her door.  Her
hair was dressed and she was gowned for the afternoon.
She tried to speak but no sound came from her
colourless lips; and she laid her hands on his shoulders
in silence.  Their lips scarcely touched before they
parted; but their eyes clung desperately.

"Good-bye, dear."

"Good-bye," she whispered.

"You know I love you.  You know I shall never love
another woman?"

"Try to—forget me, Jim."

"I can't."

"I can't forget you, either....  I'm sorry, dear.
I wish you had me....  I'd give you anything,
Jim—anything.  Don't you know it?"

"Yes."

She laid her head on his breast, rested a moment,
then lifted it, not looking at him, and turned slowly
back into her room.

It was dark when he arrived in New York.  The
flaring streets of the city seemed horrible to him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIII

.. vspace:: 2

Washington Square seemed to him a little
cooler than the streets to the northward;
the white arch, the trees, the splash of water
made a difference.  But beyond, southward, narrow
streets and lanes were heavy with the close, hot odours
of the slums—a sickening smell of over-ripe fruit piled
on push-carts, the reek of raw fish, of sour malt from
saloons—a subtler taint of opium from blind alleys
where Chinese signs hung from rusting iron balconies.

Through cracks between drawn curtains behind the
window of Grismer's basement studio, light glimmered;
and when Cleland pulled the bell-wire in the area he
could hear the crazy, cracked bell jangling inside.

Grismer came.

For a second he hesitated behind the iron area gate,
then recognizing her visitor opened for him.

They shook hands with a pleasant, commonplace
word or two of civility, and walked together through
the dark, hot passageway into the lighted basement.

"It's devilish hot," said Grismer.  "There's probably
a storm brewing over Staten Island."

He looked colourless and worn.  There was a dew of
perspiration on his forehead, which dampened the
thick amber-gold hair.  He wore only a gauze undershirt,
trousers and slippers, under which his supple,
graceful figure was apparent.

"Grismer," said Cleland uneasily, "this cellar is hell
in July.  Why won't you come up to Runner's Rest
for the hot period?  You can't do anything here.  You
can't stand it."

Grismer fished a siphon out of his ice-box and looked
around with a questioning smile.  "I've some orange
juice.  Would you like some?"

Cleland nodded and walked over to a revolving table
on which the wax model of his fountain stood.  Grismer
presently came up beside him with both glasses, and he
took his with an absent nod, but continued to examine
the model in silence.

"Probably you don't care for it," suggested Grismer.

Cleland said slowly:

"You gave me a different idea.  I didn't know you
were going to do anything like this."

"I'm afraid you are disappointed."

"No....  It's beautiful, Grismer.  I hadn't thought
that a figure would be possible, considering the
character of the place and the very simple and primitive
surroundings.  But this is in perfect taste and
amazingly in accord with everything."

He looked at the slim, naked, sinuous figure—an
Indian girl of fifteen drinking out of cupped hands.  Wild
strawberry vines in full fruit bound her hair, which fell
in two clubbed braids to her shoulders.  A narrow
breadth of faun-skin fell from a wampum girdle to her
knees.  And, from the thin metal forehead-fillet, the
head of a snake reared, displaying every fang.

"It's the Lake-Serpent, isn't it?—the young Oneida
girl of the Iroquois legend?" inquired Cleland.

Grismer nodded.

"That's your country," he said.  "The Iroquois
war-trail passed through your valley and down the river
to Charlemont and Old Deerfield.  I read up on it.
The story of the Lake-Serpent and the Eight Thunders
fascinated me.  I thought the thing might be done."

"You've done it.  It's stunning."

"The water," explained Grismer, "flows out of her
hollowed hands, out of the serpent's throat and down
each braid of hair, dripping on her shoulders.  Her
entire body will appear to be all glimmering with a thin
skin of running water.  I shall use the 'serpent spot'
on her forehead like a caste-mark, I think.  And what
I want to get is an effect from a fine cloud of spray
which will steam up from the basin at her feet like the
'cloud on the water' which the legend speaks of.  I can
get it by an arrangement of very minute orifices through
which spray will rush and hang over the water in a
sort of rainbow mist.  Do you think that would be all
right?"

"Of course.  It's a masterpiece, Grismer," said the
other quietly.

Into Grismer's pale face a slow colour came and spread.

"That's worth living for," he said.

"What?"

"I said that I'm glad I have lived to hear you speak
that way of anything I have done," said Grismer with
a smile.

"I don't understand why you should care about my
opinion," returned Cleland, turning an amused and
questioning gaze on the sculptor.  "I'm no critic, you
know."

"I know," nodded Grismer, with his odd smile.  "But
your approval means more than any critic has to offer
me....  There's an arm-chair over there, if you care
to be seated."

Cleland took his glass of iced orange juice with him.
Grismer set his on the floor and dropped onto the
ragged couch.

"Anybody can point it up now," he said.  "It ought
to be cast in silver-grey bronze, not burnished—a trifle
over life-size."

"You must have worked like the devil to have finished
this in such a brief period."

"Oh, I work that way—when I do work....  I've
been anxious—worried over what you might think....
I'm satisfied now."

He filled and lighted his pipe, leaned back clasping
his well-made arms behind his head.

"Cleland," he said, "it's a strange sensation to feel
power within one's self—be conscious of it, certain of
it, and deliberately choose not to use it....  And the
very liberty of choice is an added power."

Cleland looked up, perplexed.  Grismer smiled, and
his smile seemed singularly care-free and tranquil:

"Just think," he said, "what the gods *could* have
done if they had taken the trouble to bestir themselves!
What they did do makes volumes of mythology: what
they refrained from doing would continue in the telling
through all eternity.  What they did betrayed their
power," he added, with a whimsical gesture toward his
fountain; "but what they refrained from doing interests
me, Cleland—fascinates me, arouses my curiosity,
my respect, my awe, and my gratitude that they were
godlike enough to disdain display—that they were
decent enough to leave to the world material to feed its
imagination."

Cleland smiled sombrely at Grismer's whimsical
humour, but his features settled again into grave,
care-worn lines, and his absent gaze rested on nothing.  And
Grismer's golden eyes studied him.

"It must be pleasant out there in the country," he
said casually.

"It's cool.  You must go there, Grismer.  This place
is unendurable.  Do go up while Phil Grayson is
there."

"Is there anybody else?"

"Helen—and Stephanie," he said, using her name
with an effort.  "The Belters were there for a week.
No doubt Stephanie will ask other people during the
summer."

"When do you go back?" asked Grismer quietly.

There was a short silence, then Cleland said in a
voice of forced frankness:

"I was about to tell you that I'm going over to Paris
for a while.  You know how it is—a man grows
restless—wants to run over and take a look at the place just
to satisfy himself that it's still there."  His strained
smile remained stamped on his face after his gaze
shifted from Grismer's penetrating eyes—unsmiling,
golden-deep eyes that seemed to have perceived a rent
in him, and were looking through the aperture into the
secret places of his mind.

"When are you going, Cleland?"

"Oh, I don't know.  Some time this week, if I can get
accommodations."

"You go alone?"

"Why—of course!"

"I thought perhaps you might feel that Stephanie
ought to see Europe."

"I hadn't—considered——"

He reddened, took a swallow of his orange juice, and,
holding the glass, turned his eyes on the wax model.

"How long will you be away?" asked Grismer in his
still and singularly agreeable voice.

There was another silence.  Then Cleland made a
painful effort at careless frankness once more:

"That reminds me, Grismer," he exclaimed.  "I can't
ever repay you for that fountain, but I can do my
damndest with a cheque-book and a fountain pen.  I
should feel most uncomfortable if I went away leaving
that obligation unsettled."

He drew out his cheque-book and fountain pen and
smiled resolutely at Grismer, whose dark golden eyes
rested on him with an intentness that he could scarcely
endure.

"Would you let me give it to you, Cleland?"

"I can't, Grismer....  It's splendid of you."

"I shall not need the money," said Grismer, almost
absently, and for an instant his gaze grew vague and
remote.  Then he turned his head again, where it lay
cradled on his clasped hands behind his neck: "You
won't let me give it to you, I know.  And there's no
use telling you that I shall not need the money.  You
won't believe me....  You won't understand how
absolutely meaningless is money to me—just now.  Well,
then—write in what you care to offer."

"I can't do that, Grismer."

The other smiled and, still smiling, named a figure.
And Cleland wrote it out, detached the cheque, started
to rise, but Grismer told him to lay it on the table
beside his glass of orange juice.

"It's a thing no man can pay for," said Cleland,
looking at the model.

Grismer said quietly:

"The heart alone can pay for anything....  A
gift without it is a cheque unsigned....  Cleland, I've
spoken to you twice since you have returned from
abroad—but you have not understood.  And there is
much unsaid between us.  It must be said some
day....  There are questions you ought to ask me.
I'd see any other man in hell before I'd answer.  But
I'll answer *you*!"

Cleland turned his eyes, heavy with care, on this man
who was speaking.

Grismer said:

"There are three things in the world which I have
desired—to stand honourably and well in the eyes of
such people as your father and you; to win your personal
regard and respect; to win the love of Stephanie
Quest."

In the tense silence he struck a match and relighted
his pipe.  It went out again and grew cold while he was
speaking:

"I lost the consideration of such people as you and
your father; in fact, I never gained it at all....  And
it was like a little death to something inside me....
And as for Stephanie——"  He shook his head.  "No,"
he said, "there was no love in her to give me.  There is
none now.  There never will be."

He laid aside his pipe, clasped his hands behind his
head once more and dropped one long leg over the other.

"You won't question me.  I suppose it's the pride in
you, Cleland.  But my pride is dead; I cut its
throat....  So I'll tell you what you ought to know.

"I always was in love with her, even as a boy—after
that single glimpse of her there in the railroad station.
It's odd how such things really happen.  Your people
had no social interest in mine.  I shall use a more
sinister term: your father held my father in
contempt....  So there was no chance for me to know
you and Stephanie except as I was thrown with you in
school."

He smiled:

"You can never know what a boy suffers who is
fiercely proud, who is ready to devote himself soul and
body to another boy, and who knows that he is
considered inferior....  It drives him to strange
perverseness, to illogical excesses—to anything which may
conceal the hurt—the raw, quivering heart of a
boy....  So we fought with fists.  You remember.
You remember, too, probably, many things I said and
did to intensify your hostility and contempt—like a
hurt thing biting at its own wounds——!"

He shrugged:

"Well, you went away.  Has Stephanie told you how
she and I met?"

"Yes."

"I thought she would tell you," he said tranquilly.
"And has she told you about our unwise behaviour—our
informal comradeship—reckless escapades?"

"Yes."

Grismer raised his head and looked at him intently.

"And has she related the circumstances of our
marriage?" he asked.

"Partly."

Grismer nodded.

"I mean in part.  There were many things she
refused to speak of, were there not?"

"Yes."

He slowly unclasped his linked fingers and leaned
forward on the couch, groping for his pipe.  When he
found it he slowly knocked the cinders from the bowl,
then laid it aside once more.

"Cleland, I'll have to tell where I stood the day that
my father—killed himself."

"*What!*"

"Stephanie knew it.  There had been a suit pending,
threatening him....  For years the fear of such
a thing had preyed on his mind....  I never dreamed
there was any reason for him to be afraid....  But
there was."

He dropped his head and sat for a few moments
thinking and playing with his empty pipe.  Then:

"Stephanie's aunt was the Nemesis.  She became
obsessed with the belief that her nephew and later,
Stephanie, had suffered wickedly through my father's—conversion
of trust funds."  He swallowed hard and passed
one hand over his eyes: "My father was a
defaulter....  That woman's patience was infernal.
She never ceased her investigations.  She was
implacable.  And she—got him.

"She was dying when the case was ready.  Nobody
knew she was mortally ill....  I suppose my father
saw disgrace staring him in the face....  He made a
last effort to see her.  He did see her.  Stephanie was
there....  Then he went away....  He had not
been well.  It was an overdose of morphine."

Grismer leaned forward, clasping his hands on his
knees and fixing his eyes on space.

"The money that I inherited was considerable," he
said in his soft, agreeable voice.  "But after I had
begun to amuse myself with it, the papers in the suit
were sent to me by that dead woman's attorneys.  So,"
he said pleasantly, "I learned for the first time that
the money belonged to Stephanie's estate.  And, of
course, I transferred it to her attorneys at once....
She never told you anything of this?"

"No."

"No," said Grismer thoughtfully, "she couldn't have
told you without laying bare my father's disgrace.  But
that is how I suddenly found myself on my uppers,"
he continued lightly.  "Stephanie came to me in an
agony of protest.  She is a splendid girl, Cleland.  She
rather violently refused to touch a penny of the money.
You should have heard what she said to her aunt's
attorneys—who now represented her.  Really, Cleland,
there was the devil to pay....  But that was easy.
I paid him.  Naturally, I couldn't retain a penny....
So it lies there yet, accumulating interest, payable at
any time to Stephanie's order....  But she'll never
use it....  Nor shall I, Cleland....  God knows
who'll get it—some charity, I hope....  After I step
out, I think Stephanie will give it to some charity for
the use of little children who have missed their
childhood—children like herself, Cleland."

After a silence he idly struck a match, watched it
burn out, dropped the cinder to the floor:

"There was no question of *you* at that time," said
Grismer, lifting his eyes to Cleland's drawn face.  "And
I was very desperately in love....  There seemed
to be hope that Stephanie might care for me....
Then came that reckless escapade at Albany, where she
was recognized by some old friends of your father and
by schoolmates of her own....

"Cleland, I would gladly have shot myself then, had
that been any solution.  But there seemed to be only
the one solution....  She has told you, I believe?"

"Yes."

"Well, that was what was done....  I think she
cried all the way back.  The Albany Post Road seemed
like a road through hell to me.  I knew then that
Stephanie cared nothing for me in that way; that my place
in her life served other purposes.

"I don't know what she thought I expected of her—what
duty she believed she owed me.  I know now that
the very thought of wifehood was abhorrent to her....
But she was game, Cleland! ... What line of reasoning
she followed I don't know.  Whether my love for
her touched her, or some generous impulse of
renunciation—some childish idea of bringing to me again the
inheritance which I had forced on her, I don't know.

"But she was game.  She came here that night with
her suitcase.  She was as white as death, could scarcely
speak....  I never even touched her hand, Cleland....
She slept there—behind that curtain on
the iron bed.  I sat here all night long.

"In the morning we talked it over.  And with every
generous plucky word she uttered I realized that it was
hopeless.  And do you know—God knows how—but
somehow I kept thinking of you, Cleland.  And it was
like clairvoyance, almost, for I could not drive away
the idea that she cared for you, unknowingly, and that
when you came back some day she'd find it out."

He rose from the couch and began to pace the studio
slowly, his hands in his pockets.

"Cleland," he said, "she meant to play the game.
The bed she had made for herself she was ready to lie
on....  But I looked into those grey eyes of hers
and I knew that it was pity that moved her, square
dealing that nerved her, and that already she was
suffering agonies to know what you would think of what
she had done—done with a man you never liked—the
son of a man whom your father held in contempt
because—because he considered him—dishonest!"

He halted a pace from where Cleland was sitting:

"I told her to go back to her studio and think it
over.  She went out....  I did not think of her
coming back here....  I was standing in front of that
cracked mirror over there....  To get a sure line on
my temple....  That's what shattered the glass—when
she struck my arm up....

"Well, a man goes to pieces sometimes....  She
made me promise to wait two years—said she would try
to care for me enough in that time to live with me....
The child was frightened sick.  The terror of my ever
doing such a—a fool thing remains latent in her brain.
I know it.  I know it's there.  I know, Cleland, that she
is in love with you.  And that she dare not ask me for
her freedom for fear that I shall do some such silly
thing."

He began to laugh, quite naturally, without any
bitterness at all:

"I tried to make you understand.  I told you that I
would do anything for you.  But you didn't comprehend....
Yet, I meant it.  I mean it now.  She belongs
to you, Cleland.  I want you to take her.  I wish
her to understand that I give her the freedom she's
entitled to.  That she need not be afraid to take
it—need not fear that I might make an ass of myself."

He laughed again, quite gaily:

"No, indeed, I mean to live.  I tell you, Cleland, there
is no excitement on earth like beating Fate at her own
game.  There's only one thing——"

After a pause, Cleland looked up into the man's
wistful, golden eyes.

"What is it, Grismer?"

"If I could win—your friendship——"

"Good God!" whispered Cleland, rising and
offering a hand that shook, "—Do you think I'm worth it,
Oswald?"

Their hands met, clasped; a strange light flashed
in Grismer's golden eyes.

"Do you mean it, Cleland?"

"With all my heart, old chap....  I don't know
what to say to you—except that you're white all
through—straighter than I am, Grismer—clean to the
soul of you!"

Grismer drew a long, deep breath.

"Thanks," he said.  "That's about all I want of
life....  Tell Stephanie what you said to me—if you
don't mind....  I don't care what others think ... if
you and she think me straight."

"Oswald, I tell you you're straighter than I
am—stronger.  Your thoughts never wavered; you stood
steady to punishment, not whimpering.  I've had a
curb-bit on myself, and I don't know now how long it
might have taken me to get it between my teeth and
smash things."

Grismer smiled:

"It would have taken two to smash the Cleland
traditions.  It couldn't have been done—between you and
Stephanie....  Are you going back to Runner's Rest
to-night?"

"Yes—if you say so," he replied in a low voice.

"I do say so.  Call her on the telephone as soon
as you leave here.  Then take the first train."

"And you?  Will you come?"

"Not to-night."

"Will you let us know when you can come, Oswald?"

Grismer picked up a shabby dressing gown from
the back of a decrepit chair, and put it on over his
undershirt and trousers.

"Sure," he said pleasantly.  "I've one or two
matters to keep me here.  I'll fix them up to-night....
And please make it very plain to Stephanie that I'm
taking this affair beautifully and that the last thing
I'd do would be to indulge in any foolishness to shock
her....  I'm really most interested in living.  Tell
her so.  She will believe it.  For I have never lied to
her, Cleland."

They walked together to the area gate.

"Stephanie should see her attorneys," said Grismer.
"The easiest way, I think, would be for her to leave
the state and for me to go abroad.  Her attorneys will
advise her.  But," he added carelessly, "there's time
to talk over that with her.  The main thing is to know
that she will be free.  And she will be....  Good
night, Cleland!" ... He laughed boyishly.  "I've
never been as happy in my whole life!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIV

.. vspace:: 2

With the clang of the closing gate, Grismer's
handsome face altered terribly, and he turned
deathly white for a moment.  Two policemen
lounged by in the glare of the arc-light; one of
them glanced down into the areaway and saw a pallid
face behind the iron bars—turned sharply to look
again.

"Gee," he said to his mate, "d'yeh get that guy's
map?"

"Coke," said the other carelessly.  "Looks like a
feller I seen in Sing Sing waitin' for the priest—what's
his name, now——"  The voices receded.  But Grismer
had heard.

Perhaps his brain registered the scene sketched by
the policeman—a bloodless face behind the death-cell
grating—the distant steps of the procession already
sounding in the corridor.

He opened the gate and went out to the sidewalk
where a young girl, unskillfully painted, stood looking
about her preliminary to opening the night's campaign.

"Hello," she said tentatively.

"Ah," he said pleasantly, "a goddess of the stars!"

"Got anything on?" she asked, approaching with
her mirthless smile.

"Yes, a few casual garments."

She looked him over with the uncanny wisdom of her
caste, and, young as she was, she divined in this man
only the opportunity to waste her time.

"What's the matter?" she asked, glancing at his
shabby dressing gown.  "Up against it?"

"What I'm up against," he said, absently, "will look
good to you, too, some day."

"What's that?"

"Death, my dear."

"Quit kiddin'!" she retorted, with an uneasy laugh.
"You got your looks yet."  She stepped nearer, looking
at him curiously.  "Nothing like that," she said.
"You're a looker.  Buck up, old scout!"

She was leaning against the railing where he stood
resting his back.  Presently he turned, leisurely, and
surveyed her.

"You *are* young," he said.  "You'll be a tired girl
before you're up against what I am."

"What have you done?" she enquired curiously.

"Nothing."

"Sure.  That's why we all go up the river."

"I'm going across the river," he remarked, smiling.

"Which?"

"The Styx.  You never heard of it, I suppose."

"One of them dirty rivers in Jersey?"

He nodded gravely.

"What's out there?" she enquired.

"I don't know, my dear."

"Then what's the idea?"

She waited for an answer, but his golden eyes were
dreamily remote.

The girl lingered.  Once or twice professional sense
suggested departure, but when her tired eyes of a child
rested on him something held her inert.

When she again interrupted his revery he looked
around at her as though he had never before seen her,
and she repeated what she had said.

"What?" he asked sharply.

"I got a fiver that ain't workin'," she said again.
"You can use it in your business if it's any good."

"My dear child," he said pleasantly, "you're very
kind, but that's not what the matter is."  He turned,
dropped his arm on the railing, facing her: "What's
your name?"

"Gloria Cameron."

"Come on," he said, good-humouredly, "what's your
other name?"

"Anne."

"Anne, what?"

"O'Hara."

"Will you wait a minute?"

She nodded uncertainly.

He went back through the area, entered his studio
and dressed in his shabby street clothes.

The cheque was still lying on a small table where
Cleland had placed it at his request.  And now he
picked it up, dipped a rusty pen into an ink-bottle, and
indorsed the cheque, making it payable to Anne O'Hara.
Then he took his straw hat and went out.

The girl was waiting.

"Anne," he said, "I want you to read what's written
on this pretty perforated piece of paper."  He held it
so that the electric light fell on it.

"Is it good?" she asked in an awed voice.

"Perfectly."  He turned the cheque over and showed
her the indorsement.

She found her voice presently:

"What are you putting over on me?"

He said:

"I'd give this cheque to you now, but it wouldn't be
any good when the banks open to-morrow."

She stared her question, and he laughed:

"It's a law concerning cheques.  Never mind.  But
there's a way to beat it.  I had a lot of money once.
They'll take my paper at Square Jack Hennesey's.
Shall we stroll up that way?"

She did not understand.  It was quite evident that
she had no faith in the scrap of paper either.  But it
was still more evident that she was willing to remain
with him, even at the loss of professional
opportunities—even though she was facing the obloquy of being
"kidded."

"Come into my studio first," he said.

She went without protest.  In the brightly lighted
basement he turned and scrutinized her coolly from
head to foot.

"How old?" he asked bluntly.

"Seventeen."

"How long are you on the job?"

"Two years."

"Whose are you?"

"I'm for myself——"

"Come on!  Don't lie!"

She straightened her thin finger in defiance:

"What are you?  A bull?"

"You know I'm not.  Who are you working for?
Wait!  Never mind!  You're working for somebody,
aren't you?"

"Y-yes."

"Do your folks know it?"

"No."

"What was it—cloaks, feathers, department store?"

She nodded.

"You *can* go back?"

She remained silent, and he repeated the question.
Then the girl turned white under her paint.

"Damn you!" she said, "what are you trying to do
to me?"

"Send you home, Anne, with a couple of thousand
real money.  Will you go?"

"Show it to me!" she said, but her voice had become
childish and tremulous and her painted mouth was
quivering.

"I'm going to show it to you," he said pleasantly.
"I'll get it at Square Jack's for you.  If I do will you
fly the coop?  I mean now, to-night!  Will you?"

"W-with you?"

"Dear child, I've got to cross that dirty Jersey
river.  I told you.  You live up state, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Hudson."

"All right.  Will you go now, just as you are?
You'd stand a fat chance if you went back and tried
to pack up.  That thing would batter you to a pulp,
wouldn't he?"

She nodded.

"All right," he said.  "Take off your hat and wash
your face, Anne.  They'd be on to you at home.  I've
got to pack a few things for my journey and write a
couple of letters.  Get all the paint off while I'm busy.
There's soap, towels, and a basin behind that screen."

She came slowly to him and stood looking at him
out of her disenchanted young eyes.

"Is this on the square?" she asked.

"Won't you take a chance that it is?" he asked,
taking her slim hands and looking her in the eyes.

"Yes....  I'll take a chance with you—if you ask
me to."

"I do."  He patted her hands and smiled, then released
them.  "Hustle!" he said.  "I'll be ready very soon."

He wrote first to Cleland:

.. vspace:: 2

DEAR CLELAND:

.. vspace:: 1

I think I'll go up tonight, stay at Pittsfield, and either
drive across the mountain in the morning of take an early
train through the tunnel for North Adams.  Either way
ought to land me at Runner's Rest station about eight in the
morning.

I can't tell you what your kindness has done for me.  I
think it was about all I really wanted in the world—your
friendship.  It seems to clean off my slate, square me with
life.

I shall start in a few minutes.  Until we meet, then, your
friend, OSWALD GRISMER.

.. vspace:: 2

He directed the envelope to Cleland's studio in town.

The other letter he directed to Stephanie at Runner's
Rest and stamped it.

He wrote to her:

.. vspace:: 2

I'm happier than I have been in years because I can do
this thing for you.

And now I'm going to admit something which will ease
your mind immensely: the situation was so impossible that
I also began to weary of it a little.  You are entitled to
the truth.

And now life looks very inviting to me.  Liberty is the
most wonderful thing in the world.  And I am restless for it,
restless to begin again.

So if I come to you as a comrade, don't think for a
moment that any sympathy is due me.  Alas, man belongs
to a restless sex, Stephanie, and the four winds are less
irresponsible and inconstant!

As a comrade, I should delight in you.  You are a very
wonderful girl—but you belong to Cleland and not to me.
Don't worry.  I'm absolutely satisfied.  Until we meet, then,

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   Your grateful friend,
       OSWALD.

.. vspace:: 2

"I'll get a special for this letter on our way uptown,"
he said, voicing his thoughts aloud to the girl who was
scrubbing her painted lips and cheeks behind the screen.

When she emerged, pinning on her hat, he had
packed a suitcase and was ready.

They found a taxi in Washington Square.

On the way uptown he mailed his letter to Stephanie;
sent a district messenger with his letter to Cleland's
studio; sent a night letter to Runner's Rest saying that
he would take accommodations on a train which would
be due at Runner's Rest station at eight next morning;
stopped at the darkened and barred house of Square
Jack Hennesey, and was admitted after being
scrutinized through a sliding grill.

When he came out half an hour later he told the
driver to go to the Grand Central Station, and got into
the cab...

"Anne," he said gaily, "here's the two thousand.
Count it."

The sheafs of new bills pinned to their paper bands
lay in her lap for a long time before she touched them.
Even then she merely lifted one packet and let it drop
without even looking at it.  So Grismer folded the bills
and put them into her reticule.  Then he took her slim
left hand in both of his and held it while they rode on
in silence through the electric glare of the metropolis.

At the station he dismissed the taxicab, bought a
ticket and sleeping-car accommodations to Hudson—managed
to get a state-room for her all to herself.

"You won't sleep much," he remarked, smiling,
"so we'll have to provide you with amusement, Anne."

Carrying his suitcase, the girl walking beside him, he
walked across the great rotunda to the newsstand.
There, and at the confectionery counter opposite, he
purchased food for mind and body—light food suitable
for a young and badly bruised mind, and for a soul in
embryo, still in the making.

Then he went over to another window and bought a
ticket for himself to Pittsfield, and sleeping
accommodations.

"We travel by different lines, Anne," he said, opening
his portfolio and placing his own tickets in it, where
several letters lay addressed to him at his basement
studio.  Then he replaced the portfolio in his breast
pocket.

"I'll go with you to your train," he said, declining
with a shake of his head the offices of a red-capped
porter.  "Your train leaves at 12.10 and we have only
a few minutes."

They walked together through the gates, the officials
permitting him to accompany her.

The train stood on the right—a very long train, and
they had a long distance to walk along the concrete
platform before they found her car.

A porter showed them to her stateroom.  Grismer
tipped him generously:

"Be very attentive to this young lady," he said, "and
see that she has every service required, and that she is
notified in plenty of time to get off at Hudson.  Now
you may leave us until we ring."

He turned from the corridor and entered the stateroom,
closing the door behind him.  The girl sat on
the sofa, very pale, with a dazed expression in her eyes.

He seated himself beside her and drew her hands into
his own.

"Let me tell you something," he said cheerfully.
"Everybody makes mistakes.  You've made some; so
have I; so has everybody I ever heard of.

"Everybody gets in wrong at one time or another.
The idea is to get out again and make a fresh
start....  Will you try?"

She nodded, so close to tears that she could not speak.

"Promise me you'll make a hard fight to travel straight?"

"Y-yes."

"It won't be easy.  But try to win out, Anne.  Back
there—in those streets and alleys—there's nothing to
hope for except death.  You'll find it if you ever go
back—in some hospital, in some saloon-brawl, in some
rooming-house—it will surely, surely find you by bullet,
by knife, by disease—sooner or later it will find you
unless you start to search for it yourself."

He patted her hand, patted her pale cheek:

"It's a losing game, Anne.  There's nothing in it.
I guess you know that already.  So go back to your
people and tell them the last lies you ever tell.  And
stick.  Stay put, little girl.  You really *are* all right,
you know, but you got in wrong.  Now, you're out!"

He laughed and stood up.  She lifted her head.  All
her colour had fled.

"Don't forget me," she whispered.

"Not as long as I live, Anne."

"May I—I write to you?"

He thought a minute, then with a smile:

"Why not?"  He found a card and pencil, wrote his
name and address, and laid it on the sofa.  "If it would
do any good to think of me when you're likely to get in
wrong," he said, "then try to remember that I was
square with you.  And be so to me.  Will you?"

"I—will."

That was all.  She was crying and her eyes were
too blind with tears to see the expression of his face
as he kissed her.

He went away lightly, swinging his suitcase, and
stood on the very end of the cement platform looking
out across a wilderness of tracks branching out into
darkness, set with red, green, and blue lamps.

He waited, lighting a cigarette.  On his left a heavy
electric engine rolled into the station, drawing a
Western express train.  The lighted windows of the cars
threw a running yellow illumination over his motionless
figure for a few moments, then the train passed into
the depths of the station.

And now her train began to move very slowly out
through the wilderness of yard tracks.  Car after car
passed him, gaining momentum all the while.

When the last car sped by and the tail-lights dwindled
into perspective, Grismer had finished his cigarette.

Behind him lay the dusky, lamp-lit tunnel of the
station.  Before him, through ruddy darkness, countless
jewelled lamps twinkled, countless receding rails
glimmered, leading away into the night.

It was in him to travel that way—the way of the
glimmering, jewelled lamps, the road of the shining
rails.

But first he shoved his suitcase, with his foot, over
the platform's edge, as though it had fallen there by
accident....  And, as though he had followed to
recover it, he climbed down among the tracks.

There was a third rail running parallel to the twin
rails.  It was roofed with wood.  Lying flat, there in
the shimmering dusk, he could look up under the wooden
guard rail and see it.

Then, resting both legs across the steel car-tracks,
he reached out and took the guarded third rail in both
hands.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXV

.. vspace:: 2

The train that Cleland took, after calling
Runner's Rest on the telephone, landed him at the
home station at an impossible hour.  Stars filled
the heavens with a magnificent lustre; the July
darkness was superb and still untouched by the coming
dawn.

As he stepped from the car the tumbling roar of the
river filled his ears—that and the high pines' sighing
under the stars, and the sweet-scented night wind in his
face greeted and met him as he set foot on the platform
at Runner's Rest station and looked around for
the conveyance that he had asked Stephanie to
send.

There was nobody in sight except the baggage agent.
He walked toward the rear of the station, turned the
corner, and saw Stephanie standing there bareheaded
in the starlight, wrapped in a red cloak, her hair in two
heavy braids.

"Steve!" he exclaimed.  "Why on earth did you
come—you darling!"

"Did you imagine I wouldn't?" she asked unsteadily.

"I told you over the wire to send Williams with a
buckboard."

"Everybody was in bed when the telephone rang.  So
I concluded to sit up for you, and when the time came
I went out to the stable, harnessed up, and drove over
here."

Her hand was trembling in his while she spoke, but
her voice was under control.

They turned together and went over to the buckboard.
She stepped in; he strapped his suitcase on
behind, then followed her and took the reins from her
gloved hands.

They were very quiet, but he could feel her tremble
a little at times, when their shoulders were in contact.
The tension betrayed itself in his voice at moments, too.

"I have a night letter from Oswald," she said.  "They
telephoned it up from the station.  He is coming
to-morrow morning."

"That's fine.  He's a splendid fellow, Steve."

"I have always known it."

"I know you have.  I'm terribly sorry that I did not
know him better."

The buckboard turned from the station road into a
fragrant wood-road.  In the scented dusk little
night-moths with glistening wings drifted through the rays
of the wagon-lamp like snowflakes.  A bird, aroused
from slumber in the thicket, sang a few sweet, sleepy
notes.

"Tell me," said Stephanie, in a low, tremulous voice.

He understood:

"It was entirely Oswald's doing.  I never dreamed of
mentioning it to him.  I was absolutely square to him
and to you, Steve.  I went there with no idea that he
knew I was in love with you—or that you cared for
me....  He met me with simple cordiality.  We
looked at his beautiful model for the fountain.  I don't
think I betrayed in voice or look or manner that
anything was wrong with me....  Then, with a very
winning simplicity, he spoke of you, of himself....
There seemed to be nothing for me to say; he knew
that I was in love with you, and that you had come to
care for me....  And I heard a man speak to another
man as only a gentleman could speak—a real man, rare
and thoroughbred....  It cost him something to say
to me what he said.  His nerve was heart-breaking to
me when he found the courage to tell me what his father
had done.

"He told me with a smile that his pride was dead—that
he had cut its throat.  But it was still alive,
Steve—a living, quivering thing.  And I saw him slay it
before my eyes—kill it there between his, with his
steady, pleasant smile....  Well, he meant me to
understand him and what he had done....  And
I understand....  And I understand your loyalty,
now.  And the dreadful fear which kept you
silent....  But there is no need to be afraid any more."

"Did he say so?"

"Yes.  He told me to tell you.  He said you'd believe
him because he had never lied to you."

"I do believe him," she said.  "I have never known
him to lie to anybody."

The light over the porch at Runner's Rest glimmered
through the trees.  In a few moments they were at the
door.

"I'll stable the horse," he said briefly.

She was in the library when he returned from the
barn.

"The dawn is just breaking," she said.  "It is
wonderful out of doors.  Do you hear the birds?"

"Do you want to go to bed, Steve?"

"No.  Do you?"

"Wait for me, then."

She waited while he went to his room.  The windows
were open and the fresh, clean air of dawn carried the
perfume of wet roses into the house.

The wooded eastern hills were very dark against the
dawn; silvery mist marked the river's rushing course;
thickets rang with bird songs.

She walked to the porch.  Under its silver-sheeted
dew the lawn looked like a lake.

Very far away across the valley a train was rushing
northward.  She could hear the faint vibration,
the distant whistle.  Then, from close by, the clear,
sweet call of a meadow-lark mocked the unseen
locomotive's warning in exquisite parody.

Cleland came down presently, freshened, dressed in
flannels.

"Steve," he said, "you've only a nightgown on under
that cloak!"

"It's all right.  I'm going to get soaked anyway, if
we walk on the lawn."

She laughed, drew off her slippers, flung them into
the room behind her, then, with her lovely little naked
feet she stepped ankle deep into the drenched grass,
turned, tossed one corner of her red cloak over her
shoulder, and looked back at him.

Over the soaking lawn they wandered, his arm encircling
her slender body, her hand covering his, holding it
closer at her waist.

The sky over the eastern hills was tinted with palest
saffron now; birds sang everywhere.  Down by the
river cat-birds alternately mewed like sick kittens or
warbled like thrushes; rose grosbeaks filled the dawn
with heavenly arias, golden orioles fluted from every
elm, song-sparrows twittered and piped their cheery
amateur efforts, and there came the creak and chirr of
purple grackles from the balsams and an incessant,
never-ending rush of jolly melody from the robins.

Over the tumbling river, through the hanging curtains
of mist, a great blue heron, looming enormously
in the vague light, flapped by in stately flight and
alighted upon a bar of golden sand.

More swiftly now came the transfiguration of the
world, shell-pink and gold stained the sky; then a blaze
of dazzling light cut the wooded crests opposite as
the thin knife-rim of the sun glittered above the
trees.

All the world rang out with song now; the river mists
lifted and curled and floated upward in silvery shreds
disclosing golden shoals and pebbled rapids all
criss-crossed with the rosy lattice of the sun.

The girl at his side leaned her cheek against his
shoulder.

"What would all this have meant without you?" she
sighed.  "The world turned very dark for me yesterday.
And it was the blackest night I ever knew."

"And for me," he said; "—I had no further interest
in living."

"Nor I....  I wanted to die last night....  I
prayed I might....  I nearly did die—with happiness—when
I heard your voice over the wire.  That was
all that mattered in the world—your voice calling
me—out of the depths—dearest—dearest——"

With her waist closely enlaced, he turned and looked
deep into her grey eyes—clear, sweet eyes tinged with
the lilac-grey of iris bloom.

"The world is just beginning for us," he said.  "This
is the dawn of our first morning on earth."

The slender girl in his arms lifted her face toward
his.  Both her hands crept up around his neck.  The
air around them rang with the storm of bird music
bursting from every thicket, confusing, almost
stunning their ears with its heavenly tumult.

But within the house there was another clamour
which they did not hear—the reiterated ringing of the
telephone.  They did not hear it, standing there in the
golden glory of the sunrise, with the young world
awaking all around them and the birds' ecstacy overwhelming
every sound save the reckless laughter of the river.

But, in the dim house, Helen awoke in her bed,
listening.  And after she had listened a while she sprang
up, slipped out into the dark hall, and unhooked the
receiver from the hinge.

And after she had heard what the distant voice had
to say she wrote it down on the pad of paper hanging
by the receiver—wrote it, shivering there in the
darkened hall:

.. vspace:: 2

Oswald Grismer, on his way last night to visit you at
Runner's Rest, was killed by the third rail in the Grand
Central Station.  He was identified by letters.  Harry Belter
was notified, and has taken charge of the body.  There is
no doubt that it was entirely accidental.  Mr. Grismer's
suit-case evidently fell to the track, and, attempting to
recover it, he came into contact with the charged rail and
was killed instantly.

.. vspace:: 1

MARIE CLIFF BELTER.

.. vspace:: 2

When she had written it down, she went to Stephanie's
room and found it empty.

But through the open window sunshine streamed, and
presently she saw the red-cloaked figure down by the
river's edge; heard the girl's sweet laughter float out
among the willows—enchanting, gay, care-free laughter,
where she had waded out into the shallow rapids
and now stood knee-deep, challenging her lover to
follow her if he dared.

Then Helen saw his white-flannelled figure wading
boldly out through the water in pursuit; saw the slim,
red-cloaked girl turn to flee; went closer to the window
and stood with the written message in her hand, watching
the distant scene through eyes dimmed with those
illogical tears which women shed when there is nothing
else in the world to do.

It was plain that they thought themselves all alone
in the world, with the sunrise and the blue mountains as
an agreeable setting, created as a background for them
alone.

Twice the girl narrowly escaped capture; above the
rush of the river their gales of laughter came back on
the summer wind.  Suddenly she slipped, fell with a cry
into a deeper pool, and was caught up by him and
carried shoreward, with her white arms around his neck
and her lips resting on his.

And as the tall young lover, dripping from head to
foot, came striding across the lawn with all he loved on
earth laughing up at him in his arms, the girl at the
window turned away and went into her own room with
the written message in her hand.

And there, seated on the edge of her bed, she read it
over and over, crying, uncertain, wondering whether
she might not withhold it for a few hours more.

Because life is very wonderful, and youth more wonderful
still.  And there is always time to talk of life
and death when daylight dies and the last laugh is
spent—when shadows fall, and blossoms close, and birds
grow silent among the branches.

She did not know why she was crying.  She had not
cared for the dead man.

She looked out through drawn blinds at the sunshine,
not knowing why she wept, not knowing what to do.

Then, from the hall came Stephanie's ecstatic voice:

"Helen!  Wake up, darling, and come down!  Because
Jim and I have the most wonderful thing in the
world to tell you!"

But on the paper in her lap was written something
more wonderful still.  For there is nothing more
wonderful than that beginning of everything which is called
the end.

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::