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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10441 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: "She almost wished some fisherman might come into view."]
+
+
+
+                              THE GREEN MOUSE
+
+                                    By
+
+                            ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+                          ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY
+
+                             EDMUND FREDERICK
+
+                                   1910
+
+                                    TO
+
+                                 MY FRIEND
+
+                                JOHN CORBIN
+
+Folly and Wisdom, Heavenly twins,
+  Sons of the god Imagination,
+Heirs of the Virtues--which were Sins
+  Till Transcendental Contemplation
+Transmogrified their outer skins--
+  Friend, do you follow me? For I
+  Have lost myself, I don't know why.
+
+Resuming, then, this erudite
+  And decorative Dedication,--
+Accept it, John, with all your might
+  In Cinquecentic resignation.
+You may not understand it, quite,
+  But if you've followed me all through,
+  You've done far more than I could do.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+To the literary, literal, and scientific mind purposeless fiction is
+abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined;
+the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to
+believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works
+suitable for man, woman, child, and suffragette, are to adorn the
+lingerie-laden counters in our great department shops.
+
+It is, then, with animation and confidence that the author politely
+offers to a regenerated nation this modern, moral, literary, and highly
+scientific work, thinly but ineffectually disguised as fiction, in
+deference to the prejudices of a few old-fashioned story-readers who
+still survive among us.
+
+R. W. C.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I.    An Idyl of the Idle
+II.   The Idler
+III.  The Green Mouse
+IV.   An Ideal Idol
+V.    Sacharissa
+VI.   In Wrong
+VII.  The Invisible Wire
+VIII. "In Heaven and Earth"
+IX.   A Cross-town Car
+X.    The Lid Off
+XI.   Betty
+XII.  Sybilla
+XIII. The Crown Prince
+XIV.  Gentlemen of the Press
+XV.   Drusilla
+XVI.  Flavilla
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"She almost wished some fisherman might come into view"
+
+"'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly"
+
+"'Are you not terribly impatient?' she inquired"
+
+"The lid of the basket tilted a little.... Then a plaintive voice said
+'Meow-w!'"
+
+"'I'm afraid,' he ventured, 'that I may require that table for cutting'"
+
+"'Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil again'"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+AN IDYL OF THE IDYL
+
+
+_In Which a Young Man Arrives at His Last Ditch and a Young Girl Jumps
+Over It_
+
+Utterly unequipped for anything except to ornament his environment, the
+crash in Steel stunned him. Dazed but polite, he remained a passive
+observer of the sale which followed and which apparently realized
+sufficient to satisfy every creditor, but not enough for an income to
+continue a harmlessly idle career which he had supposed was to continue
+indefinitely.
+
+He had never earned a penny; he had not the vaguest idea of how people
+made money. To do something, however, was absolutely necessary.
+
+He wasted some time in finding out just how much aid he might expect from
+his late father's friends, but when he understood the attitude of society
+toward a knocked-out gentleman he wisely ceased to annoy society, and
+turned to the business world.
+
+Here he wasted some more time. Perhaps the time was not absolutely
+wasted, for during that period he learned that he could use nobody who
+could not use him; and as he appeared to be perfectly useless, except for
+ornament, and as a business house is not a kindergarten, and furthermore,
+as he had neither time nor money to attend any school where anybody could
+teach him anything, it occurred to him to take a day off for minute and
+thorough self-examination concerning his qualifications and even his
+right to occupy a few feet of space upon the earth's surface.
+
+Four years at Harvard, two more in postgraduate courses, two more in
+Europe to perfect himself in electrical engineering, and a year at home
+attempting to invent a wireless apparatus for intercepting and
+transmitting psychical waves had left him pitifully unfit for wage
+earning.
+
+There remained his accomplishments; but the market was overstocked with
+assorted time-killers.
+
+His last asset was a trivial though unusual talent--a natural manual
+dexterity cultivated since childhood to amuse himself--something he never
+took seriously. This, and a curious control over animals, had, as the
+pleasant years flowed by, become an astonishing skill which was much more
+than sleight of hand; and he, always as good-humored as well-bred, had
+never refused to amuse the frivolous, of which he was also one, by
+picking silver dollars out of space and causing the proper card to fall
+fluttering from the ceiling.
+
+Day by day, as the little money left him melted away, he continued his
+vigorous mental examination, until the alarming shrinkage in his funds
+left him staring fixedly at his last asset. Could he use it? Was it an
+asset, after all? How clever was he? Could he face an audience and
+perform the usual magician tricks without bungling? A slip by a careless,
+laughing, fashionable young amateur amusing his social equals at a house
+party is excusable; a bungle by a hired professional meant an end to hope
+in that direction.
+
+So he rented a suite of two rooms on Central Park West, furnished them
+with what remained from better days, bought the necessary paraphernalia
+of his profession, and immured himself for practice before entering upon
+his contemplated invasion of Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbor. And one very
+lovely afternoon in May, when the Park from his windows looked like a
+green forest, and puff on puff of perfumed air fluttered the curtains at
+his opened windows, he picked up his gloves and stick, put on his hat,
+and went out to walk in the Park; and when he had walked sufficiently he
+sat down on a bench in a flowery, bushy nook on the edge of a bridle
+path.
+
+Few people disturbed the leafy privacy; a policeman sauntering southward
+noted him, perhaps for future identification. The spectacle of a well-
+built, well-groomed, and fashionable young man sitting moodily upon a
+park bench was certainly to be noted. It is not the fashion for
+fashionable people to sit on park benches unless they contemplate self,
+as well as social, destruction.
+
+So the policeman lingered for a while in the vicinity, but not hearing
+any revolver shot, presently sauntered on, buck-skinned fist clasped
+behind his broad back, squinting at a distant social gathering composed
+entirely of the most exclusive nursemaids.
+
+The young man looked up into the pleasant blue above, then his
+preoccupied gaze wandered from woodland to thicket, where the scarlet
+glow of Japanese quince mocked the colors of the fluttering scarlet
+tanagers; where orange-tinted orioles flashed amid tangles of golden
+Forsythia; and past the shrubbery to an azure corner of water, shimmering
+under the wooded slope below.
+
+That sense of languor and unrest, of despondency threaded by hope which
+fair skies and sunshine and new leaves bring with the young year to the
+young, he felt. Yet there was no bitterness in his brooding, for he was a
+singularly generous young man, and there was no vindictiveness mixed with
+the memories of his failures among those whose cordial respect for his
+father had been balanced between that blameless gentleman's wealth and
+position.
+
+A gray squirrel came crawling and nosing through the fresh grass; he
+caught its eyes, and, though the little animal was plainly bound
+elsewhere on important business, the young man soon had it curled up on
+his knee, asleep.
+
+For a while he amused himself by using his curious power, alternately
+waking the squirrel and allowing it to bound off, tail twitching, and
+then calling it back, slowly but inexorably to climb his trousers and
+curl up on his knee and sleep an uncanny and deep sleep which might end
+only at the young man's pleasure.
+
+He, too, began to feel the subtle stillness of the drowsing woodland;
+musing there, caressing his short, crisp mustache, he watched the purple
+grackle walking about in iridescent solitude, the sun spots waning and
+glowing on the grass; he heard the soft, garrulous whimper of waterfowl
+along the water's edge, the stir of leaves above.
+
+He thought of various personal matters: his poverty, the low ebb of his
+balance at the bank, his present profession, his approaching début as an
+entertainer, the chances of his failure. He thought, too, of the
+astounding change in his life, the future, vacant of promise, devoid of
+meaning, a future so utterly new and blank that he could find in it
+nothing to speculate upon. He thought also, and perfectly impersonally,
+of a girl whom he had met now and then upon the stairs of the apartment
+house which he now inhabited.
+
+Evidently there had been an ebb in her prosperity; the tumble of a New
+Yorker's fortune leads from the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence
+through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she painted
+pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt sienna; and
+her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.
+
+He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful
+beauty he had known--might still know if he chose; for a man who can pay
+for his evening clothes need never deny himself the society he was bred
+to.
+
+She certainly did resemble that girl--she had the same bluish violet
+eyes, the same white and deeply fringed lids, the same free grace of
+carriage, a trifle too boyish at times--the same firmly rounded, yet
+slender, figure.
+
+"Now, as a matter of fact," he mused aloud, stroking the sleeping
+squirrel on his knee, "I could have fallen in love with either of those
+girls--before Copper blew up."
+
+Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like
+the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints
+portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I
+have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes
+of that waking Aphrodite in the Luxembourg. If she would only just look
+at me once instead of looking through me when we pass one another in the
+hall----"
+
+The deadened gallop of a horse on the bridle path caught his ear. The
+horse was coming fast--almost too fast. He laid the sleeping squirrel on
+the bench, listened, then instinctively stood up and walked to the
+thicket's edge.
+
+What happened was too quick for him to comprehend; he had a vision of a
+big black horse, mane and tail in the wind, tearing madly, straight at
+him--a glimpse of a white face, desperate and set, a flutter of loosened
+hair; then a storm of wind and sand roared in his ears; he was hurled,
+jerked, and flung forward, dragged, shaken, and left half senseless,
+hanging to nose and bit of a horse whose rider was picking herself out of
+a bush covered with white flowers.
+
+Half senseless still, he tightened his grip on the bit, released the
+grasp on the creature's nose, and, laying his hand full on the forelock,
+brought it down twice and twice across the eyes, talking to the horse in
+halting, broken whispers.
+
+When he had the trembling animal under control he looked around; the girl
+stood on the grass, dusty, dirty, disheveled, bleeding from a cut on the
+cheek bone; the most bewildered and astonished creature he had ever
+looked upon.
+
+"It will be all right in a few minutes," he said, motioning her to the
+bench on the asphalt walk. She nodded, turned, picked up his hat, and,
+seating herself, began to smooth the furred nap with her sleeve, watching
+him intently all the while. That he already had the confidence of a horse
+that he had never before seen was perfectly apparent. Little by little
+the sweating, quivering limbs were stilled, the tense muscles in the neck
+relaxed, the head sank, dusty velvet lips nibbled at his hand, his
+shoulder; the heaving, sunken flanks filled and grew quiet.
+
+Bareheaded, his attire in disorder and covered with slaver and sand, the
+young man laid the bridle on the horse's neck, held out his hand, and,
+saying "Come," turned his back and walked down the bridle path. The horse
+stretched a sweating neck, sniffed, pricked forward both small ears, and
+slowly followed, turning as the man turned, up and down, crowding at heel
+like a trained dog, finally stopping on the edge of the walk.
+
+The young man looped the bridle over a low maple limb, and leaving the
+horse standing sauntered over to the bench.
+
+"That horse," he said pleasantly, "is all right now; but the question is,
+are you all right?"
+
+She rose, handing him his hat, and began to twist up her bright hair. For
+a few moments' silence they were frankly occupied in restoring order to
+raiment, dusting off gravel and examining rents.
+
+"I'm tremendously grateful," she said abruptly.
+
+"I am, too," he said in that attractive manner which sets people of
+similar caste at ease with one another.
+
+"Thank you; it's a generous compliment, considering your hat and
+clothing."
+
+He looked up; she stood twisting her hair and doing her best with the few
+remaining hair pegs.
+
+"I'm a sight for little fishes," she said, coloring. "Did that wretched
+beast bruise you?"
+
+"Oh, no----"
+
+"You limped!"
+
+"Did I?" he said vaguely. "How do you feel?"
+
+"There is," she said, "a curious, breathless flutter all over me; if that
+is fright, I suppose I'm frightened, but I don't mind mounting at once--
+if you would put me up----"
+
+"Better wait a bit," he said; "it would not do to have that horse feel a
+fluttering pulse, telegraphing along the snaffle. Tell me, are you
+spurred?"
+
+She lifted the hem of her habit; two small spurs glittered on her
+polished boot heels.
+
+"That's it, you see," he observed; "you probably have not ridden cross
+saddle very long. When your mount swerved you spurred, and he bolted, bit
+in teeth."
+
+"That's exactly it," she admitted, looking ruefully at her spurs. Then
+she dropped her skirt, glanced interrogatively at him, and, obeying his
+grave gesture, seated herself again upon the bench.
+
+"Don't stand," she said civilly. He took the other end of the seat,
+lifting the still slumbering squirrel to his knee.
+
+"I--I haven't said very much," she began; "I'm impulsive enough to be
+overgrateful and say too much. I hope you understand me; do you?"
+
+"Of course; you're very good. It was nothing; you could have stopped your
+horse yourself. People do that sort of thing for one another as a matter
+of course."
+
+"But not at the risk you took----"
+
+"No risk at all," he said hastily.
+
+She thought otherwise, and thought it so fervently that, afraid of
+emotion, she turned her cold, white profile to him and studied her horse,
+haughty lids adroop. The same insolent sweetness was in her eyes when
+they again reverted to him. He knew the look; he had encountered it often
+enough in the hallway and on the stairs. He knew, too, that she must
+recognize him; yet, under the circumstances, it was for her to speak
+first; and she did not, for she was at that age when horror of overdoing
+anything chokes back the scarcely extinguished childish instinct to say
+too much. In other words, she was eighteen and had had her first season
+the winter past--the winter when he had not been visible among the
+gatherings of his own kind.
+
+[Illustration: "'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly."]
+
+"Those squirrels are very tame," she observed calmly.
+
+"Not always," he said. "Try to hold this one, for example."
+
+She raised her pretty eyebrows, then accepted the lump of fluffy fur from
+his hands. Instantly an electric shock seemed to set the squirrel
+frantic, there was a struggle, a streak of gray and white, and the
+squirrel leaped from her lap and fairly flew down the asphalt path.
+
+"Gracious!" she exclaimed faintly; "what was the matter?"
+
+"Some squirrels are very wild," he said innocently.
+
+"I know--but you held him--he was asleep on your knee. Why didn't he stay
+with me?"
+
+"Oh, perhaps because I have a way with animals."
+
+"With horses, too," she added gayly. And the smile breaking from her
+violet eyes silenced him in the magic of a beauty he had never dreamed
+of. At first she mistook his silence for modesty; then--because even as
+young a maid as she is quick to divine and fine of instinct--she too fell
+silent and serious, the while the shuttles of her reason flew like
+lightning, weaving the picture of him she had conceived--a gentleman, a
+man of her own sort, rather splendid and wise and bewildering. The
+portrait completed, there was no room for the hint of presumption she had
+half sensed in the brown eyes' glance that had set her alert; and she
+looked up at him again, frankly, a trifle curiously.
+
+"I am going to thank you once more," she said, "and ask you to put me up.
+There is not a flutter of fear in my pulse now."
+
+"Are you quite sure?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+They arose; he untied the horse and beckoned it to the walk's edge.
+
+"I forgot," she said, laughing, "that I am riding cross saddle. I can
+mount without troubling you--" She set her toe to the stirrup which he
+held, and swung herself up into the saddle with a breezy "Thanks,
+awfully," and sat there gathering her bridle.
+
+Had she said enough? How coldly her own thanks rang in her ears--for
+perhaps he had saved her neck--and perhaps not. Busy with curb and
+snaffle reins, head bent, into her oval face a tint of color crept. Did
+he think she treated lightly, flippantly, the courage which became him
+so? Or was he already bored by her acknowledgment of it? Sensitive,
+dreading to expose youth and inexperience to the amused smile of this
+attractive young man of the world, she sat fumbling with her bridle,
+conscious that he stood beside her, hat in hand, looking up at her. She
+could delay no longer; the bridle had been shifted and reshifted to the
+last second of procrastination. She must say something or go.
+
+Meeting his eyes, she smiled and leaned a little forward in her saddle as
+though to speak, but his brown eyes troubled her, and all she could say
+was "Thank you--good-by," and galloped off down the vista through dim,
+leafy depths heavy with the incense of lilac and syringa.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+THE IDLER
+
+
+_Concerning the Young Man in the Ditch and His Attempts to Get Out of It_
+
+Although he was not vindictive, he did not care to owe anything to
+anybody who might be inclined to give him a hearing on account of former
+obligations or his social position. Everybody knew he had gone to smash;
+everybody, he very soon discovered, was naturally afraid of being
+bothered by him. The dread of the overfed that an underfed member of the
+community may request a seat at the table he now understood perfectly. He
+was learning.
+
+So he solicited aid from nobody whom he had known in former days; neither
+from those who had aided him when he needed no aid, nor those who owed
+their comfortable position to the generosity of his father--a gentleman
+notorious for making fortunes for his friends.
+
+Therefore he wrote to strangers on a purely business basis--to amazing
+types lately emerged from the submerged, bulging with coal money, steel
+money, copper money, wheat money, stockyard money--types that galloped
+for Fifth Avenue to build town houses; that shook their long cars and
+frisked into the country and built "cottages." And this was how he put
+it:
+
+"_Madam:_ In case you desire to entertain guests with the professional
+services of a magician it would give me pleasure to place my very unusual
+accomplishments at your disposal."
+
+And signed his name.
+
+It was a dreadful drain on his bank account to send several thousand
+engraved cards about town and fashionable resorts. No replies came. Day
+after day, exhausted with the practice drill of his profession, he walked
+to the Park and took his seat on the bench by the bridle path. Sometimes
+he saw her cantering past; she always acknowledged his salute, but never
+drew bridle. At times, too, he passed her in the hall; her colorless
+"Good morning" never varied except when she said "Good evening." And all
+this time he never inquired her name from the hall servant; he was that
+sort of man--decent through instinct; for even breeding sometimes permits
+sentiment to snoop.
+
+For a week he had been airily dispensing with more than one meal a day;
+to keep clothing and boots immaculate required a sacrifice of breakfast
+and luncheon--besides, he had various small pensioners to feed, white
+rabbits with foolish pink eyes, canary birds, cats, albino mice,
+goldfish, and other collaborateurs in his profession. He was obliged to
+bribe the janitor, too, because the laws of the house permitted neither
+animals nor babies within its precincts. This extra honorarium deprived
+him of tobacco, and he became a pessimist.
+
+Besides, doubts as to his own ability arose within him; it was all very
+well to practice his magic there alone, but he had not yet tried it on
+anybody except the janitor; and when he had begun by discovering several
+red-eyed rabbits in the janitor's pockets that intemperate functionary
+fled with a despondent yell that brought a policeman to the area gate
+with a threat to pull the place.
+
+At length, however, a letter came engaging him for one evening. He was
+quite incredulous at first, then modestly scared, perplexed, exultant and
+depressed by turns. Here was an opening--the first. And because it was
+the first its success or failure meant future engagements or consignments
+to the street, perhaps as a white-wing. There must be no faltering now,
+no bungling, no mistakes, no amateurish hesitation. It is the empty-
+headed who most strenuously demand intelligence in others. One yawn from
+such an audience meant his professional damnation--he knew that; every
+second must break like froth in a wine glass; an instant's perplexity, a
+slackening of the tension, and those flaccid intellects would relax into
+native inertia. Incapable of self-amusement, depending utterly upon
+superior minds for a respite from ennui, their caprice controlled his
+fate; and he knew it.
+
+Sitting there by the sunny window with a pair of magnificent white
+Persian cats purring on either knee, he read and reread the letter
+summoning him on the morrow to Seabright. He knew who his hostess was--a
+large lady lately emerged from a corner in lard, dragging with her some
+assorted relatives of atrophied intellects and a husband whose only
+mental pleasure depended upon the speed attained by his racing car--the
+most exacting audience he could dare to confront.
+
+Like the White Knight he had had plenty of practice, but he feared that
+warrior's fate; and as he sat there he picked up a bunch of silver hoops,
+tossed them up separately so that they descended linked in a glittering
+chain, looped them and unlooped them, and, tiring, thoughtfully tossed
+them toward the ceiling again, where they vanished one by one in mid-air.
+
+The cats purred; he picked up one, molded her carefully in his handsome
+hands; and presently, under the agreeable massage, her purring increased
+while she dwindled and dwindled to the size of a small, fluffy kitten,
+then vanished entirely, leaving in his hand a tiny white mouse. This
+mouse he tossed into the air, where it became no mouse at all but a white
+butterfly that fluttered 'round and 'round, alighting at last on the
+window curtain and hung there, opening and closing its snowy wings.
+
+"That's all very well," he reflected, gloomily, as, at a pass of his
+hand, the air was filled with canary birds; "that's all very well, but
+suppose I should slip up? What I need is to rehearse to somebody before I
+face two or three hundred people."
+
+He thought he heard a knocking on his door, and listened a moment. But as
+there was an electric bell there he concluded he had been mistaken; and
+picking up the other white cat, he began a gentle massage that stimulated
+her purring, apparently at the expense of her color and size, for in a
+few moments she also dwindled until she became a very small, coal-black
+kitten, changing in a twinkling to a blackbird, when he cast her
+carelessly toward the ceiling. It was well done; in all India no magician
+could have done it more cleverly, more casually.
+
+Leaning forward in his chair he reproduced the two white cats from behind
+him, put the kittens back in their box, caught the blackbird and caged
+it, and was carefully winding up the hairspring in the white butterfly,
+when again he fancied that somebody was knocking.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+THE GREEN MOUSE
+
+
+_Showing the Value of a Helping Hand When It Is White and Slender_
+
+This time he went leisurely to the door and opened it; a girl stood
+there, saying, "I beg your pardon for disturbing you--" It was high time
+she admitted it, for her eyes had been disturbing him day and night since
+the first time he passed her in the hall.
+
+She appeared to be a trifle frightened, too, and, scarcely waiting for
+his invitation, she stepped inside with a hurried glance behind her, and
+walked to the center of the room holding her skirts carefully as though
+stepping through wet grass.
+
+"I--I am annoyed," she said in a voice not perfectly under command. "If
+you please, would you tell me whether there is such a thing as a pea-
+green mouse?"
+
+Then he did a mean thing; he could have cleared up that matter with a
+word, a smile, and--he didn't.
+
+"A green mouse?" he repeated gently, almost pitifully.
+
+She nodded, then paled; he drew a big chair toward her, for her knees
+trembled a little; and she sat down with an appealing glance that ought
+to have made him ashamed of himself.
+
+"What has frightened you?" inquired that meanest of men.
+
+"I was in my studio--and I must first explain to you that for weeks and
+weeks I--I have imagined I heard sounds--" She looked carefully around
+her; nothing animate was visible. "Sounds," she repeated, swallowing a
+little lump in her white throat, "like the faint squealing and squeaking
+and sniffing and scratching of--of live things. I asked the janitor, and
+he said the house was not very well built and that the beams and
+wainscoting were shrinking."
+
+"Did he say that?" inquired the young man, thinking of the bribes.
+
+"Yes, and I tried to believe him. And one day I thought I heard about one
+hundred canaries singing, and I know I did, but that idiot janitor said
+they were the sparrows under the eaves. Then one day when your door was
+open, and I was coming up the stairway, and it was dark in the entry,
+something big and soft flopped across the carpet, and--it being
+exceedingly common to scream--I didn't, but managed to get past it, and"--
+her violet eyes widened with horror--"do you know what that soft, floppy
+thing was? It was an owl!"
+
+He was aware of it; he had managed to secure the escaped bird before her
+electric summons could arouse the janitor.
+
+"I called the janitor," she said, "and he came and we searched the entry;
+but there was no owl."
+
+He appeared to be greatly impressed; she recognized the sympathy in his
+brown eyes.
+
+"That wretched janitor declared I had seen a cat," she resumed; "and I
+could not persuade him otherwise. For a week I scarcely dared set foot on
+the stairs, but I had to--you see, I live at home and only come to my
+studio to paint."
+
+"I thought you lived here," he said, surprised.
+
+"Oh, no. I have my studio--" she hesitated, then smiled. "Everybody makes
+fun of me, and I suppose they'll laugh me out of it, but I detest
+conventions, and I did hope I had talent for something besides
+frivolity."
+
+Her gaze wandered around his room; then suddenly the possible
+significance of her unconventional situation brought her to her feet,
+serious but self-possessed.
+
+"I beg your pardon again," she said, "but I was really driven out of my
+studio--quite frightened, I confess."
+
+"What drove you out?" he asked guiltily.
+
+"Something--you can scarcely credit it--and I dare not tell the janitor
+for fear he will think me--queer." She raised her distressed and lovely
+eyes again: "Oh, please believe that I _did_ see a bright green mouse!"
+
+"I do believe it," he said, wincing.
+
+"Thank you. I--I know perfectly well how it sounds--and I know that
+horrid people see things like that, but"--she spoke piteously--"I had
+only one glass of claret at luncheon, and I am perfectly healthy in body
+and mind. How could I see such a thing if it was not there?"
+
+"It was there," he declared.
+
+"Do you really think so? A green--bright green mouse?"
+
+"Haven't a doubt of it," he assured her; "saw one myself the other day."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"On the floor--" he made a vague gesture. "There's probably a crack
+between your studio and my wall, and the little rascal crept into your
+place."
+
+She stood looking at him uncertainly: "Are there really such things as
+green mice?"
+
+"Well," he explained, "I fancy this one was originally white. Somebody
+probably dyed it green."
+
+"But who on earth would be silly enough to do such a thing?"
+
+His ears grew red--he felt them doing it.
+
+After a moment she said: "I am glad you told me that you, too, saw this
+unspeakable mouse. I have decided to write to the owners of the house and
+request an immediate investigation. Would--would it be too much to ask
+you to write also?"
+
+"Are you--you going to write?" he asked, appalled.
+
+"Certainly. Either some dreadful creature here keeps a bird store and
+brings home things that escape, or the house is infested. I don't care
+what the janitor says; I did hear squeals and whines and whimpers!"
+
+"Suppose--suppose we wait," he began lamely; but at that moment her blue
+eyes widened; she caught him convulsively by the arm, pointing, one snowy
+finger outstretched.
+
+"Oh-h!" she said hysterically, and the next instant was standing upon a
+chair, pale as a ghost. It was a wonder she had not mounted the dresser,
+too, for there, issuing in creepy single file from the wainscoting, came
+mice--mice of various tints. A red one led the grewsome rank, a black and
+white one came next, then in decorous procession followed the guilty
+green one, a yellow one, a blue one, and finally--horror of horrors!--a
+red-white-and-blue mouse, carrying a tiny American flag.
+
+He turned a miserable face toward her; she, eyes dilated, frozen to a
+statue, saw him advance, hold out a white wand--saw the uncanny
+procession of mice mount the stick and form into a row, tails hanging
+down--saw him carry the creatures to a box and dump them in.
+
+He was trying to speak now. She heard him stammer something about the
+escape of the mice; she heard him asking her pardon. Dazed, she laid her
+hand in his as he aided her to descend to the floor; nerveless,
+speechless, she sank into the big chair, horror still dilating her eyes.
+
+"It's all up with me," he said slowly, "if you write to the owners. I've
+bribed the janitor to say nothing. I'm dreadfully mortified that these
+things have happened to annoy you."
+
+The color came back into her face; amazement dominated her anger. "But
+why--why do you keep such creatures?"
+
+"Why shouldn't I?" he asked. "It is my profession."
+
+"Your--what?"
+
+"My profession," he repeated doggedly.
+
+"Oh," she said, revolted, "that is not true! You are a gentleman--I know
+who you are perfectly well!"
+
+"Who am I?"
+
+She called him by name, almost angrily.
+
+"Well," he said sullenly, "what of it? If you have investigated my record
+you must know I am as poor as these miserable mice."
+
+"I--I know it. But you are a gentleman----"
+
+"I am a mountebank," he said; "I mean a mountebank in its original
+interpretation. There's neither sense nor necessity for me to deny it."
+
+"I--I don't understand you," she whispered, shocked.
+
+"Why, I do monkey tricks to entertain people," he replied, forcing a
+laugh, "or rather, I hope to do a few--and be paid for them. I fancy
+every man finds his own level; I've found mine, apparently."
+
+Her face was inscrutable; she lay back in the great chair, watching him.
+
+"I have a little money left," he said; "enough to last a day or two. Then
+I am to be paid for entertaining some people at Seabright; and," he added
+with that very attractive smile of his from which all bitterness had
+departed, "and that will be the first money I ever earned in all my
+life."
+
+She was young enough to be fascinated, child enough to feel the little
+lump in her throat rising. She knew he was poor; her sisters had told her
+that; but she had supposed it to be only comparative poverty--just as her
+cousins, for instance, had scarcely enough to keep more than two horses
+in town and only one motor. But want--actual need--she had never dreamed
+of in his case--she could scarcely understand it even now--he was so well
+groomed, so attractive, fairly radiating good breeding and the easy
+financial atmosphere she was accustomed to.
+
+"So you see," he continued gayly, "if you complain to the owners about
+green mice, why, I shall have to leave, and, as a matter of fact, I
+haven't enough money to go anywhere except--" he laughed.
+
+"Where?" she managed to say.
+
+"The Park. I was joking, of course," he hastened to add, for she had
+turned rather white.
+
+"No," she said, "you were not joking." And as he made no reply: "Of
+course, I shall not write--now. I had rather my studio were overrun with
+multicolored mice--" She stopped with something almost like a sob. He
+smiled, thinking she was laughing.
+
+But oh, the blow for her! In her youthful enthusiasm she had always, from
+the first time they had encountered one another, been sensitively aware
+of this tall, clean-cut, attractive young fellow. And by and by she
+learned his name and asked her sisters about him, and when she heard of
+his recent ruin and withdrawal from the gatherings of his kind her youth
+flushed to its romantic roots, warming all within her toward this
+splendid and radiant young man who lived so nobly, so proudly aloof. And
+then--miracle of Manhattan!--he had proved his courage before her dazed
+eyes--rising suddenly out of the very earth to save her from a fate which
+her eager desire painted blacker every time she embellished the incident.
+And she decorated the memory of it every day.
+
+And now! Here, beside her, was this prince among men, her champion,
+beaten to his ornamental knees by Fate, and contemplating a miserable,
+uncertain career to keep his godlike body from actual starvation. And
+she--she with more money than even she knew what to do with, powerless to
+aid him, prevented from flinging open her check book and bidding him to
+write and write till he could write no more.
+
+A memory--a thought crept in. Where had she heard his name connected with
+her father's name? In Ophir Steel? Certainly; and was it not this young
+man's father who had laid the foundation for her father's fortune? She
+had heard some such thing, somewhere.
+
+He said: "I had no idea of boring anybody--you least of all--with my
+woes. Indeed, I haven't any sorrows now, because to-day I received my
+first encouragement; and no doubt I'll be a huge success. Only--I thought
+it best to make it clear why it would do me considerable damage just now
+if you should write."
+
+"Tell me," she said tremulously, "is there anything--anything I can do
+to--to balance the deep debt of gratitude I owe you----"
+
+"What debt?" he asked, astonished. "Oh! that? Why, that is no debt--
+except that I was happy--perfectly and serenely happy to have had that
+chance to--to hear your voice----"
+
+"You were brave," she said hastily. "You may make as light of it as you
+please, but I know."
+
+"So do I," he laughed, enchanted with the rising color in her cheeks.
+
+"No, you don't; you don't know how I felt--how afraid I was to show how
+deeply--deeply I felt. I felt it so deeply that I did not even tell my
+sisters," she added naively.
+
+"Your sisters?"
+
+"Yes; you know them." And as he remained silent she said: "Do you not
+know who I am? Do you not even know my name?"
+
+He shook his head, laughing.
+
+"I'd have given all I had to know; but, of course, I could not ask the
+servants!"
+
+Surprise, disappointment, hurt pride that he had had no desire to know
+gave quick place to a comprehension that set a little thrill tingling her
+from head to foot. His restraint was the nicest homage ever rendered her;
+she saw that instantly; and the straight look she gave him out of her
+clear eyes took his breath away for a second.
+
+"Do you remember Sacharissa?" she asked.
+
+"I do--certainly! I always thought----"
+
+"What?" she said, smiling.
+
+He muttered something about eyes and white skin and a trick of the heavy
+lids.
+
+She was perfectly at ease now; she leaned back in her chair, studying him
+calmly.
+
+"Suppose," she said, "people could see me here now."
+
+"It would end your artistic career," he replied, laughing; "and fancy! I
+took you for the sort that painted for a bare existence!"
+
+"And I--I took you for----"
+
+"Something very different than what I am."
+
+"In one way--not in others."
+
+"Oh! I look the mountebank?"
+
+"I shall not explain what I mean," she said with heightened color, and
+rose from her chair. "As there are no more green mice to peep out at me
+from behind my easel," she added, "I can have no excuse from abandoning
+art any longer. Can I?"
+
+The trailing sweetness of the inquiry was scarcely a challenge, yet he
+dared take it up.
+
+"You asked me," he said, "whether you could do anything for me."
+
+"Can I?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I will--I am glad--tell me what to do?"
+
+"Why, it's only this. I've got to go before an audience of two hundred
+people and do things. I've had practice here by myself, but--but if you
+don't mind I should like to try it before somebody--you. Do you mind?"
+
+She stood there, slim, blue-eyed, reflecting; then innocently: "If I've
+compromised myself the damage was done long ago, wasn't it? They're going
+to take away my studio anyhow, so I might as well have as much pleasure
+as I can."
+
+And she sat down, gracefully, linking her white fingers over her knees.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+AN IDEAL IDOL
+
+
+_A Chapter Devoted to the Proposition that All Mankind Are Born of Woman_
+
+He began by suddenly filling the air with canary birds; they flew and
+chirped and fluttered about her head, until, bewildered, she shrank back,
+almost frightened at the golden hurricane.
+
+To reassure her he began doing incredible things with the big silver
+hoops, forming chains and linked figures under her amazed eyes, although
+each hoop seemed solid and without a break in its polished circumference.
+Then, one by one, he tossed the rings up and they vanished in mid-air
+before her very eyes.
+
+"How did you do that?" she cried, enchanted.
+
+He laughed and produced the big, white Persian cats, changed them into
+kittens, then into birds and butterflies, and finally into a bowl full of
+big, staring goldfish. Then he picked up a ladle, dipped out the fish,
+carefully fried them over an electric lamp, dumped them from the smoking
+frying pan back into the water, where they quietly swam off again,
+goggling their eyes in astonishment.
+
+"That," said the girl, excitedly, "is miraculous!"
+
+"Isn't it?" he said, delighted as a boy at her praise. "What card will
+you choose?"
+
+And he handed her a pack.
+
+"The ace of hearts, if you please."
+
+"Draw it from the pack."
+
+"Any card?" she inquired. "Oh! how on earth did you make me draw the ace
+of hearts?"
+
+"Hold it tightly," he warned her.
+
+She clutched it in her pretty fingers.
+
+"Are you sure you hold it?" he asked.
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Look!"
+
+She looked and found that it was the queen of diamonds she held so
+tightly; but, looking again to reassure herself, she was astonished to
+find that the card was the jack of clubs. "Tear it up," he said. She tore
+it into small pieces.
+
+"Throw them into the air!"
+
+She obeyed, and almost cried out to see them take fire in mid-air and
+float away in ashy flakes.
+
+Face flushed, eyes brilliant, she turned to him, hanging on his every
+movement, every expression.
+
+Before her rapt eyes the multicolored mice danced jigs on slack wires,
+then were carefully rolled up into little balls of paper which
+immediately began to swell until each was as big as a football. These
+burst open, and out of each football of white paper came kittens,
+turtles, snakes, chickens, ducks, and finally two white rabbits with
+silly pink eyes that began gravely waltzing round and round the room.
+
+"Please stand up and shake your skirts," he said.
+
+She rose hastily and obeyed; a rain of silver coins fell, then gold, then
+banknotes, littering the floor. Then precious stones began to drop about
+her; she shook them from her hair, her collar, her neck; she clenched her
+hands in nervous amazement, but inside each tight little fist she felt
+something, and opening her fingers she fairly showered the floor with
+diamonds.
+
+"Can't you save one for me?" he asked. "I really need it." But when again
+she looked for the glittering heap at her feet, it was gone; and, search
+as she might, not one coin, not one gem remained.
+
+Glancing up in dismay she found herself in a perfect storm of white
+butterflies--no, they were red--no, green!
+
+"Is there anything in this world you desire?" he asked her.
+
+"A--a glass of water----"
+
+She was already holding it in her hands, and she cried out in amazement,
+spilling the brimming glass; but no water fell, only a rain of little
+crimson flames.
+
+"I can't--can't drink this--can I?" she faltered.
+
+"With perfect safety," he smiled, and she tasted it.
+
+"Taste it again," he said.
+
+She tried it; it was lemonade.
+
+"Again."
+
+It was ginger ale.
+
+"Once more."
+
+She stared at the glass, frothing with ice-cream soda; there was a long
+silver spoon in it, too.
+
+Enchanted, she lay back, savoring her ice, shyly watching him.
+
+He went on gayly doing uncanny or charming things; her eyes were tired,
+dazzled, but not too weary to watch him, though she scarcely followed the
+marvelous objects that appeared and vanished and glittered and flamed
+under his ceaselessly busy hands.
+
+She did notice with a shudder the appearance of an owl that sat for a
+while on his shoulder and then turned into a big fur muff which was all
+right as long as he held it, but walked away on four legs when he tossed
+it to the floor.
+
+A shower of brilliant things followed like shooting stars; two or three
+rose trees grew, budded, and bloomed before her eyes; and he laid the
+fresh, sweet blossoms in her hands. They turned to violets later, but
+that did not matter; nothing mattered any longer as long as she could lie
+there and gaze at him--the most splendid man her maiden eyes had ever
+unclosed upon.
+
+About two thousand yards of brilliant ribbons suddenly fell from the
+ceiling; she looked at him with something perilously close to a sigh. Out
+of an old hat he produced a cage full of parrots; every parrot repeated
+her first name decorously, monotonously, until packed back into the hat
+and stuffed into a box which was then set on fire.
+
+Her heart was pretty full now; for she was only eighteen and she had been
+considering his poverty. So when in due time the box burned out and from
+the black and charred _débris_ the parrots stepped triumphantly forth,
+gravely repeating her name in unison; and when she saw that the
+entertainment was at an end, she rose, setting her ice-cream soda upon a
+table, and, although the glass instantly changed into a teapot, she
+walked straight up to him and held out her hand.
+
+"I've had a perfectly lovely time," she said. "And I want to say to you
+that I have been thinking of several things, and one is that it is
+perfectly ridiculous for you to be poor."
+
+"It is rather ridiculous," he admitted, surprised. "Isn't it! And no need
+of it at all. Your father made a fortune for my father. All you have to
+do is to let my father make a fortune for you."
+
+"Is that all?" he asked, laughing.
+
+"Of course. Why did you not tell him so? Have you seen him?"
+
+"No," he said gravely.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I saw others--I did not care to try--any more--friends."
+
+"Will you--now?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Then I will."
+
+"Please don't," he said quietly. Her hand still lay in his; she looked up
+at him; her eyes were starry bright and a little moist.
+
+"I simply can't stand this," she said, steadying her voice.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Your--your distress--" She choked; her sensitive mouth trembled.
+
+"Good Heavens!" he breathed; "do you care!"
+
+"Care--care," she stammered. "You saved my life with a laugh! You face
+st-starvation with a laugh! Your father made mine! Care? Yes, I care!"
+
+But she had bent her head; a bright tear fell, spangling his polished
+shoes; the pulsating seconds passed; he laid his other hand above both of
+hers which he held, and stood silent, stunned, scarcely daring to
+understand.
+
+Nor was it here he could understand or even hope--his instinct held him
+stupid and silent. Presently he released her hands.
+
+She said "Good-by" calmly enough; he followed her to the door and opened
+it, watching her pass through the hall to her own door. And there she
+paused and looked back; and he found himself beside her again.
+
+"Only," she began, "only don't do all those beautiful magic things for
+any--anybody else--will you? I wish to have--have them all for myself--to
+share them with no one----"
+
+He held her hands imprisoned again. "I will never do one of those things
+for anybody but you," he said unsteadily.
+
+"Truly?" Her face caught fire.
+
+"Yes, truly."
+
+"But how--how, then, can you--can----"
+
+"I don't care what happens to me!" he said. To look at him nobody would
+have thought him young enough to say that sort of thing.
+
+"I care," she said, releasing her hands and stepping back into her
+studio.
+
+For a moment her lovely, daring face swam before his eyes; then, in the
+next moment, she was in his arms, crying her eyes out against his
+shoulder, his lips pressed to her bright hair.
+
+And that was all right in its way, too; madder things have happened in
+our times; but nothing madder ever happened than a large, bald gentleman
+who came up the stairs in a series of bounces and planted his legs apart
+and tightened his pudgy grip upon his malacca walking stick, and
+confronted them with distended eyes and waistband.
+
+In vigorous but incoherent English he begged to know whether this scene
+was part of an education in art.
+
+"Papah," she said calmly, "you are just in time. Go into the studio and
+I'll come in one moment."
+
+Then giving her lover both hands and looking at him with all her soul in
+her young eyes: "I love you; I'll marry you. And if there's trouble"--she
+smiled upon her frantic father--"if there is trouble I will follow you
+about the country exhibiting green mice----"
+
+"What!" thundered her father.
+
+"Green mice," she repeated with an adorable smile at her lover--"unless
+my father finds a necessity for you in his business--with a view to
+partnership. And I'm going to let you arrange that together. Good-by."
+
+And she entered her studio, closing the door behind her, leaving the two
+men confronting one another in the entry.
+
+For one so young she had much wisdom and excellent taste; and listening,
+she heard her father explode in one lusty Saxon word. He always said it
+when beaten; it was the beginning of the end, and the end of the sweetest
+beginning that ever dawned on earth for a maid since the first sunbeam
+stole into Eden.
+
+So she sat down on her little camp stool before her easel and picked up a
+hand glass; and, sitting there, carefully removed all traces of tears
+from her wet and lovely eyes with the cambric hem of her painting apron.
+
+"Damnation!" repeated Mr. Carr, "am I to understand that the only thing
+you can do for a living is to go about with a troupe of trained mice?"
+
+"I've invented a machine," observed the young man, modestly. "It ought to
+be worth millions--if you'd care to finance it."
+
+"The idea is utterly repugnant to me!" shouted her father.
+
+The young man reddened. "If you wouldn't mind examining it--" He drew
+from his pocket a small, delicately contrived bit of clockwork. "This is
+the machine----"
+
+"I don't want to see it!"
+
+"You _have_ seen it. Do you mind sitting down a moment? Be careful of
+that kitten! Kindly take this chair. Thank you. Now, if you would be good
+enough to listen for ten minutes----"
+
+"I don't want to be good enough! Do you hear!"
+
+"Yes, I hear," said young Destyn, patiently. "And as I was going to
+explain, the earth is circumscribed by wireless currents of
+electricity----"
+
+"I--dammit, sir----"
+
+"But those are not the only invisible currents that are ceaselessly
+flowing around our globe!" pursued the young man, calmly. "Do you see
+this machine?"
+
+"No, I don't!" snarled the other.
+
+"Then--" And, leaning closer, William Augustus Destyn whispered into
+Bushwyck Carr's fat, red ear.
+
+"What!!!"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You can't _prove_ it!"
+
+"Watch me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ethelinda had dried her eyes. Every few minutes she glanced anxiously at
+the little French clock over her easel.
+
+"What on earth can they be doing?" she murmured. And when the long hour
+struck she arose with resolution and knocked at the door.
+
+"Come in," said her father, irritably, "but don't interrupt. William and
+I are engaged in a very important business transaction."
+
+[Illustration: ]
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+SACHARISSA
+
+
+_Treating of Certain Scientific Events Succeeding the Wedding Journey of
+William and Ethelinda_
+
+Sacharissa took the chair. She knew nothing about parliamentary
+procedure; neither did her younger, married sister, Ethelinda, nor the
+recently acquired family brother-in-law, William Augustus Destyn.
+
+"The meeting will come to order," said Sacharissa, and her brother-in-law
+reluctantly relinquished his new wife's hand--all but one finger.
+
+"Miss Chairman," he began, rising to his feet.
+
+The chair recognized him and bit into a chocolate.
+
+"I move that our society be known as The Green Mouse, Limited."
+
+"Why limited?" asked Sacharissa.
+
+"Why not?" replied her sister, warmly.
+
+"Well, what does your young man mean by limited?"
+
+"I suppose," said Linda, "that he means it is to be the limit. Don't you,
+William?"
+
+"Certainly," said Destyn, gravely; and the motion was put and carried.
+
+"Rissa, dear!"
+
+The chair casually recognized her younger sister.
+
+"I propose that the object of this society be to make its members very,
+very wealthy."
+
+The motion was carried; Linda picked up a scrap of paper and began to
+figure up the possibility of a new touring car.
+
+Then Destyn arose; the chair nodded to him and leaned back, playing a
+tattoo with her pencil tip against her snowy teeth.
+
+He began in his easy, agreeable voice, looking across at his pretty wife:
+
+"You know, dearest--and Sacharissa, over there, is also aware--that, in
+the course of my economical experiments in connection with your father's
+Wireless Trust, I have accidentally discovered how to utilize certain
+brand-new currents of an extraordinary character."
+
+Sacharissa's expression became skeptical; Linda watched her husband in
+unfeigned admiration.
+
+"These new and hitherto unsuspected currents," continued Destyn modestly,
+"are not electrical but psychical. Yet, like wireless currents, their
+flow eternally encircles the earth. These currents, I believe, have their
+origin in that great unknown force which, for lack of a better name, we
+call fate, or predestination. And I am convinced that by intercepting one
+of these currents it is possible to connect the subconscious
+personalities of two people of opposite sex who, although ultimately
+destined for one another since the beginning of things, have, through
+successive incarnations, hitherto missed the final consummation--
+marriage!--which was the purpose of their creation."
+
+"Bill, dear," sighed Linda, "how exquisitely you explain the infinite."
+
+"Fudge!" said Sacharissa; "go on, William."
+
+"That's all," said Destyn. "We agreed to put in a thousand dollars apiece
+for me to experiment with. I've perfected the instrument--here it is."
+
+He drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, flat jeweler's case and took
+out a delicate machine resembling the complicated interior of a watch.
+
+"Now," he said, "with this tiny machine concealed in my waistcoat pocket,
+I walk up to any man and, by turning a screw like the stem of a watch,
+open the microscopical receiver. Into the receiver flow all psychical
+emanations from that unsuspicious citizen. The machine is charged,
+positively. Then I saunter up to some man, place the instrument on a
+table--like that--touch a lever. Do you see that hair wire of Rosium
+uncoil like a tentacle? It is searching, groping for the invisible,
+negative, psychical current which will carry its message."
+
+"To whom?" asked Sacharissa.
+
+"To the subconscious personality of the only woman for whom he was
+created, the only woman on earth whose psychic personality is properly
+attuned to intercept that wireless greeting and respond to it."
+
+"How can you tell whether she responds?" asked Sacharissa, incredulously.
+He pointed to the hair wire of Rosium:
+
+"I watch that. The instant that the psychical current reaches and awakens
+her, crack!--a minute point of blue incandescence tips the tentacle. It's
+done; psychical communication is established. And that man and that
+woman, wherever they may be on earth, surely, inexorably, will be drawn
+together, even from the uttermost corners of the world, to fulfill that
+for which they were destined since time began."
+
+There was a semirespectful silence; Linda looked at the little jewel-like
+machine with a slight shudder; Sacharissa shrugged her young shoulders.
+
+"How much of this," said she, "is theory and how much is fact?--for,
+William, you always were something of a poet."
+
+"I don't know. A month ago I tried it on your father's footman, and in a
+week he'd married a perfectly strange parlor maid."
+
+"Oh, they do such things, anyway," observed Sacharissa, and added,
+unconvinced: "Did that tentacle burn blue?"
+
+"It certainly did," said Destyn.
+
+Linda murmured: "I believe in it. Let's issue stock."
+
+"To issue stock is one thing," said Destyn, "to get people to buy it is
+another. You and I may believe in Green Mouse, Limited, but the rest of
+the world is always from beyond the Mississippi."
+
+"The thing to do," said Linda, "is to prove your theory by practicing on
+people. They may not like the idea, but they'll be so grateful, when
+happily and unexpectedly married, that they'll buy stock."
+
+"Or give us testimonials," added Sacharissa, "that their bliss was
+entirely due to a single dose of Green Mouse, Limited."
+
+"Don't be flippant," said Linda. "Think what William's invention means to
+the world! Think of the time it will save young men barking up wrong
+trees! Think of the trouble saved--no more doubt, no timidity, no
+hesitation, no speculation, no opposition from parents."
+
+"Any of our clients," added Destyn, "can be instantly switched on to a
+private psychical current which will clinch the only girl in the world.
+Engagements will be superfluous; those two simply can't get away from
+each other."
+
+"If that were true," observed Sacharissa, "it would be most unpleasant.
+There would be no fun in it. However," she added, smiling, "I don't
+believe in your theory or your machine, William. It would take more than
+that combination to make me marry anybody."
+
+"Then we're not going to issue stock?" asked Linda. "I do need so many
+new and expensive things."
+
+"We've got to experiment a little further, first," said Destyn.
+
+Sacharissa laughed: "You blindfold me, give me a pencil and lay the
+Social Register before me. Whatever name I mark you are to experiment
+with."
+
+"Don't mark any of our friends," began Linda.
+
+"How can I tell whom I may choose. It's fair for everybody. Come; do you
+promise to abide by it--you two?"
+
+They promised doubtfully.
+
+"So do I, then," said Sacharissa. "Hurry up and blindfold me, somebody.
+The bus will be here in half an hour, and you know how father acts when
+kept waiting."
+
+Linda tied her eyes with a handkerchief, gave her a pencil and seated
+herself on an arm of the chair watching the pencil hovering over the
+pages of the Social Register which her sister was turning at hazard.
+
+"_This_ page," announced Sacharissa, "and _this_ name!" marking it with a
+quick stroke.
+
+Linda gave a stifled cry and attempted to arrest the pencil; but the
+moving finger had written.
+
+"Whom have I selected?" inquired the girl, whisking the handkerchief from
+her eyes. "What are you having a fit about, Linda?"
+
+And, looking at the page, she saw that she had marked her own name.
+
+"We must try it again," said Destyn, hastily. "That doesn't count. Tie
+her up, Linda."
+
+"But--that wouldn't be fair," said Sacharissa, hesitating whether to take
+it seriously or laugh. "We all promised, you know. I ought to abide by
+what I've done."
+
+"Don't be silly," said Linda, preparing the handkerchief and laying it
+across her sister's forehead.
+
+Sacharissa pushed it away. "I can't break my word, even to myself," she
+said, laughing. "I'm not afraid of that machine."
+
+"Do you mean to say you are willing to take silly chances?" asked Linda,
+uneasily. "I believe in William's machine whether you do or not. And I
+don't care to have any of the family experimented with."
+
+"If I were willing to try it on others it would be cowardly for me to
+back out now," said Sacharissa, forcing a smile; for Destyn's and Linda's
+seriousness was beginning to make her a trifle uncomfortable.
+
+"Unless you want to marry somebody pretty soon you'd better not risk it,"
+said Destyn, gravely.
+
+"You--you don't particularly care to marry anybody, just now, do you,
+dear?" asked Linda. "No," replied her sister, scornfully.
+
+There was a silence; Sacharissa, uneasy, bit her underlip and sat looking
+at the uncanny machine.
+
+She was a tall girl, prettily formed, one of those girls with long limbs,
+narrow, delicate feet and ankles.
+
+That sort of girl, when she also possesses a mass of chestnut hair, a
+sweet mouth and gray eyes, is calculated to cause trouble.
+
+And there she sat, one knee crossed over the other, slim foot swinging,
+perplexed brows bent slightly inward.
+
+"I can't see any honorable way out of it," she said resolutely. "I said
+I'd abide by the blindfolded test."
+
+"When we promised we weren't thinking of ourselves," insisted Ethelinda.
+
+"That doesn't release us," retorted her Puritan sister.
+
+"Why?" demanded Linda. "Suppose, for example, your pencil had marked
+William's name! That would have been im--immoral!"
+
+"_Would_ it?" asked Sacharissa, turning her honest, gray eyes on her
+brother-in-law.
+
+"I don't believe it would," he said; "I'd only be switched on to Linda's
+current again." And he smiled at his wife.
+
+Sacharissa sat thoughtful and serious, swinging her foot.
+
+"Well," she said, at length, "I might as well face it at once. If there's
+anything in this instrument we'll all know it pretty soon. Turn on your
+receiver, Billy."
+
+"Oh," cried Linda, tearfully, "don't you do it, William!"
+
+"Turn it on," repeated Sacharissa. "I'm not going to be a coward and
+break faith with myself, and you both know it! If I've got to go through
+the silliness of love and marriage I might as well know who the bandarlog
+is to be.... Anyway, I don't really believe in this thing.... I can't
+believe in it.... Besides, I've a mind and a will of my own, and I fancy
+it will require more than amateur psychical experiments to change either.
+Go on, Billy."
+
+"You mean it?" he asked, secretly gratified.
+
+"Certainly," with superb affectation of indifference. And she rose and
+faced the instrument.
+
+Destyn looked at his wife. He was dying to try it.
+
+"Will!" she exclaimed, "suppose we are not going to like Rissa's possible
+f--fiance! Suppose father doesn't like him!"
+
+"You'll all probably like him as well as I shall," said her sister
+defiantly. "Willy, stop making frightened eyes at your wife and start
+your infernal machine!"
+
+There was a vicious click, a glitter of shifting clockwork, a snap, and
+it was done.
+
+"Have you now, _theoretically_, got my psychical current bottled up?" she
+asked disdainfully. But her lip trembled a little.
+
+He nodded, looking very seriously at her.
+
+"And now you are going to switch me on to this unknown gentleman's
+psychical current?"
+
+"Don't let him!" begged Linda. "Billy, dear, how _can_ you when nobody
+has the faintest idea who the creature may turn out to be!"
+
+"Go ahead!" interrupted her sister, masking misgiving under a careless
+smile.
+
+Click! Up shot the glittering, quivering tentacle of Rosium, vibrating
+for a few moments like a thread of silver. Suddenly it was tipped with a
+blue flash of incandescence.
+
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! There he is!" cried Linda, excitedly. "Rissy! Rissy,
+little sister, _what_ have you done?"
+
+"Nothing," she said, catching her breath. "I don't believe that flash
+means anything. I don't feel a bit different--not the least bit. I feel
+perfectly well and perfectly calm. I don't love anybody and I'm not going
+to love anybody--until I want to, and that will probably never happen."
+
+However, she permitted her sister to take her in her arms and pet her. It
+was rather curious how exceedingly young and inexperienced she felt. She
+found it agreeable to be fussed over and comforted and cradled, and for a
+few moments she suffered Linda's solicitude and misgivings in silence.
+After a while, however, she became ashamed.
+
+"Nothing is going to happen, Linda," she said, looking dreamily up at the
+ceiling; "don't worry, dear; I shall escape the bandarlog."
+
+"If something doesn't happen," observed Destyn, pocketing his instrument,
+"the Green Mouse, Limited, will go into liquidation with no liabilities
+and no assets, and there'll be no billions for you or for me or for
+anybody."
+
+"William," said his wife, "do you place a low desire for money before
+your own sister-in-law's spiritual happiness?"
+
+"No, darling, of course not."
+
+"Then you and I had better pray for the immediate bankruptcy of the Green
+Mouse."
+
+Her husband said, "By all means," without enthusiasm, and looked out of
+the window. "Still," he added, "I made a happy marriage. I'm for wedding
+bells every time. Sacharissa will like it, too. I don't know why you and
+I shouldn't be enthusiastic optimists concerning wedded life; I can't see
+why we shouldn't pray for Sacharissa's early marriage."
+
+"William!"
+
+"Yes, darling."
+
+"You _are_ considering money before my sister's happiness!"
+
+"But in her case I don't see why we can't conscientiously consider both."
+
+Linda cast one tragic glance at her material husband, pushed her sister
+aside, arose and fled. After her sped the contrite Destyn; a distant door
+shut noisily; all the elements had gathered for the happy, first quarrel
+of the newly wedded.
+
+"Fudge," said Sacharissa, walking to the window, slim hands clasped
+loosely behind her back.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+IN WRONG
+
+
+_Wherein Sacharissa Remains In and a Young Man Can't Get Out_
+
+The snowstorm had ceased; across Fifth Avenue the Park resembled the
+mica-incrusted view on an expensive Christmas card. Every limb, branch,
+and twig was outlined in clinging snow; crystals of it glittered under
+the morning sun; brilliantly dressed children, with sleds, romped and
+played over the dazzling expanse. Overhead the characteristic deep blue
+arch of a New York sky spread untroubled by a cloud. Her family--that is,
+her father, brother-in-law, married sister, three unmarried sisters and
+herself--were expecting to leave for Tuxedo about noon. Why? Nobody knows
+why the wealthy are always going somewhere. However, they do, fortunately
+for story writers.
+
+"It's quite as beautiful here," thought Sacharissa to herself, "as it is
+in the country. I'm sorry I'm going."
+
+Idling there by the sunny window and gazing out into the white expanse,
+she had already dismissed all uneasiness in her mind concerning the
+psychical experiment upon herself. That is to say, she had not exactly
+dismissed it, she used no conscious effort, it had gone of itself--or,
+rather, it had been crowded out, dominated by a sudden and strong
+disinclination to go to Tuxedo.
+
+As she stood there the feeling grew and persisted, and, presently, she
+found herself repeating aloud: "I don't want to go, I _don't_ want to go.
+It's stupid to go. Why should I go when it's stupid to go and I'd rather
+stay here?"
+
+Meanwhile, Ethelinda and Destyn were having a classical reconciliation in
+a distant section of the house, and the young wife had got as far as:
+
+"Darling, I am _so_ worried about Rissa. I _do_ wish she were not going
+to Tuxedo. There are so many attractive men expected at the Courlands'."
+
+"She can't escape men anywhere, can she?"
+
+"N-no; but there will be a concentration of particularly good-looking and
+undesirable ones at Tuxedo this week. That idle, horrid, cynical crowd is
+coming from Long Island, and I _don't_ want her to marry any of them."
+
+"Well, then, make her stay at home."
+
+"She wants to go."
+
+"What's the good of an older sister if you can't make her mind you?" he
+asked.
+
+"She won't. She's set her heart on going. All those boisterous winter
+sports appeal to her. Besides, how can one member of the family be absent
+on New Year's Day?"
+
+Arm in arm they strolled out into the great living room, where a large,
+pompous, vividly colored gentleman was laying down the law to the
+triplets--three very attractive young girls, dressed precisely alike, who
+said, "Yes, pa-_pah!_" and "No pa-_pah!_" in a grave and silvery-voiced
+chorus whenever filial obligation required it.
+
+"And another thing," continued the pudgy and vivid old gentleman, whose
+voice usually ended in a softly mellifluous shout when speaking
+emphatically: "that worthless Westbury--Cedarhurst--Jericho--
+Meadowbrook set are going to be in evidence at this housewarming, and I
+caution you now against paying anything but the slightest, most
+superficial and most frivolous attention to anything that any of those
+young whip-snapping, fox-hunting cubs may say to you. Do you hear?" with
+a mellow shout like a French horn on a touring car.
+
+"Yes, pa-_pah!_"
+
+The old gentleman waved his single eyeglass in token of dismissal, and
+looked at his watch.
+
+"The bus is here," he said fussily. "Come on, Will; come, Linda, and you,
+Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla, get your furs on. Don't take the
+elevator. Go down by the stairs, and hurry! If there's one thing in this
+world I won't do it is to wait for anybody on earth!"
+
+Flunkies and maids flew distractedly about with fur coats, muffs, and
+stoles. In solemn assemblage the family expedition filed past the
+elevator, descended the stairs to the lower hall, and there drew up for
+final inspection.
+
+A mink-infested footman waited outside; valets, butlers, second-men and
+maids came to attention.
+
+"Where's Sacharissa?" demanded Mr. Carr, sonorously.
+
+"Here, dad," said his oldest daughter, strolling calmly into the hall,
+hands still linked loosely behind her.
+
+"Why haven't you got your hat and furs on?" demanded her father.
+
+"Because I'm not going, dad," she said sweetly.
+
+The family eyed her in amazement.
+
+"Not going?" shouted her father, in a mellow bellow. "Yes, you are! Not
+_going!_ And why the dickens not?"
+
+"I really don't know, dad," she said listlessly. "I don't want to go."
+
+Her father waved both pudgy arms furiously. "Don't you feel well? You
+look well. You _are_ well. Don't you _feel_ well?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"No, you don't! You're pale! You're pallid! You're peaked! Take a tonic
+and lie down. Send your maid for some doctors--all kinds of doctors--and
+have them fix you up. Then come to Tuxedo with your maid to-morrow
+morning. Do you hear?"
+
+"Very well, dad."
+
+"And keep out of that elevator until it's fixed. It's likely to do
+anything. Ferdinand," to the man at the door, "have it fixed at once.
+Sacharissa, send that maid of yours for a doctor!"
+
+"Very well, dad!"
+
+She presented her cheek to her emphatic parent; he saluted it
+explosively, wheeled, marshaled the family at a glance, started them
+forward, and closed the rear with his own impressive person. The iron
+gates clanged, the door of the opera bus snapped, and Sacharissa strolled
+back into the rococo reception room not quite certain why she had not
+gone, not quite convinced that she was feeling perfectly well.
+
+For the first few minutes her face had been going hot and cold,
+alternately flushed and pallid. Her heart, too, was acting in an unusual
+manner--making sufficient stir for her to become uneasily aware of it.
+
+"Probably," she thought to herself, "I've eaten too many chocolates." She
+looked into the large gilded box, took another and ate it reflectively.
+
+A curious languor possessed her. To combat it she rang for her maid,
+intending to go for a brisk walk, but the weight of the furs seemed to
+distress her. It was absurd. She threw them off and sat down in the
+library.
+
+A little while later her maid found her lying there, feet crossed, arms
+stretched backward to form a cradle for her head.
+
+"Are you ill, Miss Carr?"
+
+"No," said Sacharissa.
+
+The maid cast an alarmed glance at her mistress' pallid face.
+
+"Would you see Dr. Blimmer, miss?"
+
+"No."
+
+The maid hesitated:
+
+"Beg pardon, but Mr. Carr said you was to see some doctors."
+
+"Very well," she said indifferently. "And please hand me those
+chocolates. I don't care for any luncheon."
+
+"No luncheon, miss?" in consternation.
+
+Sacharissa had never been known to shun sustenance.
+
+The symptom thoroughly frightened her maid, and in a few minutes she had
+Dr. Blimmer's office on the telephone; but that eminent practitioner was
+out. Then she found in succession the offices of Doctors White, Black,
+and Gray. Two had gone away over New Year's, the other was out.
+
+The maid, who was clever and resourceful, went out to hunt up a doctor.
+There are, in the cross streets, plenty of doctors between the Seventies
+and Eighties. She found one without difficulty--that is, she found the
+sign in the window, but the doctor was out on his visits.
+
+She made two more attempts with similar results, then, discovering a
+doctor's sign in a window across the street, started for it regardless of
+snowdrifts, and at the same moment the doctor's front door opened and a
+young man, with a black leather case in his hand, hastily descended the
+icy steps and hurried away up the street.
+
+The maid ran after him and arrived at his side breathless, excited:
+
+"Oh, _could_ you come--just for a moment, if you please, sir! Miss Carr
+won't eat her luncheon!"
+
+"What!" said the young man, surprised.
+
+"Miss Carr wishes to see you--just for a----"
+
+"Miss Carr?"
+
+"Miss Sacharissa!"
+
+"Sacharissa?"
+
+"Y-yes, sir--she----"
+
+"But I don't know any Miss Sacharissa!"
+
+"I understand that, sir."
+
+"Look here, young woman, do you know my name?"
+
+"No, sir, but that doesn't make any difference to Miss Carr."
+
+"She wishes to see _me!_"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"I--I'm in a hurry to catch a train." He looked hard at the maid, at his
+watch, at the maid again.
+
+"Are you perfectly sure you're not mistaken?" he demanded.
+
+"No, sir, I----"
+
+"A certain Miss Sacharissa Carr desires to see _me?_ Are you certain of
+that?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir--she----"
+
+"Where does she live?"
+
+"One thousand eight and a half Fifth Avenue, sir."
+
+"I've got just three minutes. Can you run?"
+
+"I--yes!"
+
+"Come on, then!"
+
+And away they galloped, his overcoat streaming out behind, the maid's
+skirts flapping and her narrow apron flickering in the wind. Wayfarers
+stopped to watch their pace--a pace which brought them to the house in
+something under a minute. Ferdinand, the second man, let them in.
+
+"Now, then," panted the young man, "which way? I'm in a hurry, remember!"
+And he started on a run for the stairs.
+
+"Please follow me, sir; the elevator is quicker!" gasped the maid,
+opening the barred doors.
+
+The young man sprang into the lighted car, the maid turned to fling off
+hat and jacket before entering; something went fizz-bang! snap! clink!
+and the lights in the car were extinguished.
+
+"Oh!" shrieked the maid, "it's running away again! Jump, sir!"
+
+The ornate, rococo elevator, as a matter of fact, was running away,
+upward, slowly at first. Its astonished occupant turned to jump out--too
+late.
+
+"P-push the third button, sir! Quick!" cried the maid, wringing her
+hands.
+
+"W-where is it!" stammered the young man, groping nervously in the dark
+car. "I can't see any."
+
+"Cr-rack!" went something.
+
+"It's stopped! It's going to fall!" screamed the maid. "Run, Ferdinand!"
+
+The man at the door ran upstairs for a few steps, then distractedly slid
+to the bottom, shouting:
+
+"Are you hurt, sir?"
+
+"No," came a disgusted voice from somewhere up the shaft.
+
+Every landing was now noisy with servants, maids sped upstairs, flunkeys
+sped down, a butler waddled in a circle.
+
+"Is anybody going to get me out of this?" demanded the voice in the
+shaft. "I've a train to catch."
+
+The perspiring butler poked his head into the shaft from below:
+
+"'Ow far hup, sir, might you be?"
+
+"How the devil do I know?"
+
+"Can't you see nothink, sir?"
+
+"Yes, I can see a landing and a red room."
+
+"'E's stuck hunder the library!" exclaimed the butler, and there was a
+rush for the upper floors.
+
+The rush was met and checked by a tall, young girl who came leisurely
+along the landing, nibbling a chocolate.
+
+"What is all this noise about?" she asked. "Has the elevator gone wrong
+again?"
+
+Glancing across the landing at the grille which screened the shaft she
+saw the gilded car--part of it--and half of a perfectly strange young man
+looking earnestly out.
+
+"It's the doctor!" wailed her maid.
+
+"That isn't Dr. Blimmer!" said her mistress.
+
+"No, miss, it's a perfectly strange doctor."
+
+"I am _not_ a doctor," observed the young man, coldly.
+
+Sacharissa drew nearer.
+
+"If that maid of yours had asked me," he went on, "I'd have told her. She
+saw me coming down the steps of a physician's house--I suppose she
+mistook my camera case for a case of medicines."
+
+"I did--oh, I did!" moaned the maid, and covered her head with her apron.
+
+"The thing to do," said Sacharissa, calmly, "is to send for the nearest
+plumber. Ferdinand, go immediately!"
+
+"Meanwhile," said the imprisoned young man, "I shall miss my train. Can't
+somebody break that grille? I could climb out that way."
+
+"Sparks," said Miss Carr, "can you break that grille?"
+
+Sparks tried. A kitchen maid brought a small tackhammer--the only "'ammer
+in the 'ouse," according to Sparks, who pounded at the foliated steel
+grille and broke the hammer off short.
+
+"Did it 'it you in the 'ead, sir?" he asked, panting.
+
+"Exactly," replied the young man, grinding his teeth.
+
+Sparks 'oped as 'ow it didn't 'urt the gentleman. The gentleman stanched
+his wound in terrible silence.
+
+Presently Ferdinand came back to report upon the availability of the
+family plumber. It appeared that all plumbers, locksmiths, and similar
+indispensable and free-born artisans had closed shop at noon and would
+not reopen until after New Year's, subject to the Constitution of the
+United States.
+
+"But this gentleman cannot remain here until after New Year's," said
+Sacharissa. "He says he is in a hurry. Do you hear, Sparks?"
+
+The servants stood in a helpless row.
+
+"Ferdinand," she said, "Mr. Carr told you to have that elevator fixed
+before it was used again!"
+
+Ferdinand stared wildly at the grille and ran his thumb over the bars.
+
+"And Clark"--to her maid--"I am astonished that you permitted this
+gentleman to risk the elevator."
+
+"He was in a hurry--I thought he was a doctor." The maid dissolved into
+tears.
+
+"It is now," broke in the voice from the shaft, "an utter impossibility
+for me to catch any train in the United States."
+
+"I am dreadfully sorry," said Sacharissa.
+
+"Isn't there an ax in the house?"
+
+The butler mournfully denied it.
+
+"Then get the furnace bar."
+
+It was fetched; nerve-racking blows rained on the grille; puffing
+servants applied it as a lever, as a battering-ram, as a club. The house
+rang like a boiler factory.
+
+"I can't stand any more of that!" shouted the young man. "Stop it!"
+
+Sacharissa looked about her, hands closing both ears.
+
+"Send them away," said the young man, wearily. "If I've got to stay here
+I want a chance to think."
+
+After she had dismissed the servants Sacharissa drew up a chair and
+seated herself a few feet from the grille. She could see half the car and
+half the man--plainer, now that she had come nearer.
+
+He was a young and rather attractive looking fellow, cheek tied up in his
+handkerchief, where the head of the hammer had knocked off the skin.
+
+"Let me get some witch-hazel," said Sacharissa, rising.
+
+"I want to write a telegram first," he said.
+
+So she brought some blanks, passed them and a pencil down to him through
+the grille, and reseated herself.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+THE INVISIBLE WIRE
+
+
+_In Which the Telephone Continues Ringing_
+
+When he had finished writing he sorted out some silver, and handed it and
+the yellow paper to Sacharissa.
+
+"It's dark in here. Would you mind reading it aloud to me to see if I've
+made it plain?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly," said Sacharissa; and she read:
+
+MRS. DELANCY COURLAND,
+
+Tuxedo.
+
+I'm stuck in an idiotic elevator at 1008-1/2 Fifth Avenue. If I don't
+appear by New Year's you'll know why. Be careful that no reporters get
+hold of this.
+
+KILLIAN VAN K. VANDERDYNK.
+
+Sacharissa flushed deeply. "I can't send this," she said.
+
+"Why not?" demanded the young man, irritably.
+
+"Because, Mr. Vanderdynk, my father, brother-in-law, married sister, and
+three younger sisters are expected at the Courlands'. Imagine what effect
+such a telegram would have on them!"
+
+"Then cross out the street and number," he said; "just say I'm stuck in a
+strange elevator."
+
+She did so, rang, and a servant took away the telegram.
+
+"Now," said the heir apparent to the Prince Regency of Manhattan, "there
+are two things still" possible. First, you might ring up police
+headquarters and ask for aid; next, request assistance from fire
+headquarters."
+
+"If I do," she said, "wouldn't the newspapers get hold of it?"
+
+"You are perfectly right," he said.
+
+She had now drawn her chair so close to the gilded grille that, hands
+resting upon it, she could look down into the car where sat the scion of
+the Vanderdynks on a flimsy Louis XV chair.
+
+"I can't express to you how sorry I am," she said. "Is there anything I
+can do to--to ameliorate your imprisonment?"
+
+He looked at her in a bewildered way.
+
+"You don't expect me to remain here until after New Year's, do you?" he
+inquired.
+
+"I don't see how you can avoid it. Nobody seems to want to work until
+after New Year's."
+
+"Stay in a cage--two days and a night!"
+
+"Perhaps I had better call up the police."
+
+"No, no! Wait. I'll tell you what to do. Start that man, Ferdinand, on a
+tour of the city. If he hunts hard enough and long enough he'll find some
+plumber or locksmith or somebody who'll come."
+
+She rang for Ferdinand; together they instructed him, and he went away,
+promising to bring salvation in some shape.
+
+Which promise made the young man more cheerful and smoothed out the
+worried pucker between Sacharissa's straight brows.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "that you will never forgive my maid for this--or
+me either."
+
+He laughed. "After all," he admitted, "it's rather funny."
+
+"I don't believe you think it's funny."
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Didn't you want to go to Tuxedo?"
+
+"I!" He looked up at the pretty countenance of Sacharissa. "I _did_ want
+to--a few minutes ago."
+
+"And now that you can't your philosophy teaches you that you _don't_ want
+to?"
+
+They laughed at each other in friendly fashion.
+
+"Perhaps it's my philosophy," he said, "but" I really don't care very
+much.... I'm not sure that I care at all.... In fact, now that I think of
+it, why should I have wished to go to Tuxedo? It's stupid to want to go
+to Tuxedo when New York is so attractive."
+
+"Do you know," she said reflectively, "that I came to the same
+conclusion?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Be-before you--I----"
+
+"Oh, yes," she said rather hastily, "before you came----"
+
+She broke off, pink with consternation. What a ridiculous thing to say!
+What on earth was twisting her tongue to hint at such an absurdity?
+
+She said, gravely, with heightened color: "I was standing by the window
+this morning, thinking, and it occurred to me that I didn't care to go to
+Tuxedo.... When did you change _your_ mind?"
+
+"A few minutes a--that is--well, I never _really_ wanted to go. It's
+jollier in town. Don't you think so? Blue sky, snow--er--and all that?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "it is perfectly delightful in town to-day."
+
+He assented, then looked discouraged.
+
+"Perhaps you would like to go out?" he said.
+
+"I? Oh, no.... The sun on the snow is bad for one's eyes; don't you think
+so?"
+
+"Very.... I'm terribly sorry that I'm giving you so much trouble."
+
+"I don't mind--really. If only I could do something for you."
+
+"You are."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes; you are being exceedingly nice to me. I am afraid you feel under
+obligations to remain indoors and----"
+
+"Truly, I don't. I was not going out."
+
+She leaned nearer and looked through the bars: "Are you quite sure you
+feel comfortable?"
+
+"I feel like something in a zoo!"
+
+She laughed. "That reminds me," she said, "have you had any luncheon?"
+
+He had not, it appeared, after a little polite protestation, so she rang
+for Sparks.
+
+Her own appetite, too, had returned when the tray was brought; napkin and
+plate were passed through the grille to him, and, as they lunched, he in
+his cage, she close to the bars, they fell into conversation, exchanging
+information concerning mutual acquaintances whom they had expected to
+meet at the Delancy Courlands'.
+
+"So you see," she said, "that if I had not changed my mind about going to
+Tuxedo this morning you would not be here now. Nor I.... And we would
+never have--lunched together."
+
+"That didn't alter things," he said, smiling. "If you hadn't been ill you
+would have gone to Tuxedo, and I should have seen you there."
+
+"Then, whatever I did made no difference," she assented, thoughtfully,
+"for we were bound to meet, anyway."
+
+He remained standing close to the grille, which, as she was seated,
+brought his head on a level with hers.
+
+"It would seem," he said laughingly, "as though we were doomed to meet
+each other, anyway. It looks like a case of Destiny to me."
+
+She started slightly: "What did you say?"
+
+"I said that it looks as though Fate intended us to meet, anyhow. Don't
+you think so?"
+
+She remained silent.
+
+He added cheerfully: "I never was afraid of Fate."
+
+"Would you care for a--a book--or anything?" she asked, aware of a new
+constraint in her voice.
+
+"I don't believe I could see to read in here.... Are you--going?"
+
+"I--ought to." Vexed at the feeble senselessness of her reply she found
+herself walking down the landing, toward nowhere in particular. She
+turned abruptly and came back.
+
+"Do you want a book?" she repeated.
+
+"Oh, I forgot that you can't see to read. But perhaps you might care to
+smoke."
+
+"Are you going away?"
+
+"I--don't mind your smoking."
+
+He lighted a cigarette; she looked at him irresolutely.
+
+"You mustn't think of remaining," he said. Whereupon she seated herself.
+
+"I suppose I ought to try to amuse you--till Ferdinand returns with a
+plumber," she said.
+
+He protested: "I couldn't think of asking so much from you."
+
+"Anyway, it's my duty," she insisted. "I ought."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you are under my roof--a guest."
+
+"Please don't think----"
+
+"But I really don't mind! If there is anything I can do to make your
+imprisonment easier----"
+
+"It is easy. I rather like being here."
+
+"It is very amiable of you to say so."
+
+"I really mean it."
+
+"How can you _really_ mean it?"
+
+"I don't know, but I do." In their earnestness they had come close to the
+bars; she stood with both hands resting on the grille, looking in; he in
+a similar position, looking out.
+
+He said: "I feel like an occupant of the Bronx, and it rather astonishes
+me that you haven't thrown me in a few peanuts."
+
+She laughed, fetched her box of chocolates, then began seriously: "If
+Ferdinand doesn't find anybody I'm afraid you might be obliged to remain
+to dinner."
+
+"That prospect," he said, "is not unpleasant. You know when one becomes
+accustomed to one's cage it's rather a bore to be let out."
+
+They sampled the chocolates, she sitting close to the cage, and as the
+box would not go through the bars she was obliged to hand them to him,
+one by one.
+
+"I wonder," she mused, "how soon Ferdinand will find a plumber?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+She bent her adorable head, chose a chocolate and offered it to him.
+
+[Illustration: "Are you not terribly impatient?" she inquired]
+
+"Are you not terribly impatient?" she inquired.
+
+"Not--terribly."
+
+Their glances encountered and she said hurriedly:
+
+"I am sure you must be perfectly furious with everybody in this house.
+I--I think it is most amiable of you to behave so cheerfully about it."
+
+"As a matter of fact," he said, "I'm feeling about as cheerful as I ever
+felt in my life."
+
+"Cooped up in a cage?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"Which may fall at any--" The idea was a new one to them both. She leaned
+forward in sudden consternation. "I never thought of that!" she
+exclaimed. "You don't think there's any chance of its falling, do you?"
+
+He looked at the startled, gray eyes so earnestly fixed on his. The sweet
+mouth quivered a little--just a little--or he thought it did.
+
+"No," he replied, with a slight catch in his voice, "I don't believe it's
+going to fall."
+
+"Perhaps you had better not move around very much in it. Be careful, I
+beg of you. You will, won't you, Mr. Vanderdynk?"
+
+"Please don't let it bother you," he said, stepping toward her
+impulsively.
+
+"Oh, don't, don't move!" she exclaimed. "You really must keep perfectly
+still. Won't you promise me you will keep perfectly still?"
+
+"I'll promise you anything," he said a little wildly.
+
+Neither seemed to notice that he had overdone it.
+
+She drew her chair as close as it would go to the grille and leaned
+against it.
+
+"You _will_ keep up your courage, won't you?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"Certainly. By the way, how far is it to the b-basement?"
+
+She turned quite white for an instant, then:
+
+"I think I'd better go and ring up the police."
+
+"No! A thousand times no! I couldn't stand that."
+
+"But the car might--drop before----"
+
+"Better decently dead than publicly paragraphed.... I haven't the least
+idea that this thing is going to drop.... Anyway, it's worth it," he
+added, rather vaguely.
+
+"Worth--what?" she asked, looking into his rather winning, brown eyes.
+
+"Being here," he said, looking into her engaging gray ones.
+
+After a startling silence she said calmly: "Will you promise me not to
+move or shake the car till I return?"
+
+"You won't be very long, will you?"
+
+"Not--very," she replied faintly.
+
+She walked into the library, halted in the center of the room, hands
+clasped behind her. Her heart was beating like a trip hammer.
+
+"I might as well face it," she said to herself; "he is--by far--the most
+thoroughly attractive man I have ever seen.... I--I _don't_ know what's
+the matter," she added piteously.... "if it's that machine William made I
+can't help it; I don't care any longer; I wish----"
+
+A sharp crack from the landing sent her out there in a hurry, pale and
+frightened.
+
+"Something snapped somewhere," explained the young man with forced
+carelessness, "some unimportant splinter gave way and the thing slid down
+an inch or two."
+
+"D-do you think----"
+
+"No, I don't. But it's perfectly fine of you to care."
+
+"C-care? I'm a little frightened, of course.... Anybody would be.... Oh,
+I wish you were out and p-perfectly safe." "If I thought you could ever
+really care what became of a man like me----"
+
+Killian Van K. Vanderdynk's aristocratic senses began gyrating; he
+grasped the bars, the back of his hand brushed against hers, and the
+momentary contact sent a shock straight through the scion of that
+celebrated race.
+
+She seated herself abruptly; a delicate color grew, staining her face.
+
+Neither spoke. A long, luminous sunbeam fell across the landing, touching
+the edge of her hair till it glimmered like bronze afire. The sensitive
+mouth was quiet, the eyes, very serious, were lifted from time to time,
+then lowered, thoughtfully, to the clasped fingers on her knee.
+
+Could it be possible? How could it be possible?--with a man she had never
+before chanced to meet--with a man she had seen for the first time in her
+life only an hour or so ago! Such things didn't happen outside of short
+stories. There was neither logic nor common decency in it. Had she or had
+she not any ordinary sense remaining?
+
+She raised her eyes and looked at the heir of the Vanderdynks.
+
+Of course anybody could see he was unusually attractive--that he had that
+indefinable something about him which is seldom, if ever, seen outside of
+fiction or of Mr. Gibson's drawings--perhaps it is entirely confined to
+them--except in this one very rare case.
+
+Sacharissa's eyes fell.
+
+Another unusual circumstance was engaging her attention, namely, that his
+rather remarkable physical perfection appeared to be matched by a
+breeding quite as faultless, and a sublimity of courage in the face of
+destruction itself, which----
+
+Sacharissa lifted her gray eyes.
+
+There he stood, suspended over an abyss, smoking a cigarette, bravely
+forcing himself to an attitude of serene insouciance, while the basement
+yawned for him! Machine or no machine, how could any girl look upon such
+miraculous self-control unmoved? _She_ could not. It was natural that a
+woman should be deeply thrilled by such a spectacle--and William Destyn's
+machine had nothing to do with it--not a thing! Neither had psychology,
+nor demonology, nor anything, with wires or wireless. She liked him,
+frankly. Who wouldn't? She feared for him, desperately. Who wouldn't?
+She----
+
+"C-r-rack!"
+
+"Oh--_what_ is it!" she cried, springing to the grille.
+
+"I don't know," he said, somewhat pale. "The old thing seems--to be
+sliding."
+
+"Giving way!"
+
+"A--little--I think----"
+
+"Mr. Vanderdynk! I _must_ call the police----"
+
+"Cr-rackle--crack-k-k!" went the car, dropping an inch or two.
+
+With a stifled cry she caught his hands through the bars, as though to
+hold him by main strength.
+
+"Are you crazy?" he said fiercely, thrusting them away. "Be careful! If
+the thing drops you'll break your arms!"
+
+"I--I don't care!" she said breathlessly. "I can't let----"
+
+"Crack!" But the car stuck again.
+
+"I _will_ call the police!" she cried.
+
+"The papers may make fun of _you_."
+
+"Was it for _me_ you were afraid? Oh, Mr. Vanderdynk! What do I care for
+ridicule compared to--to----"
+
+The car had sunk so far in the shaft now that she had to kneel and put
+her head close to the floor to see him.
+
+"I will only be a minute at the telephone," she said. "Keep up courage; I
+am thinking of you every moment."
+
+"W-will you let me say one word?" he stammered.
+
+"Oh, what? Be quick, I beg you."
+
+"It's only goodbye--in case the thing drops. May I say it?"
+
+"Y-yes--yes! But say it quickly."
+
+"And if it doesn't drop after all, you won't be angry at what I'm going
+to say?"
+
+"N-no. Oh, for Heaven's sake, hurry!"
+
+"Then--you are the sweetest woman in the world!... Goodbye--Sacharissa--
+dear."
+
+She sprang up, dazed, and at the same moment a terrific crackling and
+splintering resounded from the shaft, and the car sank out of sight.
+
+Faint, she swayed for a second against the balustrade, then turned and
+ran downstairs, ears strained for the sickening crash from below.
+
+There was no crash, no thud. As she reached the drawing-room landing, to
+her amazement a normally-lighted elevator slid slowly down, came to a
+stop, and the automatic grilles opened quietly.
+
+As Killian Van K. Vanderdynk crept forth from the elevator, Sacharissa's
+nerves gave way; his, also, seemed to disintegrate; and they stood for
+some moments mutually supporting each other, during which interval
+unaccustomed tears fell from the gray eyes, and unaccustomed words,
+breathed brokenly, reassured her; and, altogether unaccustomed to such
+things, they presently found themselves seated in a distant corner of the
+drawing-room, still endeavoring to reassure each other with interclasped
+hands.
+
+They said nothing so persistently that the wordless minutes throbbed into
+hours; through the windows the red west sent a glowing tentacle into the
+room, searching the gloom for them.
+
+It fell, warm, across her upturned throat, in the half light.
+
+For her head lay back on his shoulder; his head was bent down, lips
+pressed to the white hands crushed fragrantly between his own.
+
+A star came out and looked at them with astonishment; in a little while
+the sky was thronged with little stars, all looking through the window at
+them.
+
+Her maid knocked, backed out hastily and fled, distracted. Then Ferdinand
+arrived with a plumber.
+
+Later the butler came. They did not notice him until he ventured to cough
+and announce dinner.
+
+The interruptions were very annoying, particularly when she was summoned
+to the telephone to speak to her father.
+
+"What is it, dad?" she asked impatiently.
+
+"Are you all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes," she answered, carelessly; "we are all right, dad. Goodbye."
+
+"We? Who the devil is 'We'?"
+
+"Mr. Vanderdynk and I. We're taking my maid and coming down to Tuxedo
+this evening together. I'm in a hurry now."
+
+"What!!!"
+
+"Oh, it's all right, dad. Here, Killian, please explain things to my
+father."
+
+Vanderdynk released her hand and picked up the receiver as though it had
+been a live wire.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Carr?" he began--stopped short, and stood listening,
+rigid, bewildered, turning redder and redder as her father's fluency
+increased. Then, without a word, he hooked up the receiver.
+
+"Is it all right?" she asked calmly. "Was dad--vivacious?"
+
+The young man said: "I'd rather go back into that elevator than go to
+Tuxedo.... But--I'm going."
+
+"So am I," said Bushwyck Carr's daughter, dropping both hands on her
+lover's shoulders.... "Was he really very--vivid?"
+
+"Very."
+
+The telephone again rang furiously.
+
+He bent his head; she lifted her face and he kissed her.
+
+After a while the racket of the telephone annoyed them, and they slowly
+moved away out of hearing.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+"IN HEAVEN AND EARTH"
+
+
+_The Green Mouse Stirs_
+
+"I've been waiting half an hour for you," observed Smith, dryly, as
+Beekman Brown appeared at the subway station, suitcase in hand.
+
+"It was a most extraordinary thing that detained me," said Brown,
+laughing, and edging his way into the ticket line behind his friend where
+he could talk to him across his shoulder; "I was just leaving the office,
+Smithy, when Snuyder came in with a card."
+
+"Oh, all right--of course, if----"
+
+"No, it was not a client; I must be honest with you."
+
+"Then you had a terrible cheek to keep me here waiting."
+
+"It was a girl," said Beekman Brown.
+
+Smith cast a cold glance back at him over his left shoulder.
+
+"What kind of a girl?"
+
+"A most extraordinary girl. She came on--on a matter----"
+
+"Was it business or a touch?"
+
+"Not exactly business."
+
+"Ornamental girl?" demanded Smith.
+
+"Yes--exceedingly; but it wasn't that----
+
+"Oh, it was not that which kept you talking to her half an hour while
+I've sat suffocating in this accursed subway!"
+
+"No, Smith; her undeniably attractive features and her--ah--winning
+personality had nothing whatever to do with it. Buy the tickets and I'll
+tell you all about it."
+
+Smith bought two tickets. A north bound train roared into the station.
+The young men stepped aboard, seated themselves, depositing their
+suitcases at their feet.
+
+"Now what about that winning-looker who really didn't interest you?"
+suggested Smith in tones made slightly acid by memory of his half hour
+waiting.
+
+"Smith, it was a most unusual episode. I was just leaving the office to
+keep my appointment with you when Snuyder came in with a card----"
+
+"You've said that already."
+
+"But I didn't tell you what was on that card, did I?"
+
+"I can guess."
+
+"No, you can't. Her name was not on the card. She was not an agent; she
+had nothing to sell; she didn't want a position; she didn't ask for a
+subscription to anything. And what do you suppose was on that card?"
+
+"Well, what was on the card, for the love of Mike?" snapped Smith. "I'll
+tell you. The card seemed to be an ordinary visiting card; but down in
+one corner was a tiny and beautifully drawn picture of a green mouse."
+
+"A--what?"
+
+"A mouse."
+
+"G-green?"
+
+"Pea green.... Come, now, Smith, if you were just leaving your office and
+your clerk should come in, looking rather puzzled and silly, and should
+hand you a card with nothing on it but a little green mouse, wouldn't it
+give you pause?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+Brown removed his straw hat, touched his handsome head with his
+handkerchief, and continued:
+
+"I said to Snuyder: 'What the mischief is this?' He said: 'It's for you.
+And there's an exceedingly pretty girl outside who expects you to receive
+her for a few moments.' I said: 'But what has this card with a green
+mouse on it got to do with that girl or with me?' Snuyder said he didn't
+know and that I'd better ask her. So I looked at my watch and I thought
+of you----"
+
+"Yes, you did."
+
+"I tell you I did. Then I looked at the card with the green mouse on
+it.... And I want to ask you frankly, Smith, what would _you_ have done?"
+
+"Oh, what you did, I suppose," replied Smith, wearily. "Go on."
+
+"I'm going. She entered----"
+
+"She was tall and squeenly; you probably forgot that," observed Smith in
+his most objectionable manner.
+
+"Probably not; she was of medium height, as a detail of external
+interest. But, although rather unusually attractive in a merely
+superficial and physical sense, it was instantly evident from her speech
+and bearing, that, in her, intellect dominated; her mind, Smithy, reigned
+serene, unsullied, triumphant over matter."
+
+Smith looked up in amazement, but Brown, a reminiscent smile lighting his
+face, went on:
+
+"She had a very winsome manner--a way of speaking--so prettily in
+earnest, so grave. And she looked squarely at me all the time----"
+
+"So you contributed to the Home for Unemployed Patagonians."
+
+"Would you mind shutting up?" asked Brown.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then try to listen respectfully. She began by explaining the
+significance of that pea-green mouse on the card. It seems, Smith, that
+there is a scientific society called The Green Mouse, composed of a few
+people who have determined to apply, practically, certain theories which
+they believe have commercial value."
+
+"Was she," inquired Smith with misleading politeness, "what is known as
+an 'astrologist'?"
+
+"She was not. She is the president, I believe, of The Green Mouse
+Society. She explained to me that it has been indisputably proven that
+the earth is not only enveloped by those invisible electric currents
+which are now used instead of wires to carry telegraphic messages, but
+that this world of ours is also belted by countless psychic currents
+which go whirling round the earth----"
+
+"_What_ kind of currents?"
+
+"Psychic."
+
+"Which circle the earth?"
+
+"Exactly. If you want to send a wireless message you hitch on to a
+current, don't you?--or you tap it--or something. Now, they have
+discovered that each one of these numberless millions of psychic currents
+passes through two, living, human entities of opposite sex; that, for
+example, all you have got to do to communicate with the person who is on
+the same psychical current that you are, is to attune your subconscious
+self to a given intensity and pitch, and it will be like communication by
+telephone, no matter how far apart you are."
+
+"Brown!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Did she go to your office to tell you that sort of--of--information?"
+
+"Partly. She was perfectly charming about it. She explained to me that
+all nature is divided into predestined pairs, and that somewhere, at some
+time, either here on earth or in some of the various future existences,
+this predestined pair is certain to meet and complete the universal
+scheme as it has been planned. Do you understand, Smithy?"
+
+Smith sat silent and reflective for a while, then:
+
+"You say that her theory is that everybody owns one of those psychic
+currents?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am on a private psychic current whirling around this globe?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"And some--ah--young girl is at the other end?"
+
+"Sure thing."
+
+"Then if I could only get hold of my end of the wire I could--ah--call
+her up?"
+
+"I believe that's the idea."
+
+"And--she's for muh?"
+
+"So they say."
+
+"Is--is there any way to get a look at her first?"
+
+"You'd have to take her anyway, sometime."
+
+"But suppose I didn't like her?"
+
+The two young men sat laughing for a few moments, then Brown went on:
+
+"You see, Smith, my interview with her was such a curious episode that
+about all I did was to listen to what she was saying, so I don't know how
+details are worked out. She explained to me that The Green Mouse Society
+has just been formed, not only for the purpose of psychical research, but
+for applying practically and using commercially the discovery of the
+psychic currents. That's what The Green Mouse is trying to do: form
+itself into a company and issue stocks and bonds----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Certainly. It sounds like a madman's dream at first, but when you come
+to look into it--for instance, think of the millions of clients such a
+company would have. As example, a young man, ready for marriage, goes to
+The Green Mouse and pays a fee. The Green Mouse sorts out, identifies,
+and intercepts the young man's own particular current, hitches his
+subconscious self to it, and zip!--he's at one end of an invisible
+telephone and the only girl on earth is at the other.... What's the
+matter with their making a quick date for an introduction?"
+
+Smith said slowly: "Do you mean to tell me that any sane person came to
+you in your office with a proposition to take stock in such an
+enterprise?"
+
+"She did not even suggest it."
+
+"What did she want, then?"
+
+"She wanted," said Brown, "a perfectly normal, unimaginative business man
+who would volunteer to permit The Green Mouse Society to sort out his
+psychic current, attach him to it, and see what would happen."
+
+"She wants to experiment on _you?_"
+
+"So I understand."
+
+"And--you're not going to let her, are you?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because it's--it's idiotic!" said Smith, warmly. "I don't believe in
+such things--you don't, either--nobody does--but, all the same, you can't
+be perfectly sure in these days what devilish sort of game you might be
+up against."
+
+Brown smiled. "I told her, very politely, that I found it quite
+impossible to believe in such things; and she was awfully nice about it,
+and said it didn't matter what I believed. It seems that my name was
+chosen by chance--they opened the Telephone Directory at random and she,
+blindfolded, made a pencil mark on the margin opposite one of the names
+on the page. It happened to be my name. That's all."
+
+"Wouldn't let her do it!" said Smith, seriously.
+
+"Why not, as long as there's absolutely nothing in it? Besides, if it
+pleases her to have a try why shouldn't she? Besides, I haven't the
+slightest intention or desire to woo or wed anybody, and I'd like to see
+anybody make me."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you told her to go ahead?"
+
+"Certainly," said Brown serenely. "And she thanked me very prettily.
+She's well bred--exceptionally."
+
+"Oh! Then what did you do?"
+
+"We talked a little while."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"Well, for instance, I mentioned that curiously-baffling sensation which
+comes over everybody at times--the sudden conviction that everything that
+you say and do has been said and done by you before--somewhere. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"And she smiled and said that such sensations were merely echoes from the
+invisible psychic wire, and that repetitions from some previous
+incarnation were not unusual, particularly when the other person through
+whom the psychic current passed, was near by."
+
+"You mean to say that when a fellow has that queer feeling that it has
+all happened before, the--the predestined girl is somewhere in your
+neighborhood?"
+
+"That is what my pretty informant told me."
+
+"Who," asked Smith, "is this pretty informant?"
+
+"She asked permission to withhold her name."
+
+"Didn't she ask you to subscribe?"
+
+"No; she merely asked for the use of my name as reference for future
+clients if The Green Mouse Society was successful in my case."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+Brown laughed. "I said that if any individual or group of individuals
+could induce me, within a year, to fall in love with and pay court to any
+living specimen of human woman I'd cheerfully admit it from the house-
+tops and take pleasure in recommending The Green Mouse to everybody I
+knew who yet remained unmarried."
+
+They both laughed.
+
+"What rot we've been talking," observed Smith, rising and picking up his
+suitcase. "Here's our station, and we'd better hustle or we'll lose the
+boat. I wouldn't miss that week-end party for the world!"
+
+"Neither would I," said Beekman Brown.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+A CROSS-TOWN CAR
+
+
+_Concerning the Sudden Madness of One Brown_
+
+As the two young fellows, carrying their suitcases, emerged from the
+subway at Times Square into the midsummer glare and racket of Broadway
+and Forty-second Street, Brown suddenly halted, pressed his hand to his
+forehead, gazed earnestly up at the sky as though trying to recollect how
+to fly, then abruptly gripped Smith's left arm just above the elbow and
+squeezed it, causing the latter gentleman exquisite discomfort.
+
+"Here! Stop it!" protested Smith, wriggling with annoyance.
+
+Brown only gazed at him and then at the sky.
+
+"Stop it!" repeated Smith, astonished. "Why do you pinch me and then look
+at the sky? Is--is a monoplane attempting to alight on me? _What_ is the
+matter with you, anyway?"
+
+"That peculiar consciousness," said Brown, dreamily, "is creeping over
+me. Don't move--don't speak--don't interrupt me, Smith."
+
+"Let go of me!" retorted Smith.
+
+"Hush! Wait! It's certainly creeping over me."
+
+"What's creeping over you?"
+
+"You know what I mean. I am experiencing that strange feeling that all--
+er--all _this_--has happened before."
+
+"All what?--confound it!"
+
+"All _this!_ My standing, on a hot summer day, in the infernal din of
+some great city; and--and I seem to recall it vividly--after a fashion--
+the blazing sun, the stifling odor of the pavements; I seem to remember
+that very hackman over there sponging the nose of his horse--even that
+pushcart piled up with peaches! Smith! What is this maddeningly elusive
+memory that haunts me--haunts me with the peculiar idea that it has all
+occurred before?... Do you know what I mean?"
+
+"I've just admitted to you that everybody has that sort of fidget
+occasionally, and there's no reason to stand on your hindlegs about it.
+Come on or we'll miss our train."
+
+But Beekman Brown remained stock still, his youthful and attractive
+features puckered in a futile effort to seize the evanescent memories
+that came swarming--gnatlike memories that teased and distracted.
+
+"It's as if the entire circumstances were strangely familiar," he said;
+"as though everything that you and I do and say had once before been done
+and said by us under precisely similar conditions--somewhere--sometime."
+
+"We'll miss that boat at the foot of Forty-second Street," cut in Smith
+impatiently. "And if we miss the boat we lose our train."
+
+Brown gazed skyward.
+
+"I never felt this feeling so strongly in all my life," he muttered;
+"it's--it's astonishing. Why, Smith, I _knew_ you were going to say
+that."
+
+"Say what?" demanded Smith.
+
+"That we would miss the boat and the train. Isn't it funny?"
+
+"Oh, very. I'll say it again sometime if it amuses you; but, meanwhile,
+as we're going to that week-end at the Carringtons we'd better get into a
+taxi and hustle for the foot of West Forty-second Street. Is there
+anything very funny in that?"
+
+"I knew _that_, too. I knew you'd say we must take a taxi!" insisted
+Brown, astonished at his own "clairvoyance."
+
+"Now, look here," retorted Smith, thoroughly vexed; "up to five minutes
+ago you were reasonable. What the devil's the matter with you, Beekman
+Brown?"
+
+"James Vanderdynk Smith, I don't know. Good Heavens! I knew you were
+going to say that to me, and that I was going to answer that way!"
+
+"Are you coming or are you going to talk foolish on this broiling
+curbstone the rest of the afternoon?" inquired Smith, fiercely.
+
+"Jim, I tell you that everything we've done and said in the last five
+minutes we have done and said before--somewhere--perhaps on some other
+planet; perhaps centuries ago when you and I were Romans and wore
+togas----"
+
+"Confound it! What do I care," shouted Smith, "whether we were Romans and
+wore togas? We are due this century at a house party on this planet. They
+expect us on this train. Are you coming? If not--kindly relax that
+crablike clutch on my elbow before partial paralysis ensues."
+
+"Smith, wait! I tell you this is somehow becoming strangely portentous.
+I've got the funniest sensation that something is going to happen to me."
+
+"It will," said Smith, dangerously, "if you don't let go my elbow."
+
+But Beekman Brown, a prey to increasing excitement, clung to his friend.
+
+"Wait just one moment, Jim; something remarkable is likely to occur! I--I
+never before felt this way--so strongly--in all my life. Something
+extraordinary is certainly about to happen to me."
+
+"It has happened," said his friend, coldly; "you've gone dippy. Also,
+we've lost that train. Do you understand?"
+
+"I knew we would. Isn't that curious? I--I believe I can almost tell you
+what else is going to happen to us."
+
+"_I'll_ tell _you_," hissed Smith; "it's an ambulance for yours and ding-
+dong to the funny-house! _What_ are you trying to do now?" With real
+misgiving, for Brown, balanced on the edge of the gutter, began waving
+his arms in a birdlike way as though about to launch himself into aerial
+flight across Forty-second Street.
+
+"The car!" he exclaimed excitedly, "the cherry-colored cross-town car!
+Where is it? Do you see it anywhere, Smith?"
+
+"What? What do you mean? There's no cross-town car in sight. Brown, don't
+act like that! Don't be foolish! What on earth----"
+
+"It's coming! There's a car coming!" cried Brown.
+
+"Do you think you're a racing runabout and I'm a curve?"
+
+Brown waved him away impatiently.
+
+"I tell you that something most astonishing is going to occur--in a
+cherry-colored tram car.... And somehow there'll be some reason for me to
+get into it."
+
+"Into what?"
+
+"Into that cherry-colored car, because--because--there'll be a wicker
+basket in it--somebody holding a wicker basket--and there'll be--there'll
+be--a--a--white summer gown--and a big white hat----"
+
+Smith stared at his friend in grief and amazement. Brown stood balancing
+himself on the gutter's edge, pale, rapt, uttering incoherent prophecy
+concerning the advent of a car not yet visible anywhere in the immediate
+metropolitan vista.
+
+"Old man," began Smith with emotion, "I think you had better come very
+quietly somewhere with me. I--I want to show you something pretty and
+nice."
+
+"Hark!" exclaimed Brown.
+
+"Sure, I'll hark for you," said Smith, soothingly, "or I'll bark for you
+if you like, or anything if you'll just come quietly."
+
+"The cherry-colored car!" cried Brown, laboring under tremendous emotion.
+"Look, Smithy! That is the car!"
+
+"Sure, it is! I see it, old man. They run 'em every five minutes. What
+the devil is there to astonish anybody about a cross-town cruiser with a
+red water line?"
+
+"Look!" insisted Brown, now almost beside himself. "The wicker basket!
+The summer gown! Exactly as I foretold it! The big straw hat!--the--the
+_girl!_"
+
+And shoving Smith violently away he galloped after the cherry-colored
+car, caught it, swung himself aboard, and sank triumphant and breathless
+into the transverse seat behind that occupied by a wicker basket, a filmy
+summer frock, a big, white straw hat, and--a girl--the most amazingly
+pretty girl he had ever laid eyes on. After him, headlong, like a
+distracted chicken, rushed Smith and alighted beside him, panting,
+menacing.
+
+"Wha'--dyeh--board--this--car--for!" he gasped, sliding fiercely up
+beside Brown. "Get off or I'll drag you off!"
+
+But Brown only shook his head with an infatuated smile.
+
+"Is it that girl?" said Smith, incensed. "Are you a--a Broadway Don Juan,
+or are you a respectable lawyer with a glimmering sense of common decency
+and an intention to keep a social engagement at the Carringtons' to-day?"
+
+And Smith drew out his timepiece and flourished it furiously under
+Brown's handsome and sun-tanned nose.
+
+But Brown only slid along the seat away from him, saying:
+
+"Don't bother me, Jim; this is too momentous a crisis in my life to have
+a well-intentioned but intellectually dwarfed friend butting into me and
+running about under foot."
+
+"Intellectually d-d--do you mean _me?_" asked Smith, unable to believe
+his ears. "_Do_ you?"
+
+"Yes, I do! Because a miracle suddenly happens to me on Forty-second
+Street, and you, with your mind of a stockbroker, unable to appreciate
+it, come clattering and clamoring after me about a house party--a common-
+place, every-day, social appointment, when I have a full-blown miracle on
+my hands!"
+
+"What miracle?" faltered Smith, stupefied.
+
+"What miracle? Haven't I been telling you that I've been having that
+queer sense that all this has happened before? Didn't I suddenly begin--
+as though compelled by some unseen power--to foretell things? Didn't I
+prophesy the coming of this cross-town car? Didn't I even name its color
+before it came into sight? Didn't I warn you that I'd probably get into
+it? Didn't I reveal to you that a big straw hat and a pretty summer
+gown----"
+
+"Confound it!" almost shouted Smith, "There are about five thousand
+cherry-colored cross-town cars in this town. There are about five million
+white hats and dresses in this borough. There are five billion girls
+wearing 'em----!" "Yes; but the _wicker basket_" breathed Brown. "How do
+you account for _that?_... And, anyway, you annoy me, Smith. Why don't
+you get out of the car and go somewhere?"
+
+"I want to know where you are going before I knock your head off."
+
+"I don't know," replied Brown, serenely.
+
+"Are you actually attempting to follow that girl?" whispered Smith,
+horrified.
+
+"Yes.... It sounds low, doesn't it? But it really isn't. It is something
+I can't explain--you couldn't understand even if I tried to enlighten
+you. The sentiment I harbor is too lofty for some to comprehend, too
+vague, too pure, too ethereal for----"
+
+"I'm as lofty and ethereal as you are!" retorted Smith, hotly. "And I
+know a--an ethereal Lothario when I see him, too!"
+
+"I'm not--though it looks like it--and I forgive you, Smithy, for losing
+your temper and using such language."
+
+"Oh, you do?" said Smith, grinning with rage.
+
+"Yes," nodded Brown, kindly. "I forgive you, but don't call me that
+again. You mean well, but I'm going to find out at last what all this
+maddening, tantalizing, unexplained and mysterious feeling that it all
+has occurred before really is. I'm going to trace it to its source; I'm
+going to compare notes with this highly intelligent girl."
+
+"You're going to _speak_ to her?"
+
+"I am. I must. How else can I compare data."
+
+"I hope she'll call the police. If she doesn't _I_ will."
+
+"Don't worry. She's part of this strange situation. She'll comprehend as
+soon as I begin to explain. She is intelligent; you only have to look at
+her to understand that."
+
+Smith choking with impotent fury, nevertheless ventured a swift glance.
+Her undeniable beauty only exasperated him. "To think--to _think_," he
+burst out, "that a modest, decent, law-loving business man like me should
+suddenly awake to find his boyhood friend had turned into a godless
+votary of Venus!"
+
+"I'm not a votary of Venus!" retorted Brown, turning pink. "I'll punch
+you if you say it again. I'm as decent and respectable a business man as
+you are! And my grammar is better. And, thank Heaven! I've intellect
+enough to recognize a miracle when it happens to me.... Do you think I am
+capable of harboring any sentiments that might bring the blush of
+coquetry to the cheek of modesty? Do you?"
+
+"Well--well, _I_ don't know what you're up to!" Smith raised his voice in
+bewilderment and despair. "I don't know what possesses you to act this
+way. People don't experience miracles in New York cross-town cars. The
+wildest stretch of imagination could only make a coincidence out of this.
+There are trillions of girls in cross-town cars dressed just like this
+one."
+
+"But the basket!"
+
+"Another coincidence. There are quadrillions of wicker baskets."
+
+"Not," said Brown, "with the contents of this one."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Smith instinctively turned to look at the basket balanced daintily on the
+girl's knees.
+
+He strove to penetrate its wicker exterior with concentrated gaze. He
+could see nothing but wicker.
+
+"Well," he began angrily, "what _is_ in that basket? And how do _you_
+know it--you lunatic?"
+
+"Will you believe me if I tell you?"
+
+"If you can offer any corroborative evidence----"
+
+"Well, then--there's a cat in that basket."
+
+"A--what?"
+
+"A cat."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I don't know how I know, but there's a big, gray cat in that basket."
+
+"Why a _gray_ one?"
+
+"I can't tell, but it _is_ gray, and it has six toes on every foot."
+
+Smith truly felt that he was now being trifled with.
+
+"Brown," he said, trying to speak civilly, "if anybody in the five
+boroughs had come to me with affidavits and told me yesterday how you
+were going to behave this morning----"
+
+His voice, rising unconsciously as the realization of his outrageous
+wrongs dawned upon him, rang out above the rattle and grinding of the
+car, and the girl turned abruptly and looked straight at him and then at
+Brown.
+
+The pure, fearless beauty of the gaze, the violet eyes widening a little
+in surprise, silenced both young men.
+
+She inspected Brown for an instant, then turned serenely to her calm
+contemplation of the crowded street once more. Yet her dainty, close-set
+ears looked as though they were listening.
+
+The young men gazed at one another.
+
+"That girl is well bred," said Smith in a low, agitated voice. "You--you
+wouldn't think of venturing to speak to her!"
+
+"I'm obliged to, I tell you! This all happened before. I recognize
+everything as it occurs.... Even to your making a general nuisance of
+yourself."
+
+Smith straightened up.
+
+"I'm going to push you forcibly from this car. Do you remember _that_
+incident?"
+
+[Illustration: "The lid of the basket tilted a little. Then a plaintive
+voice said 'Meow-w'."]
+
+"No," said Brown with conviction, "that incident did not happen. You only
+threatened to do it. I remember now."
+
+In spite of himself Smith felt a slight chill creep up over his neck and
+inconvenience his spine.
+
+He said, deeply agitated: "What a terrible position for me to be in--with
+a friend suddenly gone mad in the streets of New York and running after a
+basket containing what he believes to be a cat. A _Cat!_ Good----"
+
+Brown gripped his arm. "Watch it!" he breathed.
+
+The lid of the basket tilted a little, between lid and rim a soft, furry,
+six-toed gray paw was thrust out. Then a plaintive voice said, "Meow-w!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+THE LID OFF
+
+
+_An Alliance, Offensive, Defensive, and Back-Fensive_
+
+Smith, petrified, looked blankly at the paw.
+
+For a while he remained stupidly incapable of speech or movement, then,
+as though arousing from a bad dream:
+
+"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked with an effort. "This car is
+bound to stop sometime, I suppose, and--and then what?"
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to do. Whatever I do will be the thing that
+ought to happen to me, to that cat and to that girl--that is the thing
+which is destined to happen. That's all I know about it."
+
+His friend passed an unsteady hand across his brow.
+
+"This whole proceeding is becoming a nightmare," he said unsteadily. "Am
+I awake? Is this Forty-second Street? Hold up some fingers, Brown, and
+let me guess how many you hold up, and if I guess wrong I'm home in bed
+asleep and the whole thing is off."
+
+Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.
+
+"You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere. And if I don't come go on
+alone to the Carringtons'.... You don't mind going on and fixing things
+up with the Carringtons, do you?"
+
+"Brown, _do_ you believe that The Green Mouse Society has got hold of
+you? _Do_ you?"
+
+"I don't know and don't care.... Smith, I ask you plainly, did you ever
+before see such a perfectly beautiful girl as that one is?"
+
+"Beekman, do you believe anything queer is going to result? You don't
+suppose _she_ has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?"
+
+"Anything to do with it? How?"
+
+"I mean," he sank his voice to hoarser depths, "how do you know but that
+this girl, who pretends to pay no attention to us, _might_ be a--a--one
+of those clever, professional mesmerists who force you to follow 'em, and
+get you into their power, and exhibit you, and make you eat raw potatoes
+and tallow candles and tacks before an audience."
+
+He peeped furtively at Brown, who did not appear uneasy.
+
+"All I'm afraid of," added Smith, sullenly, "is that you'll get yourself
+into vaudeville or the patrol wagon."
+
+He waited, but Brown made no reply.
+
+"Oh, very well," he said, coldly. "I'll take a cab back to the boat."
+
+No observation from Brown.
+
+"So, _good_-by, old fellow"--with some emotion.
+
+"Good-by," said Beekman Brown, absently.
+
+In fact, he did not even notice when his thoroughly offended partner left
+the car, so intent was he in following the subtly thrilling train of
+thought which tantalized him, mocked him, led him nowhere, yet always
+lured him to fresh endeavor of memory. _Where_ had all this occurred
+before? When? What was going to happen next--happen inexorably, as it had
+once happened, or as it once should have happened, in some dim, bygone
+age when he and that basket and that cat and this same hauntingly lovely
+girl existed together on earth--or perhaps upon some planet, swimming far
+out beyond the ken of men with telescopes?
+
+He looked at the girl, strove to consider her impersonally, for her
+youthful beauty began to disturb him. Then cold doubt crept in; something
+of the monstrosity of the proceeding chilled his enthusiasm for occult
+research. Should he speak to her?
+
+Certainly, it was a dreadful thing to do--an offense the enormity of
+which was utterly inexcusable except under the stress of a purely
+impersonal and scientific necessity for investigating a mental phase of
+humanity which had always thrilled him with a curiosity most profound.
+
+He folded his arms and began to review in cold blood the circumstances
+which had led to his present situation in a cross-town car. Number one,
+and he held up one finger:
+
+As it comes, at times, to every normal human, the odd idea had come to
+him that what he was saying and doing as he emerged from the subway at
+Times Square was what he had, sometime, somewhere, said and done before
+under similar circumstances. That was the beginning.
+
+Number two, and he gravely held up a second finger:
+
+Always before when this idea had come to bother him it had faded after a
+moment or two, leaving him merely uneasy and dissatisfied.
+
+This time it persisted--intruding, annoying, exasperating him in his
+efforts to remember things which he could not recollect.
+
+Number three, and he held up a third finger:
+
+He _had_ begun to remember! As soon as he or Smith said or did anything
+he recollected having said or done it sometime, somewhere, or recollected
+that he _ought_ to have.
+
+Number four--four fingers in air, stiff, determined digits:
+
+He had not only, by a violent concentration of his memory, succeeded in
+recognizing the things said and done as having been said and done before,
+but suddenly he became aware that he was going to be able to foretell,
+vaguely, certain incidents that were yet to occur--like the prophesied
+advent of the cherry-colored car and the hat, gown, and wicker basket.
+
+He now had four fingers in the air; he examined them seriously, and then
+stuck up the fifth.
+
+"Here I am," he thought, "awake, perfectly sane, absolutely respectable.
+Why should a foolish terror of convention prevent me from asking that
+girl whether she knows anything which might throw some light on this most
+interesting mental phenomenon?... I'll do it."
+
+The girl turned her head slightly; speech and the politely perfunctory
+smile froze on his lips.
+
+She held up one finger; Brown's heart leaped. _Was_ that some cabalistic
+sign which he ought to recognize? But she was merely signaling the
+conductor, who promptly pulled the bell and lifted her basket for her
+when she got off.
+
+She thanked him; Brown heard her, and the crystalline voice began to ring
+in little bell-like echoes all through his ears, stirring endless little
+mysteries of memory.
+
+Brown also got off; his legs struck up a walk of their own volition,
+carrying him across the street, hoisting him into a north-bound Lexington
+Avenue car, and landing him in a seat behind the one where she had
+installed herself and her wicker basket.
+
+She seemed to be having some difficulty with the wicker basket;
+beseeching six-toed paws were thrust out persistently; soft meows pleaded
+for the right of liberty and pursuit of feline happiness. Several
+passengers smiled.
+
+Trouble increased as the car whizzed northward; the meows became wilder;
+mad scrambles agitated the basket; the lid bobbed and creaked; the girl
+turned a vivid pink and, bending close over the basket, attempted to
+soothe its enervated inmate.
+
+In the forties she managed to control the situation; in the fifties a
+frantic rush from within burst a string that fastened the basket lid, but
+the girl held it down with energy.
+
+In the sixties a tempest broke loose in the basket; harrowing yowls
+pierced the atmosphere; the girl, crimson with embarrassment and
+distress, signaled the conductor at Sixty-fourth Street and descended,
+clinging valiantly to a basket which apparently contained a pack of
+firecrackers in process of explosion.
+
+A classical heroine in dire distress invariably exclaims aloud: "Will
+_no_ one aid me?" Brown, whose automatic legs had compelled him to
+follow, instinctively awaited some similar appeal.
+
+It came unexpectedly; the kicking basket escaped from her arms, the lid
+burst open, and an extraordinarily large, healthy and indignant cat flew
+out, tail as big as a duster, and fled east on Sixty-fourth Street.
+
+The girl in the summer gown and white straw hat ran after the cat.
+Brown's legs ran, too.
+
+There was, and is, between the house on the northeast corner of Sixty-
+fourth Street and Lexington Avenue and the next house on Sixty-fourth, an
+open space guarded by an iron railing; through this the cat darted, fur
+on end, and, with a flying leap, took to the back fences.
+
+"Oh!" gasped the girl.
+
+Then Brown's legs did an extraordinary thing--they began to scramble and
+kick and shin up the iron railing, hoisting Brown over; and Brown's
+voice, pleasant, calm, reassuring, was busy, too: "If you will look out
+for my suitcase I think I can recover your cat.... It will give me great
+pleasure to recover your cat. I shall be very glad to have, the
+opportunity of recovering--puff--puff--your--puff--puff--c-cat!" And he
+dropped inside the iron railing and paused to recover his breath.
+
+The girl came up to the railing and gazed anxiously through at the corner
+of the only back fence she could perceive.
+
+"What a perfectly dreadful thing to happen!" she said in a voice not very
+steady. "It is exceedingly nice of you to help me catch Clarence. He is
+quite beside himself, poor lamb! You see, he has never before been in the
+city. I--I shall be distressed beyond m-measure if he is lost."
+
+"He went over those fences," said Brown, breathing faster. "I think I'd
+better go after him."
+
+"Oh--_would_ you mind? I'd be so very grateful. It seems so much to ask
+of you."
+
+"I'll do it," said Brown, firmly. "Every boy in New York has climbed back
+fences, and I'm only thirty."
+
+"It is most kind of you; but--but I don't know whether you could possibly
+get him to come to you. Clarence is timid with strangers."
+
+Brown had already clambered on to the wooden fence. He balanced himself
+there, astride. Whitewash liberally decorated coat and trousers.
+
+"I see him," he said.
+
+"W-what is he doing?"
+
+"Squatting on a trellis three back yards away." And Brown lifted a
+blandishing voice: "Here, Clarence--Clarence--Clarence! Here, kitty--
+kitty--kitty! Good pussy! Nice Clarence!"
+
+"Does he come?" inquired the girl, peering wistfully through the railing.
+
+"He does not," said Brown. "Perhaps you had better call."
+
+"Here, puss--puss--puss--puss!" she began gently in that fascinating,
+crystalline voice which seemed to set tiny silvery chimes ringing in
+Brown's ears: "Here, Clarence, darling--Betty's own little kitty-cat!"
+
+"If he doesn't come to _that_," thought Brown, "he _is_ a brute." And
+aloud: "If you could only let him see you; he sits there blinking at me."
+
+"Do you think he'd come if he saw me?"
+
+"Who wouldn't?" thought Brown, and answered, calmly: "I think so.... Of
+course, you couldn't get up here."
+
+"I could.... But I'd better not.... Besides, I live only a few houses
+away--Number 161--and I _could_ go through into the back yard."
+
+"But you'd better not attempt to climb the fence. Have one of the
+servants do it; we'll get the cat between us then and corner him."
+
+"There are no servants in the house. It's closed for the summer--all
+boarded up!"
+
+"Then how can you get in?"
+
+"I have a key to the basement.... Shall I?"
+
+"And climb up on the fence?"
+
+"Yes--if I must--if it's necessary to save Clarence.... Shall I?"
+
+"Why can't I shoo him into your yard."
+
+"He doesn't know our yard. He's a country cat; he's never stayed in town.
+I was taking him with me to Oyster Bay.... I came down from a week-end at
+Stockbridge, where some relatives kept Clarence for us while we were
+abroad during the winter.... I meant to stop and get some things in the
+house on my way back to Oyster Bay.... Isn't it a perfectly wretched
+situation?... We--the entire family--adore Clarence--and--I-I'm so
+anxious----"
+
+Her fascinating underlip trembled, but she controlled it.
+
+"I'll get that cat if it takes a month!" said Brown. Then he flushed; he
+had not meant to speak so warmly.
+
+The girl flushed too. I am so grateful.... But how----"
+
+"Wait," said Brown; and, addressing Clarence in a softly alluring voice,
+he began cautiously to crawl along the fences toward that unresponsive
+animal. Presently he desisted, partly on account of a conspiracy engaged
+in between his trousers and a rusty nail. The girl was now beyond range
+of his vision around the corner.
+
+"Miss--ah--Miss--er--er--Betty!" he called.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Clarence has retreated over another back yard."
+
+"How horrid!"
+
+"How far down do you live?"
+
+She named the number of doors, anxiously adding: "Is Clarence farther
+down the block? Oh, please, be careful. Please, don't drive him past our
+yard. If you will wait I--I'll let myself into the house and--I'll manage
+to get up on the fence."
+
+"You'll ruin your gown."
+
+"I don't care about my gown."
+
+"These fences are the limit! Full of spikes and nails.... Will you be
+careful?"
+
+"Yes, very."
+
+"The nails are rusty. I--I am h-horribly afraid of lockjaw."
+
+"Then don't remain there an instant."
+
+"I mean--I'm afraid of it for you."
+
+There was a silence; they couldn't see each other. Brown's heart was
+beating fast.
+
+"It is very generous of you to--think of me," came her voice, lower but
+very friendly.
+
+"I ca-can't avoid it," he stammered, and wanted to kick himself for what
+he had blurted out.
+
+Another pause--longer this time. And then:
+
+"I am going to enter my house and climb up on the fence.... Would you
+mind waiting a moment?"
+
+"I will wait here," said Beekman Brown, "until I see you." He added to
+himself: "I'm going mad rapidly and I know it and don't care.... _What_--
+a--girl!"
+
+While he waited, legs swinging, astride the back fence, he examined his
+injuries--thoughtfully touched the triangular tear in his trousers,
+inspected minor sartorial and corporeal lacerations, set his hat firmly
+upon his head, and gazed across the monotony of the back-yard fences at
+Clarence. The cat eyed him disrespectfully, paws tucked under, tail
+curled up against his well-fed flank--disillusioned, disgusted,
+unapproachable.
+
+Presently, through the palings of a back yard on Sixty-fifth Street,
+Brown saw a small boy, evidently the progeny of some caretaker, regarding
+him intently.
+
+"Say, mister," he began as soon as noticed, "you have tore your pants on
+a nail."
+
+"Thanks," said Brown, coldly; "will you be good enough to mind your
+business?"
+
+"I thought I'd tell you," said the small boy, delightedly aware that the
+information displeased Brown. "They're tore awful, too. That's what you
+get for playin' onto back fences. Y'orter be ashamed."
+
+Brown feigned unconsciousness and folded his arms with dignity; but the
+next moment he straightened up, quivering.
+
+"You young devil!" he said; "if you pull that slingshot again I'll come
+over there and destroy you!"
+
+At the same moment above the fence line down the block a white straw hat
+appeared; then a youthful face becomingly flushed; then two dainty,
+gloved hands grasping the top of the fence.
+
+"I am here," she called across to him.
+
+The small boy, who had climbed to the top of his fence, immediately
+joined the conversation:
+
+"Your girl's a winner, mister," he observed, critically.
+
+"Are you going to keep quiet?" demanded Brown, starting across the fence.
+
+"Sure," said the small boy, carelessly.
+
+And, settling down on his lofty perch of observation, he began singing:
+
+_"Lum' me an' the woild is mi-on._"
+
+The girl's cheeks became pinker; she looked at the small boy appealingly.
+
+"Little boy," she said, "if you'll run away somewhere I'll give you ten
+cents."
+
+"No," said the terror, "I want to see him an' you catch that cat."
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," suggested Brown, inspired. "I'll give you a
+dollar if you'll help us catch the cat."
+
+"You're on!" said the boy, briskly. "What'll I do? Touch her up with this
+bean-shooter?"
+
+"No; put that thing into your pocket!" exclaimed Brown, sharply. "Now
+climb across to Sixty-fourth Street and stand by that iron railing so
+that the cat can't bolt out into the street, and," he added, wrapping a
+dollar bill around a rusty nail and tossing it across the fence, "here's
+what's coming to you."
+
+The small boy scrambled over nimbly, ran squirrel-like across the
+transverse fence, dipped, swarmed over the iron railing and stood on
+guard.
+
+"Say, mister," he said, "if the cat starts this way you and your girl
+start a hollerin' like----"
+
+"All right," interrupted Brown, and turned toward the vision of
+loveliness and distress which was now standing on the top of her own back
+fence holding fast to a wistaria trellis and flattering Clarence with low
+and honeyed appeals.
+
+The cat, however, was either too stupid or too confused to respond; he
+gazed blankly at his mistress, and when Brown began furtively edging his
+way toward him Clarence arose, stood a second in alert indecision, then
+began to back away.
+
+"We've got him between us!" called out Brown. "If you'll stand ready to
+seize him when I drive him----"
+
+There was a wild scurry, a rush, a leap, frantic clawing for foothold.
+
+"Now, Miss Betty! Quick!" cried Brown. "Don't let him pass you."
+
+She spread her skirts, but the shameless Clarence rushed headlong between
+the most delicately ornamental pair of ankles in Manhattan.
+
+"Oh-h!" cried the girl in soft despair, and made a futile clutch; but she
+could not arrest the flight of Clarence, she merely upset him, turning
+him for an instant into a furry pinwheel, whirling through mid-air,
+landing in her yard, rebounding like a rubber ball, and disappearing,
+with one flying leap, into a narrow opening in the basement masonry.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Brown, precariously balanced on the next fence.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "this is becoming positively ghastly. He's
+bolted into our cellar."
+
+"Why, that's all right, isn't it?" asked Brown. "All you have to do is to
+go inside, descend to the cellar, and light the gas."
+
+"There's no gas."
+
+"You have electric light?"
+
+"Yes, but it's turned off at the main office. The house is closed for the
+summer, you know."
+
+Brown, balancing cautiously, walked the intervening fence like an amateur
+on a tightrope.
+
+Her pretty hat was a trifle on one side; her cheeks brilliant with
+excitement and anxiety. Utterly oblivious of herself and of appearances
+in her increasing solicitude for the adored Clarence, she sat the fence,
+cross saddle, balancing with one hand and pointing with the other to the
+barred ventilator into which Clarence had darted.
+
+A wisp of sunny hair blew across her crimson cheek; slender, active,
+excitedly unconscious of self, she seemed like some eager, adorable
+little gamin perched there, intent on mischief.
+
+"If you'll drop into our yard," she said, "and place that soap box
+against the ventilator, Clarence can't get out that way!"
+
+It was done before she finished the request. She disengaged herself from
+the fencetop, swung over, hung an instant, and dropped into a soft flower
+bed.
+
+Breathing fast, disheveled, they confronted one another on the grass. His
+blue suit of serge was smeared with whitewash; her gown was a sight. She
+felt for her hat instinctively, repinned it at hazard, looked at her
+gloves, and began to realize what she had done.
+
+"I--I couldn't help it," she faltered; "I couldn't leave Clarence in a
+city of five m-million strangers--all alone--terrified out of his senses--
+could I? I had rather--rather be thought--anything than be c-cruel to a
+helpless animal."
+
+Brown dared not trust himself to answer. She was too beautiful and his
+emotion was too deep. So he bent over and attempted to dust his garments
+with the flat of his hand.
+
+"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice. "Are your clothes quite
+ruined?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mind," he protested happily, "I really don't mind a bit. If
+you'll only let me help you corner that infern--that unfortunate cat I
+shall be perfectly happy."
+
+She said, with heightened color: "It is exceedingly nice of you to say
+so.... I--I don't quite know--what do you think we had better do?"
+
+"Suppose," he said, "you go into the basement, unlock the cellar door and
+call. He can't bolt this way."
+
+She nodded and entered the house. A few moments later he heard her
+calling, so persuasively that it was all he could do not to run to her,
+and why on earth that cat didn't he never could understand.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+BETTY
+
+
+_In Which the Remorseless and Inexorable Results of Psychical Research
+Are Revealed to the Very Young_
+
+At intervals for the next ten minutes her fresh, sweet, fascinating voice
+came to him where he stood in the yard; then he heard it growing fainter,
+more distant, receding; then silence.
+
+Listening, he suddenly heard a far, rushing sound from subterranean
+depths--like a load of coal being put in--then a frightened cry.
+
+He sprang into the basement, ran through laundry and kitchen. The cellar
+door swung wide open above the stairs which ran down into darkness; and
+as he halted to listen Clarence dashed up out of the depths, scuttled
+around the stairs and fled upward into the silent regions above.
+
+"Betty!" he cried, forgetting in his alarm the lesser conventions, "where
+are you?"
+
+"Oh, dear--oh, dear!" she wailed. "I am in such a dreadful plight. Could
+you help me, please?"
+
+"Are you hurt?" he asked. Fright made his voice almost inaudible. He
+struck a match with shaking fingers and ran down the cellar stairs.
+
+"Betty! Where are you?"
+
+"Oh, I am here--in the coal."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I--I can't seem to get out; I stepped into the coal pit in the dark and
+it all--all slid with me and over me and I'm in it up to the shoulders."
+
+Another match flamed; he saw a stump of a candle, seized it, lighted it,
+and, holding it aloft, gazed down upon the most heart rending spectacle
+he had ever witnessed.
+
+The next instant he grasped a shovel and leaped to the rescue. She was
+quite calm about it; the situation was too awful, the future too hopeless
+for mere tears. What had happened contained all the dignified elements of
+a catastrophe. They both realized it, and when, madly shoveling, he at
+last succeeded in releasing her she leaned her full weight on his own,
+breathing rapidly, and suffered him to support and guide her through the
+flame-shot darkness to the culinary regions above.
+
+Here she sank down on a chair for one moment in utter collapse. Then she
+looked up, resolutely steadying her voice:
+
+"Could anything on earth more awful have happened to a girl?" she asked,
+lips quivering in spite of her. She stretched out what had once been a
+pair of white gloves, she looked down at what had been a delicate summer
+gown of white. "How," she asked with terrible calmness, "am I to get to
+Oyster Bay?"
+
+He dropped on to a kitchen chair opposite her, clasping his coal-stained
+hands between his knees, utterly incapable of speech.
+
+She looked at her shoes--once snowy white; with a shudder she stripped
+the soiled gloves from elbow to wrist and flung them aside. Her arms and
+hands formed a starling contrast to the remainder of the ensemble.
+
+"What," she asked, "am I to do?"
+
+"The thing to do," he said, "is to telephone to your family at Oyster
+Bay."
+
+"The telephone has been disconnected. So has the water--we can't even
+w-wash our hands!" she faltered.
+
+He said: "I can go out and telephone to your family to send a maid with
+some clothes for you--if you don't mind being left alone in an empty
+house for a little while."
+
+"No, I don't; but," she gazed uncertainly at the black opening of the
+cellar, "but, please, don't be gone very long, will you?"
+
+He promised fervidly. She gave him the number and her family's name, and
+he left by the basement door.
+
+He was gone a long time, during which, for a while, she paced the floor,
+unaffectedly wringing her hands and contemplating herself and her
+garments in the laundry looking-glass.
+
+At intervals she tried to turn on the water, hoping for a few drops at
+least; at intervals she sat down to wait for him; then, the inaction
+becoming unendurable, musing goaded her into motion, and she ascended to
+the floor above, groping through the dimness in futile search for
+Clarence. She heard him somewhere in obscurity, scurrying under furniture
+at her approach, evidently too thoroughly demoralized to recognize her
+voice. So, after a while, she gave it up and wandered down to the pantry,
+instinct leading her, for she was hungry and thirsty; but she knew there
+could be nothing eatable in a house closed for the summer.
+
+She lifted the pantry window and opened the blinds; noon sunshine flooded
+the place, and she began opening cupboards and refrigerators, growing
+hungrier every moment.
+
+Then her eyes fell upon dozens of bottles of Apollinaris, and with a
+little cry of delight she knelt down, gathered up all she could carry,
+and ran upstairs to the bathroom adjoining her own bedchamber.
+
+"At least," she said to herself, "I can cleanse myself of this dreadful
+coal!" and in a few moments she was reveling, elbow deep, in a marble
+basin brimming with Apollinaris.
+
+As the stain of the coal disappeared she remembered a rose-colored
+morning gown reposing in her bedroom clothespress; and she found more
+than that there--rose stockings and slippers and a fragrant pile of
+exquisitely fine and more intimate garments, so tempting in their
+freshness that she hurried with them into the dressing room; then began
+to make rapid journeys up and downstairs, carrying dozens of quarts of
+Apollinaris to the big porcelain tub, into which she emptied them,
+talking happily to herself all the time.
+
+"If he returns I can talk to him over the banisters!... He's a nice
+boy.... Such a funny boy not to remember me.... And I've thought of him
+quite often.... I wonder if I've time for just one, delicious plunge?"
+She listened; ran to the front windows and looked out through the blinds.
+He was nowhere in sight.
+
+Ten minutes later, delightfully refreshed, she stood regarding herself in
+her lovely rose-tinted morning gown, patting her bright hair into
+discipline with slim, deft fingers, a half-smile on her lips, lids
+closing a trifle over the pensive violet eyes.
+
+"Now," she said aloud, "I'll talk to him over the banisters when he
+returns; it's a little ungracious, I suppose, after all he has done, but
+it's more conventional.... And I'll sit here and read until they send
+somebody from Sandcrest with a gown I can travel in.... And then we'll
+catch Clarence and call a cab----"
+
+A distant tinkling from the area bell interrupted her.
+
+"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "I quite forgot that I had to let him in!"
+
+Another tinkle. She cast a hurried and doubtful glance over her attire.
+It was designed for the intimacy of her boudoir.
+
+"I--I _couldn't_ talk to him out of the window! I've been shocking enough
+as it is!" she thought; and, finger tips on the banisters, she ran down
+the three stairs and appeared at the basement grille, breathless,
+radiant, forgetting, as usual, her self-consciousness in thinking of him,
+a habit of this somewhat harebrained and headlong girl which had its root
+in perfect health of body and wholesomeness of mind.
+
+"I found some clothes--not the sort I can go out in!" she said, laughing
+at his astonishment, as she unlocked the grille. "So, please, overlook my
+attire; I was _so_ full of coal dust! and I found sufficient Apollinaris
+for my necessities.... _What_ did they say at Sandcrest?"
+
+He said very soberly: "We've got to discuss this situation. Perhaps I had
+better come in for a few minutes--if you don't mind."
+
+"No, I don't mind.... Shall we sit in the drying room?" leading the way.
+"Now tell me what is the matter? You rather frighten me, you know. Is--is
+anything wrong at Sandcrest?"
+
+"No, I suppose not." He touched his flushed face with his handkerchief;
+"I couldn't get Oyster Bay on the 'phone."
+
+"W-why not?"
+
+"The wires are out of commission as far as Huntington; there's no use--I
+tried everything! Telegraph and telephone wires were knocked out in this
+morning's electric storm, it seems."
+
+She gazed at him, hands folded on her knee, left leg crossed over, foot
+swinging.
+
+"This," she said calmly, "is becoming serious. Will you tell me what I am
+to do?"
+
+"Haven't you anything to travel in?"
+
+"Not one solitary rag."
+
+"Then--you'll have to stay here to-night and send for some of your
+friends--you surely know somebody who is still in town, don't you?"
+
+"I really don't. This is the middle of July. I don't know a woman in
+town."
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Besides," she said, "we have no light, no water, nothing to eat in the
+house, no telephone to order anything----"
+
+He said: "I foresaw that you would probably be obliged to remain here, so
+when I left the telephone office I took the liberty of calling a taxi and
+visiting the electric light people, the telephone people and the nearest
+plumber. It seems he is your own plumber--Quinn, I believe his name is;
+and he's coming in half an hour to turn on the water."
+
+"Did you think of doing all that?" she asked, astonished.
+
+"Oh, that wasn't anything. And I ventured to telephone the Plaza to serve
+luncheon and dinner here for you----"
+
+"You _did?_"
+
+"And I wired to Dooley's Agency to send you a maid for to-day----"
+
+"That was perfectly splendid of you!"
+
+"They promised to send one as soon as possible.... And I think that may
+be the plumber now," as a tinkle came from the area bell.
+
+It was not the plumber; it was waiters bearing baskets full of silver,
+china, table linen, ice, fruits, confections, cut flowers, and, in
+warmers, a most delectable luncheon.
+
+Four impressive individuals commanded by a butler formed the
+processional, filing solemnly up the basement stairs to the dining room,
+where they instantly began to lay the table with dexterous celerity.
+
+In the drying room below Betty and Beekman Brown stood confronting each
+other.
+
+"I suppose," began Brown with an effort, "that I had better go now."
+
+Betty said thoughtfully: "I suppose you must."
+
+"Unless," continued Brown, "you think I had better remain--somewhere on
+the premises--until your maid arrives."
+
+"That might be safer," said Betty, more thoughtfully.
+
+"Your maid will probably be here in a few minutes."
+
+"Probably," said Betty, head bent, slim, ringless fingers busy with the
+sparkling drop that glimmered pendant from her neckchain.
+
+Silence--the ironing board between them--she standing, bright head
+lowered, worrying the jewel with childish fingers; he following every
+movement, fascinated, spellbound.
+
+After a moment, without looking up: "You have been very, very nice to me--
+in the nicest possible way," she said.... "I am not going to forget it
+easily--even if I might wish to."
+
+"I can never forget _you!_... I d-don't want to."
+
+The sparkling pendant escaped her fingers; she picked it up again and
+spoke as though gravely addressing it:
+
+"Some day somewhere," she said, looking at the jewel, "perhaps chance--
+the hazard of life--may bring us to--togeth--to acquaintance--a more
+formal acquaintance than this.... I hope so. This has been a little--
+irregular, and perhaps you had better not wait for my maid.... I hope we
+may meet--sometime."
+
+"I hope so, too," he managed to say, with so little fervor and so
+successful an imitation of her politely detached interest in convention
+that she raised her eyes. They dropped immediately, because his quiet
+voice and speech scarcely conformed to the uncontrolled protest in his
+eyes.
+
+For a moment she stood, passing the golden links through her white
+fingers like a young novice with a rosary. Steps on the stairs disturbed
+them; the recessional had begun; four solemn persons filed out the area
+gate. At the same moment, suave and respectful, her butler pro tem.
+presented himself at the doorway:
+
+"Luncheon is served, madam."
+
+"Thank you." She looked uncertainly at Brown, hesitated, flushed a
+trifle.
+
+"I will stay here and admit the plumber and then--then--I'll g-go," he
+said with a heartbroken smile.
+
+"I suppose you took the opportunity to lunch when you went out?" she
+said. Her inflection made it a question.
+
+Without answering he stepped back to allow her to pass. She moved
+forward, turned, undecided.
+
+"_Have_ you lunched?"
+
+"Please don't feel that you ought to ask me," he began, and checked
+himself as the vivid pink deepened in her cheeks. Then she freed herself
+of embarrassment with a little laugh.
+
+"Considering," she said, "that we have been chasing cats on the back
+fences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in my
+own cellar, I can't believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheon
+with me.... Is it?"
+
+"It is ador--it is," he corrected himself firmly, "exceedingly civil of
+you to ask me!"
+
+"Then--will you?" almost timidly.
+
+"I will. I shall not pretend any more. I'd rather lunch with you than be
+President of this Republic."
+
+The butler pro tem. seated her.
+
+"You see," she said, "a place had already been laid for you." And with
+the faintest trace of malice in her voice: "Perhaps your butler had his
+orders to lay two covers. Had he?"
+
+"From me?" he protested, reddening.
+
+"You don't suspect _me_, do you?" she asked, adorably mischievous. Then
+glancing over the masses of flowers in the center and at the corners of
+the lace cloth: "This is deliciously pretty. But you are either
+dreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am. Which is it?"
+
+"I think both are true," he said, laughing.
+
+And a little while later when he returned from the basement after
+admitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber:
+
+"Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?" she said, greeting
+his return with delightfully fearless eyes. "Such Astrakan caviar! Such
+salad! Everything I care for most. And how on earth you guessed I can't
+imagine.... I'm beginning to think you are rather wonderful."
+
+They lifted the long, slender glasses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded one
+another over the frosty rims--a long, curious glance from her; a straight
+gaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long.
+
+Later, when she gave the signal, they rose as though they had often dined
+together, and moved leisurely out through the dim, shrouded drawing-rooms
+where, in the golden dusk, the odor of camphor hung.
+
+She had taken a great cluster of dewy Bride's roses from the centerpiece,
+and as she walked forward, sedately youthful, beside him, her fresh,
+young face brooded over the fragrance of the massed petals.
+
+"Sweet--how sweet!" she murmured to herself, and as they reached the end
+of the vista she half turned to face him, dreamily, listless, confident.
+
+They looked at one another, she with chin brushing the roses.
+
+"The strangest of all," she said, "is that it _seems_ all right--and--and
+we _know_ that it is all quite wrong.... Had you better go?"
+
+"Unless I ought to wait and make sure your maid does not fail you....
+Shall I?" he asked evenly.
+
+She did not answer. He drew a linen-swathed armchair toward her; she
+absently seated herself and lay back, caressing the roses with delicate
+lips and chin.
+
+Twice she looked up at him, standing there by the boarded windows.
+Sunshine filtered through the latticework at the top--enough for them to
+see each other as in a dull afterglow.
+
+"I wonder how soon my maid will come," she mused, dropping the loose
+roses on her knees. "If she is going to be very long about it perhaps--
+perhaps you might care to find a chair--if you have decided to wait."
+
+He drew one from a corner and seated himself, pulses hammering his
+throat.
+
+Through the stillness of the house sounded at intervals the clink of
+glass from the pantry. Other sounds from above indicated the plumber's
+progress from floor to floor.
+
+"Do you realize," she said impulsively, "how _very_ nice you have been to
+me? What a perfectly horrid position I might have been in, with poor
+Clarence on the back fence! And suppose I had dared follow him alone to
+the cellar? I--I might have been there yet--up to my neck in coal?"
+
+She gazed into space with considerable emotion.
+
+"And now," she said, "I am safe here in my own home. I have lunched
+divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe
+indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light
+and the telephone will be in working order before very long--and it is
+_all_ due to you!"
+
+"I--I did a few things I almost w-wish I hadn't," stammered Brown,
+"b-because I can't, somehow, decently t-tell you how tremendously
+I--I--" He stuck fast.
+
+"What?"
+
+"It would look as though I were presuming on a t-trifling service
+rendered, and--oh, I can't say it; I want to, but I can't."
+
+"Say what? Please, I don't mind what you are--are going to say."
+
+"It's--it's that I----"
+
+"Y-es?" in soft encouragement.
+
+"W-want to know you most tremendously now. I don't want to wait several
+years for chance and hazard."
+
+"O-h!" as though the information conveyed a gentle shock to her. Her low-
+breathed exclamation nearly finished Brown.
+
+"I knew you'd think it unpardonable for me--at such a time--to venture
+to--to--ask--say--express--convey----"
+
+"Why do you--how can I--where could we--" She recovered herself
+resolutely. "I do not think we ought to take advantage of an accident
+like this.... Do you? Besides, probably, in the natural course of social
+events----"
+
+"But it may be years! months! weeks!" insisted Brown, losing control of
+himself.
+
+"I should hope it would at least be a decently reasonable interval of
+several weeks----"
+
+"But I don't know what to do if I never see you again for weeks! I c-care
+so much--for--you."
+
+She shrank back in her chair, and in her altered face he read that he had
+disgraced himself.
+
+"I knew I was going to," he said in despair. "I couldn't keep it--I
+couldn't stop it. And now that you see what sort of a man I am I'm going
+to tell you more."
+
+"You need not," she said faintly.
+
+"I must. Listen! I--I don't even know your full name--all I know is that
+it is Betty, and that your cat's name is Clarence and your plumber's name
+is Quinn. But if I didn't know anything at all concerning you it would
+have been the same. I suppose you will think me insane if I tell you that
+before the car, on which you rode, came into sight I _knew_ you were on
+it. And I--cared--for--you--before I ever saw you."
+
+"I don't understand----"
+
+"I know you don't. _I_ don't. All I understand is that what you and I
+have done has been done by us before, sometime, somewhere--part only--
+down to--down to where you changed cars. Up to that moment, before you
+took the Lexington Avenue car, I recognized each incident as it
+occurred.... But when all this happened to us before I must have lost
+courage--for I did not recognize anything after that except that I cared
+for you.... _Do_ you understand one single word of what I have been
+saying?"
+
+The burning color in her face had faded slowly while he was speaking; her
+lifted eyes grew softer, serious, as he ended impetuously.
+
+She looked at him in retrospective silence. There was no mistaking his
+astonishing sincerity, his painfully earnest endeavor to impart to her
+some rather unusual ideas in which he certainly believed. No man who
+looked that way at a woman could mean impertinence; her own intelligence
+satisfied her that he had not meant and could never mean offense to any
+woman.
+
+"Tell me," she said quietly, "just what you mean. It is not possible for
+you to--care--for--me.... Is it?"
+
+He disclosed to her, beginning briefly with his own name, material and
+social circumstances, a pocket edition of his hitherto uneventful career,
+the advent that morning of the emissary from The Green Mouse, his
+discussion with Smith, the strange sensation which crept over him as he
+emerged from the tunnel at Forty-second Street, his subsequent
+altercation with Smith, and the events that ensued up to the eruption of
+Clarence.
+
+He spoke in his most careful attorney's manner, frank, concise,
+convincing, free from any exaggeration of excitement or emotion. And she
+listened, alternately fascinated and appalled as, step by step, his story
+unfolded the links in an apparently inexorable sequence involving this
+young man and herself in a predestined string of episodes not yet ended--
+if she permitted herself to credit this astounding story.
+
+Sensitively intelligent, there was no escaping the significance of the
+only possible deduction. She drew it and blushed furiously. For a moment,
+as the truth clamored in her brain, the self-evidence of it stunned her.
+But she was young, and the shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous,
+almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lips
+parted in outraged protest--parted and remained so, wordless, silent--the
+soundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had imperceptibly
+begun to tremble.
+
+Her head sank slowly; she laid her white hands above the roses heaped in
+her lap.
+
+For a long while she remained so. And he did not speak.
+
+First the butler went away. Then Mr. Quinn followed. The maid had not yet
+arrived. The house was very still.
+
+And after the silence had worn his self-control to the breaking point he
+rose and walked to the dining room and stood looking down into the yard.
+The grass out there was long and unkempt; roses bloomed on the fence;
+wistaria, in its deeper green of midsummer, ran riot over the trellis
+where Clarence had basely dodged his lovely mistress, and, after making a
+furry pin wheel of himself, had fled through the airhole into Stygian
+depths.
+
+Somewhere above, in the silent house, Clarence was sulkily dissembling.
+
+"I suppose," said Brown, quietly coming back to where the girl was
+sitting in the golden dusk, "that I might as well find Clarence while we
+are waiting for your maid. May I go up and look about?"
+
+And taking her silence as assent, he started upstairs.
+
+He hunted carefully, thoroughly, opening doors, peeping under furniture,
+investigating clothespresses, listening at intervals, at intervals
+calling with misleading mildness. But, like him who died in malmsey,
+Clarence remained perjured and false to all sentiments of decency so
+often protested purringly to his fair young mistress.
+
+Mechanically Brown opened doors of closets, knowing, if he had stopped to
+think, that cats don't usually turn knobs and let themselves into tightly
+closed places.
+
+In one big closet on the fifth floor, however, as soon as he opened the
+door there came a rustle, and he sprang forward to intercept the
+perfidious one; but it was only the air stirring the folds of garments
+hanging on the wall.
+
+As he turned to step forth again the door gently closed with an ominous
+click, shutting him inside. And after five minutes' frantic fussing he
+realized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strange
+house, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, who might, at
+any moment now that the telephone was in order, call a cab and flee from
+a man who had tried to explain to her that they were irrevocably
+predestined for one another.
+
+Calling and knocking were dignified and permissible, but they did no
+good. To kick violently at the door was not dignified, but he was obliged
+to do it. Evidently the closet was too remote for the sound to penetrate
+down four flights of stairs.
+
+He tried to break down the door--they do it in all novels. He only
+rebounded painfully, ineffectively, which served him right for reading
+fiction.
+
+It irked him to shout; he hesitated for a long while; then sudden
+misgiving lest she might flee the house seized him and he bellowed. It
+was no use.
+
+The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruising
+himself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes and
+textures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder and
+madder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence of
+which he had never dreamed himself capable.
+
+Then he sat down. He remained perfectly still for a long while, listening
+and delicately feeling his hurts. A curious drowsiness began to irritate
+him; later the irritation subsided and he felt a little sleepy.
+
+His heart, however, thumped like an inexpensive clock; the cedar-tainted
+air in the closet grew heavier; he felt stupid, swaying as he rose. No
+wonder, for the closet was as near air-tight as it could be made.
+Fortunately he did not realize it.
+
+And, meanwhile, downstairs, Betty was preparing for flight.
+
+She did not know where she was going--how far away she could get in a
+rose-silk morning gown. But she had discovered, in a clothespress, an
+automobile duster, cap, and goggles; on the strength of these she tried
+the telephone, found it working, summoned a coupé, and was now awaiting
+its advent. But the maid from Dooley's must first arrive to take charge
+of the house and Clarence until she, Betty, could summon her family to
+her assistance and defy The Green Mouse, Beekman Brown, and Destiny
+behind her mother's skirts.
+
+Flight was, therefore, imperative--it was absolutely indispensable that
+she put a number of miles between herself and this young man who had just
+informed her that Fate had designed them for one another.
+
+She was no longer considering whether she owed this amazing young man any
+gratitude, or what sort of a man he might be, agreeable, well-bred,
+attractive; all she understood was that this man had suddenly stepped
+into her life, politely expressing his conviction that they could not,
+ultimately, hope to escape from each other. And, beginning to realize the
+awful import of his words, the only thing that restrained her from
+instant flight on foot was the hidden Clarence. She could not abandon her
+cat. She must wait for that maid. She waited. Meanwhile she hunted up
+Dooley's Agency in the telephone book and called them up. They told her
+the maid was on the way--as though Dooley's Agency could thwart Destiny
+with a whole regiment of its employees!
+
+She had discarded her roses with a shudder; cap, goggles, duster, lay in
+her lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she'd flee. If Brown came
+back before the maid arrived she'd tell him plainly what she had decided
+on, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering the
+incredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline to
+encourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her.
+
+At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independent
+affair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series of
+beats which annoyed her.
+
+"It is true," she admitted to herself, "that he is a gentleman, and I can
+scarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave him
+without any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I must
+remember that."
+
+Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularly
+as she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and a
+pencil, and wrote rapidly:
+
+"_Dear Mr. Brown:_
+
+"If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can't help it. The maid
+will stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of the
+family. I don't mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you told
+me about our--about what you told me.... I'm sorry you tore your clothes.
+
+"Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or your
+conduct, which was perfectly ('charming' scratched out) proper. It is
+only that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to ('marry'
+scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and a
+new line begun).
+
+"It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choice
+in life left her--to be forced, by what you say are occult currents,
+into--friendship--with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So I
+don't think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to present
+us to each other. This doesn't sound right, but you will surely
+understand.
+
+"Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, and
+childish--but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you are
+perfectly nice--but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifying
+to me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will--won't
+you?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see you
+again.
+
+"So I am only going to thank you, and say ('with all my heart' crossed
+out) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous and
+considerate--most--most----"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of Beekman
+Brown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy and
+looked at her.
+
+She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mind
+evoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on the
+back of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded.
+
+What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him for
+many minutes now. Why was he so still?
+
+She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder,
+listening.
+
+Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs.
+
+Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? Had
+Clarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can't annihilate
+big, strong young men. But _where_ was he? Had he, pursuing his quest,
+emerged through the scuttle on to the roof--and--and--fallen off?
+
+Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor,
+listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, opening
+doors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searching
+more quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quite
+steady. There was no reply.
+
+Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking up
+her rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously.
+
+A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet at
+hand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of the
+cedar press and tore it wide open.
+
+He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolled rugs, clothes hangers and
+furs, quite motionless.
+
+She knew enough to run into the servants' rooms, fling open the windows
+and, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youth
+across the floor and into the fresh air.
+
+"O-h!" she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she
+took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency,
+performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise
+which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.
+
+It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he
+made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became
+articulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. He
+opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that
+were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the
+floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear
+of death, looked back, breathless, trembling.
+
+"That is a devil of a place, that closet," he said faintly.
+
+She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed,
+being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips--felt his lips on
+them.
+
+Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the
+heart, stilling it--silencing pulse and breath--nay, thought itself. She
+heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:
+
+"I cared for you. You give me life--and I adore you.... Let me. It will
+not harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; but
+unless some day you will prove it for me--Betty--the problem of life is
+but a sorry sum--a total of ciphers without end.... No other two people
+in all the world could be what we are and what we have been to each
+other. No other two people could dare to face what we dare face." He
+paused: "Dare we, Betty?"
+
+Her eyes turned from his. He rose unsteadily, supported on one arm; she
+sprang to her feet, looked at him, and, as he made an awkward effort to
+rise, suddenly bent forward and gave him both hands in aid.
+
+"Wait--wait!" she said; "let me try to think, if I can. Don't speak to me
+again--not yet--not now."
+
+But, at intervals, as they descended the flights of stairs, she turned
+instinctively to watch his progress, for he still moved with difficulty.
+
+In the drawing-room they halted, he leaning heavily on the back of a
+chair, she, distrait, restless, pacing the polished parquet, treading her
+roses under foot, turning from time to time to look at him--a strange,
+direct, pure-lidded gaze that seemed to freshen his very soul.
+
+Once he stooped and picked up one of the trodden roses bruised by her
+slim foot; once, as she passed him, pacing absently the space between the
+door and him, he spoke her name.
+
+But: "Wait!" she breathed. "You have said everything. It is for me to
+reply--if I speak at all. C-can't you wait for--me?"
+
+"Have I angered you?"
+
+She halted, head high, superb in her slim, young beauty.
+
+"Do I look it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Nor I. Let me find out."
+
+The room had become dimmer; the light on her hair and face and hands
+glimmered dully as she passed and re-passed him in her restless progress--
+restless, dismayed, frightened progress toward a goal she already saw
+ahead--close ahead of her--every time she turned to look at him. She
+already knew the end.
+
+_That_ man! And she knew that already he must be, for her, something that
+she could never again forget--something she must reckon with forever and
+ever while life endured.
+
+She paused and inspected him almost insolently. Suddenly the rush of the
+last revolt overwhelmed her; her eyes blazed, her white hands tightened
+into two small clenched fists--and then tumult died in her ringing ears,
+the brightness of the eyes was quenched, her hands relaxed, her head sank
+low, lower, never again to look on this man undismayed, heart free,
+unafraid--never again to look into this man's eyes with the unthinking,
+unbelieving tranquillity born of the most harmless skepticism in the
+world.
+
+She stood there in silence, heard his step beside her, raised her head
+with an effort.
+
+"Betty!"
+
+Her hands quivered, refusing surrender. He bent and lifted them, pressing
+them to his eyes, his forehead. Then lowered them to the level of his
+lips, holding them suspended, eyes looking into hers, waiting.
+
+Suddenly her eyes closed, a convulsive little tremor swept her, she
+pressed both clasped hands against his lips, her own moved, but no words
+came--only a long, sweet, soundless sigh, soft as the breeze that stirs
+the crimson maple buds when the snows of spring at last begin to melt.
+
+From a dark corner under the piano Clarence watched them furtively.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+SYBILLA
+
+
+_Showing What Comes of Disobedience, Rosium, and Flour-Paste_
+
+About noon Bushwyck Carr bounced into the gymnasium, where the triplets
+had just finished their fencing lesson.
+
+"Did any of you three go into the laboratory this morning?" he demanded,
+his voice terminating in a sort of musical bellow, like the blast of a
+mellow French horn on a touring car.
+
+The triplets--Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla--all clothed precisely
+alike in knee kilts, plastrons, gauntlets and masks, came to attention,
+saluting their parent with their foils. The Boznovian fencing mistress,
+Madame Tzinglala, gracefully withdrew to the dressing room and departed.
+
+"Which of you three girls went into the laboratory this morning?"
+repeated their father impatiently.
+
+The triplets continued to stand in a neat row, the buttons of their foils
+aligned and resting on the hardwood floor. In graceful unison they
+removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded
+the author of their being attentively--more attentively still when that
+round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his
+monocle into an angry left eye and glared.
+
+"Didn't I warn you to keep out of that laboratory?" he asked wrathfully;
+"didn't I explain to you that it was none of your business? I believe I
+informed you that whatever is locked up in that room is no concern of
+yours. Didn't I?"
+
+"Yes, Pa-_pah_."
+
+"Well, confound it, what did you go in for, then?"
+
+An anxious silence was his answer. "You didn't all go in, did you?" he
+demanded in a melodious bellow.
+
+"Oh, no, Pa-_pah!_"
+
+"Did two of you go?"
+
+"Oh-h, n-o, Pa-_pah!_"
+
+"Well, which one did?"
+
+The line of beauty wavered for a moment; then Sybilla stepped slowly to
+the front, three paces, and halted with downcast eyes.
+
+"I told you not to, didn't I?" said her father, scowling the monocle out
+of his eye and reinserting it.
+
+"Y-yes, Pa-_pah_."
+
+"But you _did?_"
+
+"Y-yes----"
+
+"That will do! Flavilla! Drusilla! You are excused," dismissing the two
+guiltless triplets with a wave of the terrible eyeglass; and when they
+had faced to the rear and retired in good order, closing the door behind
+them, he regarded his delinquent daughter in wrathy and rubicund dismay.
+
+"What did you see in that laboratory?" he demanded.
+
+Sybilla began to count on her fingers. "As I walked around the room I
+noticed jars, bottles, tubes, lamps, retorts, blowpipes, batteries----"
+
+"Did you notice a small, shiny machine that somewhat resembles the
+interior economy of a watch?"
+
+"Yes, Pa-_pah_, but I haven't come to that yet----"
+
+"Did you go near it?"
+
+"Quite near----"
+
+"You didn't touch it, did you?"
+
+"I was going to tell you----"
+
+"_Did_ you?" he bellowed musically. "Answer me, Sybilla!"
+
+"Y-yes--I did."
+
+"What did you suppose it to be?"
+
+"I thought--we all thought--that you kept a wireless telephone instrument
+in there----"
+
+"Why? Just because I happen to be president of the Amalgamated Wireless
+Trust Company?"
+
+"Yes. And we were dying to see a wireless telephone work.... I thought
+I'd like to call up Central--just to be sure I could make the thing go--
+_What_ is the matter, Pa-_pah?_"
+
+He dropped into a wadded armchair and motioned Sybilla to a seat
+opposite. Then with another frightful facial contortion he reimbedded the
+monocle.
+
+"So you deliberately opened that door and went in to rummage?"
+
+"No," said the girl; "we were--skylarking a little, on our way to the
+gymnasium; and I gave Brasilia a little shove toward the laboratory door,
+and then Flavilla pushed me--very gently--and somehow I--the door flew
+open and my mask fell off and rolled inside; and I went in after it. That
+is how it happened--partly."
+
+She lifted her dark and very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then
+they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the
+polished floor with the point of her foil. "That is partly how," she
+repeated.
+
+"What is the other part?"
+
+"The other part was that, having unfortunately disobeyed you, and being
+already in the room, I thought I might as well stay and take a little
+peep around----"
+
+Her father fairly bounced in his padded chair. The velvet-eyed descendant
+of Eve shot a fearful glance at him and continued, still casually tracing
+invisible arabesques with her foil's point.
+
+"You see, don't you," she said, "that being actually _in_, I thought I
+might as well do something before I came out again, which would make my
+disobedience worth the punishment. So I first picked up my mask, then I
+took a scared peep around. There were only jars and bottles and
+things.... I was dreadfully disappointed. The certainty of being punished
+and then, after all, seeing nothing but bottles, _did_ seem rather
+unfair.... So I--walked around to--to see if I could find something to
+look at which would repay me for the punishment.... There is a proverb,
+isn't there Pa-_pah?_--something about being executed for a lamb----"
+
+"Go on!" he said sharply.
+
+"Well, all I could find that looked as though I had no business to touch
+it was a little jeweled machine----"
+
+"_That_ was it! Did you touch it?"
+
+"Yes, several times. Was it a wireless?"
+
+"Never mind! Yes, it's one kind of a wireless instrument. Go on!"
+
+Sybilla shook her head:
+
+"I'm sure I don't see why you are so disturbingly emphatic; because I
+haven't an idea how to send or receive a wireless message, and I hadn't
+the vaguest notion how that machine might work. I tried very hard to make
+it go; I turned several screws and pushed all the push-buttons----"
+
+Mr. Carr emitted a hollow, despairing sound--a sort of musical groan--and
+feebly plucked at space.
+
+"I tried every lever, screw, and spring," she went on calmly, "but the
+machine must have been out of order, for I only got one miserable little
+spark----"
+
+"You got a _spark?_"
+
+"Yes--just a tiny, noiseless atom of white fire----"
+
+Her father bounced to his feet and waved both hands at her distractedly.
+
+"Do you know what you've done?" he bellowed.
+
+"N-no----"
+
+"Well, you've prepared yourself to fall in love! And you've probably
+induced some indescribable pup to fall in love with you! And _that's_
+what you've done!"
+
+"In--_love!_"
+
+"Yes, you have!"
+
+"But how can a common wireless telephone----"
+
+"It's another kind of a wireless. Your brother-in-law, William Destyn,
+invented it; I'm backing it and experimenting with it. I told you to keep
+out of that room. I hung up a sign on the door: _'Danger! Keep out!'_"
+
+"W-was that thing loaded?"
+
+"Yes, it _was_ loaded!"
+
+"W-what with?"
+
+"Waves!" shouted her father, furiously. "Psychic waves! You little ninny,
+we've just discovered that the world and everything in it is enveloped in
+psychic waves, as well as invisible electric currents. The minute you got
+near that machine and opened the receiver, waves from your subconscious
+personality flowed into it. And the minute you touched that spring and
+got a spark, your psychic waves had signaled, by wireless, the
+subconscious personality of some young man--some insufferable pup--who'll
+come from wherever he is at present--from the world's end if need be--and
+fall in love with you."
+
+Mr. Carr jumped ponderously up and down in pure fury; his daughter
+regarded him in calm consternation.
+
+"I am so very, very sorry," she said; "but I am quite certain that I am
+not going to fall in love----"
+
+"You can't help it," roared her father, "if that instrument worked."
+
+"Is--is that what it's f-for?"
+
+"That's what it's invented for; that's why I'm putting a million into it.
+Anybody on earth desiring to meet the person with whom they're destined,
+some time or other, to fall in love, can come to us, in confidence, buy a
+ticket, and be hitched on to the proper psychic connection which insures
+speedy courtship and marriage--Damnation!"
+
+"Pa-_pah!_"
+
+"I can't help it! Any self-respecting, God-fearing father would swear! Do
+you think I ever expected to have my daughters mixed up with this
+machine? My daughters wooed, engaged and married by _machinery!_ And
+you're only eighteen; do you hear me? I won't have it! I'll certainly not
+have it!"
+
+"But, dear, I don't in the least intend to fall in love and marry at
+eighteen. And if--_he_--really--comes, I'll tell him very frankly that I
+could not think of falling in love. I'll quietly explain that the machine
+went off by mistake and that I am only eighteen; and that Flavilla and
+Drusilla and I are not to come out until next winter. That," she added
+innocently, "ought to hold him."
+
+"The thing to do," said her father, gazing fixedly at her, "is to keep
+you in your room until you're twenty!"
+
+"Oh, Pa-_pah!_"
+
+Mr. Carr smote his florid brow.
+
+"You'll stay in for a week, anyway!" he thundered mellifluously. "No
+motoring party for you! That's your punishment. You'll be safe for today,
+anyhow; and by evening William Destyn will be back from Boston and I'll
+consult him as to the safest way to keep you out of the path of this
+whippersnapper you have managed to wake up--evoke--stir out of space--
+wherever he may be--whoever he may be--whatever he chances to call
+himself----"
+
+"George," she murmured involuntarily.
+
+"_What!!_"
+
+She looked at her father, abashed, confused.
+
+"How absurd of me," she said. "I don't know why I should have thought of
+that name, George; or why I should have said it out loud--that way--I
+really don't----"
+
+"Who do you know named George?"
+
+"N-nobody in particular that I can think of----"
+
+"Sybilla! Be honest!"
+
+"Really, I don't; I am always honest."
+
+He knew she was truthful, always; but he said:
+
+"Then why the devil did you look--er--so, so moonily at me and call me
+George?"
+
+"I can't imagine--I can't understand----"
+
+"Well, _I_ can! You don't realize it, but that cub's name must be George!
+I'll look out for the Georges. I'm glad I've been warned. I'll see that
+no two-legged object named George enters this house! You'll never go
+anywhere where there's anybody named George if I can prevent it."
+
+"I--I don't want to," she returned, almost ready to cry. "You are very
+cruel to me----"
+
+"I wish to be. I desire to be a monster!" he retorted fiercely. "You're
+an exceedingly bad, ungrateful, undutiful, disobedient and foolish child.
+Your sisters and I are going to motor to Westchester and lunch there with
+your sister and your latest brother-in-law. And if they ask why you
+didn't come I'll tell them that it's because you're undutiful, and that
+you are not to stir outdoors for a week, or see anybody who comes into
+this house!"
+
+"I--I suppose I d-deserve it," she acquiesced tearfully. "I'm quite ready
+to be disciplined, and quite willing not to see anybody named George--
+ever! Besides, you have scared me d-dreadfully! I--I don't want to go out
+of the house."
+
+And when her father had retired with a bounce she remained alone in the
+gymnasium, eyes downcast, lips quivering. Later still, sitting in
+precisely the same position, she heard the soft whir of the touring car
+outside; then the click of the closing door.
+
+"There they go," she said to herself, "and they'll have such a jolly
+time, and all those very agreeable Westchester young men will be there--
+particularly Mr. Montmorency.... I _did_ like him awfully; besides, his
+name is Julian, so it is p-perfectly safe to like him--and I _did_ want
+to see how Sacharissa looks after her bridal trip."
+
+Her lower lip trembled; she steadied it between her teeth, gazed
+miserably at the floor, and beat a desolate tattoo on it with the tip of
+her foil.
+
+"I am being well paid for my disobedience," she whimpered. "Now I can't
+go out for a week; and it's April; and when I do go out I'll be so
+anxious all the while, peeping furtively at every man who passes and
+wondering whether his name might be George.... And it is going to be
+horridly awkward, too.... Fancy their bringing up some harmless dancing
+man named George to present to me next winter, and I, terrified, picking
+up my débutante skirts and running.... I'll actually be obliged to flee
+from every man until I know his name isn't George. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
+What an awful outlook for this summer when we open the house at Oyster
+Bay! What a terrible vista for next winter!"
+
+She naïvely dabbed a tear from her long lashes with the back of her
+gauntlet.
+
+Her maid came, announcing luncheon, but she would have none of it, nor
+any other offered office, including a bath and a house gown.
+
+"You go away somewhere, Bowles," she said, "and please, don't come near
+me, and don't let anybody come anywhere in my distant vicinity, because I
+am v-very unhappy, Bowles, and deserve to be--and I--I desire to be alone
+with c-conscience."
+
+"But, Miss Sybilla----"
+
+"No, no, no! I don't even wish to hear your voice--or anybody's. I don't
+wish to hear a single human sound of any description. I--_what_ is that
+scraping noise in the library?"
+
+"A man, Miss Sybilla----"
+
+"A _man!_ W-what's his name?"
+
+"I don't know, miss. He's a workman--a paper hanger."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Did you wish me to ask him to stop scraping, miss?"
+
+Sybilla laughed: "No, thank you." And she continued, amused at herself
+after her maid had withdrawn, strolling about the gymnasium, making
+passes with her foil at ring, bar, and punching bag. Her anxiety, too,
+was subsiding. The young have no very great capacity for continued
+anxiety. Besides, the first healthy hint of incredulity was already
+creeping in. And as she strolled about, swishing her foil, she mused
+aloud at her ease:
+
+"What an extraordinary and horrid machine!... _How_ can it do such
+exceedingly common things? And what a perfectly unpleasant way to fall in
+love--by machinery!... I had rather not know who I am some day to--to
+like--very much.... It is far more interesting to meet a man by accident,
+and never suspect you may ever come to care for him, than to buy a
+ticket, walk over to a machine full of psychic waves and ring up some
+strange man somewhere on earth."
+
+With a shudder of disdain she dropped on to a lounge and took her face
+between both hands.
+
+She was like her sisters, tall, prettily built, and articulated, with the
+same narrow feet and hands--always graceful when lounging, no matter what
+position her slim limbs fell into.
+
+And now, in her fencing skirts of black and her black stockings, she was
+exceedingly ornamental, with the severe lines of the plastron accenting
+the white throat and chin, and the scarlet heart blazing over her own
+little heart--unvexed by such details as love and lovers. Yes, unvexed;
+for she had about come to the conclusion that her father had frightened
+her more than was necessary; that the instrument had not really done its
+worst; in fact, that, although she had been very disobedient, she had had
+a rather narrow escape; and nothing more serious than paternal
+displeasure was likely to be visited upon her.
+
+Which comforted her to an extent that brought a return of appetite; and
+she rang for luncheon, and ate it with the healthy nonchalance usually so
+characteristic of her and her sisters.
+
+"Now," she reflected, "I'll have to wait an hour for my bath"--one of the
+inculcated principles of domestic hygiene. So, rising, she strolled
+across the gymnasium, casting about for something interesting to do.
+
+She looked out of the back windows. In New York the view from back
+windows is not imposing.
+
+Tiring of the inartistic prospect she sauntered out and downstairs to see
+what her maid might be about. Bowles was sewing; Sybilla looked on for a
+while with languid interest, then, realizing that a long day of
+punishment was before her, that she deserved it, and that she ought to
+perform some act of penance, started contritely for the library with
+resolute intentions toward Henry James.
+
+As she entered she noticed that the bookshelves, reaching part way to the
+ceiling, were shrouded in sheets. Also she encountered a pair of
+sawhorses overlaid with boards, upon which were rolls of green flock
+paper, several pairs of shears, a bucket of paste, a large, flat brush, a
+knife and a T-square.
+
+"The paper hanger man," she said. "He's gone to lunch. I'll have time to
+seize on Henry James and flee."
+
+Now Henry James, like some other sacred conventions, was, in that
+library, a movable feast. Sometimes he stood neatly arranged on one
+shelf, sometimes on another. There was no counting on Henry.
+
+Sybilla lifted the sheets from the face of one case and peered closer.
+Henry was not visible. She lifted the sheets from another case; no Henry;
+only G.P.R., in six dozen rakish volumes.
+
+Sybilla peeped into a third case. Then a very unedifying thing occurred.
+Surely, surely, this was Sybilla's disobedient day. She saw a forbidden
+book glimmering in old, gilded leather--she saw its classic back turned
+mockingly toward her--the whole allure of the volume was impudent, dog-
+eared, devil-may-care-who-reads-me.
+
+She took it out, replaced it, looked hard, hard for Henry, found him not,
+glanced sideways at the dog-eared one, took a step sideways.
+
+"I'll just see where it was printed," she said to herself, drawing out
+the book and backing off hastily--so hastily that she came into collision
+with the sawhorse table, and the paste splashed out of the bucket.
+
+But Sybilla paid no heed; she was examining the title page of old Dog-
+ear: a rather wonderful title page, printed in fascinating red and black
+with flourishes.
+
+"I'll just see whether--" And the smooth, white fingers hesitated; but
+she had caught a glimpse of an ancient engraving on the next page--a very
+quaint one, that held her fascinated.
+
+"I wonder----"
+
+She turned the next page. The first paragraph of the famous classic began
+deliciously. After a few moments she laughed, adding to herself: "I can't
+see what harm----"
+
+There was no harm. Her father had meant another book; but Sybilla did not
+know that.
+
+"I'll just glance through it to--to--be sure that I mustn't read it."
+
+She laid one hand on the paper hanger's table, vaulted up sideways, and,
+seated on the top, legs swinging, buried herself in the book, unconscious
+that the overturned paste was slowly fastening her to the spattered table
+top.
+
+An hour later, hearing steps on the landing, she sprang--that is, she
+went through all the graceful motions of springing lightly to the floor.
+But she had not budged an inch. No Gorgon's head could have consigned her
+to immovability more hopeless.
+
+Restrained from freedom by she knew not what, she made one frantic and
+demoralized effort--and sank back in terror at the ominous tearing sound.
+
+She was glued irrevocably to the table.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+THE CROWN PRINCE
+
+
+_Wherein the Green Mouse Squeaks_
+
+A few minutes later the paper hanging young man entered, swinging an
+empty dinner pail and halted in polite surprise before a flushed young
+girl in full fencing costume, who sat on his operating table, feet
+crossed, convulsively hugging a book to the scarlet heart embroidered on
+her plastron.
+
+"I--hope you don't mind my sitting here," she managed to say. "I wanted
+to watch the work."
+
+"By all means," he said pleasantly. "Let me get you a chair----"
+
+"No, thank you. I had rather sit th-this way. Please begin and don't mind
+if I watch you."
+
+The young man appeared to be perplexed.
+
+"I'm afraid," he ventured, "that I may require that table for cutting
+and----"
+
+"Please--if you don't mind--begin to paste. I am in-intensely interested
+in p-pasting--I like to w-watch p-paper p-pasted on a w-wall."
+
+Her small teeth chattered in spite of her; she strove to control her
+voice--strove to collect her wits.
+
+He stood irresolute, rather astonished, too.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, "but----"
+
+"_Please_ paste; won't you?" she asked.
+
+"Why, I've got to have that table to paste on----"
+
+"Then d-don't think of pasting. D-do anything else; cut out some strips.
+I am so interested in watching p-paper hangers cut out things--"
+
+"But I need the table for that, too----"
+
+"No, you don't. You can't be a--a very skillful w-workman if you've got
+to use your table for everything----"
+
+[Illustration: "'I'm afraid', he ventured 'that I may require that table
+for cutting.'"]
+
+He laughed. "You are quite right; I'm not a skillful paper hanger."
+
+"Then," she said, "I am surprised that you came here to paper our
+library, and I think you had better go back to your shop and send a
+competent man."
+
+He laughed again. The paper hanger's youthful face was curiously
+attractive when he laughed--and otherwise, more or less.
+
+He said: "I came to paper this library because Mr. Carr was in a hurry,
+and I was the only man in the shop. I didn't want to come. But they made
+me.... I think they're rather afraid of Mr. Carr in the shop.... And this
+work _must_ be finished today."
+
+She did not know what to say; anything to keep him away from the table
+until she could think clearly.
+
+"W-why didn't you want to come?" she asked, fighting for time. "You said
+you didn't want to come, didn't you?"
+
+"Because," he said, smiling, "I don't like to hang wall paper."
+
+"But if you are a paper hanger by trade----"
+
+"I suppose you think me a real paper hanger?"
+
+She was cautiously endeavoring to free one edge of her skirt; she nodded
+absently, then subsided, crimsoning, as a faint tearing of cloth sounded.
+
+"Go on," she said hurriedly; "the story of your career is _so_
+interesting. You say you adore paper hanging----"
+
+"No, I don't," he returned, chagrined. "I say I hate it."
+
+"Why do you do it, then?"
+
+"Because my father thinks that every son of his who finishes college
+ought to be disciplined by learning a trade before he enters a
+profession. My oldest brother, De Courcy, learned to be a blacksmith; my
+next brother, Algernon, ran a bakery; and since I left Harvard I've been
+slapping sheets of paper on people's walls----"
+
+"Harvard?" she repeated, bewildered.
+
+"Yes; I was 1907."
+
+"_You!_"
+
+He looked down at his white overalls, smiling.
+
+"Does that astonish you, Miss Carr?--you are Miss Carr, I suppose----"
+
+"Sybilla--yes--we're--we're triplets," she stammered.
+
+"The beauti--the--the Carr triplets! And you are one of them?" he
+exclaimed, delighted.
+
+"Yes." Still bewildered, she sat there, looking at him. How
+extraordinary! How strange to find a Harvard man pasting paper! Dire
+misgivings flashed up within her.
+
+"Who are you?" she asked tremulously. "Would you mind telling me your
+name. It--it isn't--_George!_"
+
+He looked up in pleased surprise:
+
+"So you know who I am?"
+
+"N-no. But--it isn't George--is it?"
+
+"Why, yes----"
+
+"O-h!" she breathed. A sense of swimming faintness enveloped her: she
+swayed; but an unmistakable ripping noise brought her suddenly to
+herself.
+
+"I am afraid you are tearing your skirt somehow," he said anxiously. "Let
+me----"
+
+"No!"
+
+The desperation of the negative approached violence, and he involuntarily
+stepped back.
+
+For a moment they faced one another; the flush died out on her cheeks.
+
+"If," she said, "your name actually is George, this--this is the most--
+the most terrible punishment--" She closed her eyes with her fingers as
+though to shut out some monstrous vision.
+
+"What," asked the amazed young man, "has my name to do with----"
+
+Her hands dropped from her eyes; with horror she surveyed him, his paste-
+spattered overalls, his dingy white cap, his dinner pail.
+
+"I--I _won't_ marry you!" she stammered in white desperation. "I _won't!_
+If you're not a paper hanger you look like one! I don't care whether
+you're a Harvard man or not--whether you're playing at paper hanging or
+not--whether your name is George or not--I won't marry you--I won't! I
+_won't!_"
+
+With the feeling that his senses were rapidly evaporating the young man
+sat down dizzily, and passed a paste-spattered but well-shaped hand
+across his eyes.
+
+Sybilla set her lips and looked at him.
+
+"I don't suppose," she said, "that you understand what I am talking
+about, but I've got to tell you at once; I can't stand this sort of
+thing."
+
+"W-what sort of thing?" asked the young man, feebly.
+
+"Your being here in this house--with me----"
+
+"I'll be very glad to go----"
+
+"Wait! _That_ won't do any good! You'll come back!"
+
+"N-no, I won't----"
+
+"Yes, you will. Or I--I'll f-follow you----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"One or the other! We can't help it, I tell you. _You_ don't understand,
+but I do. And the moment I knew your name was George----"
+
+"What the deuce has that got to do with anything?" he demanded, turning
+red in spite of his amazement.
+
+"Waves!" she said passionately, "psychic waves! I--somehow--knew that
+he'd be named George----"
+
+"Who'd be named George?"
+
+"_He!_ The--man... And if I ever--if you ever expect me to--to c-care for
+a man all over overalls----"
+
+"But I don't--Good Heavens!--I don't expect you to care for--for
+overalls----"
+
+"Then why do you wear them?" she asked in tremulous indignation.
+
+The young man, galvanized, sprang from his chair and began running about,
+taking little, short, distracted steps. "Either," he said, "I need mental
+treatment immediately, or I'll wake up toward morning.... I--don't know
+what you're trying to say to me. I came here to--to p-paste----"
+
+"That machine sent you!" she said. "The minute I got a spark you
+started----"
+
+"Do you think I'm a motor? Spark! Do you think I----"
+
+"Yes, I do. You couldn't help it; I know it was my own fault, and this--
+_this_ is the dreadful punishment--g-glued to a t-table top--with a man
+named George----"
+
+"What!!!"
+
+"Yes," she said passionately, "everything disobedient I have done has
+brought lightning retribution. I was forbidden to go into the laboratory;
+I disobeyed and--you came to hang wall paper! I--I took a b-book--which I
+had no business to take, and F-fate glues me to your horrid table and
+holds me fast till a man named George comes in...."
+
+Flushed, trembling, excited, she made a quick and dramatic gesture of
+despair; and a ripping sound rent the silence.
+
+"_Are you pasted to that table?_" faltered the young man, aghast.
+
+"Yes, I am. And it's utterly impossible for you to aid me in the
+slightest, except by pretending to ignore it."
+
+"But you--you can't remain there!"
+
+"I can't help remaining here," she said hotly, "until you go."
+
+"Then I'd better----"
+
+"No! You shall _not_ go! I--I won't have you go away--disappear somewhere
+in the city. Certainty is dreadful enough, but it's better than the awful
+suspense of knowing you are somewhere in the world, and are sure to come
+back sometime----"
+
+"But I don't want to come back!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Why should I
+wish to come back? Have I said--acted--done--looked--_Why_ should you
+imagine that I have the slightest interest in anything or in--in--anybody
+in this house?"
+
+"Haven't you?"
+
+"No!... And I cannot ignore your--your amazing--and intensely
+f-flattering fear that I have d-designs--that I desire--in other words,
+that I--er--have dared to cherish impossible aspirations in connection
+with a futile and absurd hope that one day you might possibly be induced
+to listen to any tentative suggestion of mine concerning a matrimonial
+alliance----"
+
+He choked and turned a dull red.
+
+She reddened, too, but said calmly:
+
+"Thank you for putting it so nicely. But it is no use. Sooner or later
+you and I will be obliged to consider a situation too hopeless to admit
+of discussion."
+
+"What situation?"
+
+"Ours."
+
+"I can't see any situation--except your being glued--I _beg_ your
+pardon!--but I must speak truthfully."
+
+"So must I. Our case is too desperate for anything but plain and terrible
+truths. And the truths are these: _I_ touched the forbidden machine and
+got a spark; your name is George; _I'm_ glued here, unable to escape;
+_you_ are not rude enough to go when I ask you not to.... And now--here--
+in this room, you and I must face these facts and make up our minds....
+For I simply _must_ know what I am to expect; I can't endure--I couldn't
+live with this hanging over me----"
+
+"_What_ hanging over you?"
+
+He sprang to his feet, waving his dinner pail around in frantic circles:
+
+"What is it, in Heaven's name, that is hanging over you?"
+
+"Over _you_, too!"
+
+"Over me?"
+
+"Certainly. Over us both. We are headed straight for m-marriage."
+
+"T-to _each other?_"
+
+"Of course," she said faintly. "Do you think I'd care whom you are going
+to marry if it wasn't I? Do you think I'd discuss my own marital
+intentions with you if you did not happen to be vitally concerned?"
+
+"Do _you_ expect to marry _me?_" he gasped.
+
+"I--I don't _want_ to: but I've got to."
+
+He stood petrified for an instant, then with a wild look began to gather
+up his tools.
+
+She watched him with the sickening certainty that if he got away she
+could never survive the years of suspense until his inevitable return. A
+mad longing to get the worst over seized her. She knew the worst, knew
+what Fate held for her. And she desired to get it over--have the worst
+happen--and be left to live out the shattered remains of her life in
+solitude and peace.
+
+"If--if we've got to marry," she began unsteadily, "why not g-get it over
+quickly--and then I don't mind if you go away."
+
+She was quite mad: that was certain. He hastily flung some brushes into
+his tool kit, then straightened up and gazed at her with deep compassion.
+
+"Would you mind," she asked timidly, "getting somebody to come in and
+marry us, and then the worst will be over, you see, and we need never,
+never see each other again."
+
+He muttered something soothing and began tying up some rolls of wall
+paper.
+
+"Won't you do what I ask?" she said pitifully. "I-I am almost afraid
+that--if you go away without marrying me I could not live and endure
+the--the certainty of your return."
+
+He raised his head and surveyed her with deepest pity. Mad--quite mad!
+And so young--so exquisite... so perfectly charming in body! And the mind
+darkened forever.... How terrible! How strange, too; for in the pure-
+lidded eyes he seemed to see the soft light of reason not entirely
+quenched.
+
+Their eyes encountered, lingered; and the beauty of her gaze seemed to
+stir him to the very wellspring of compassion.
+
+"Would it make you any happier to believe--to know," he added hastily,
+"that you and I were married?"
+
+"Y-yes, I think so."
+
+"Would you be quite happy to believe it?"
+
+"Yes--if you call that happiness."
+
+"And you would not be unhappy if I never returned?"
+
+"Oh, no, no! I--that would make me--comparatively--happy!"
+
+"To be married to me, and to know you would never again see me?"
+
+"Yes. Will you?"
+
+"Yes," he said soothingly. And yet a curious little throb of pain
+flickered in his heart for a moment, that, mad as she undoubtedly was,
+she should be so happy to be rid of him forever.
+
+He came slowly across the room to the table on which she was sitting. She
+drew back instinctively, but an ominous ripping held her.
+
+"Are you going for a license and a--a clergyman?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, no," he said gently, "that is not necessary. All we have to do is to
+take each other's hands--so----"
+
+She shrank back.
+
+"You will have to let me take your hand," he explained.
+
+She hesitated, looked at him fearfully, then, crimson, laid her slim
+fingers in his.
+
+The contact sent a quiver straight through him; he squared his shoulders
+and looked at her.... Very, very far away it seemed as though he heard
+his heart awaking heavily.
+
+What an uncanny situation! Strange--strange--his standing here to humor
+the mad whim of this stricken maid--this wonderfully sweet young
+stranger, looking out of eyes so lovely that he almost believed the dead
+intelligence behind them was quickening into life again.
+
+"What must we do to be married?" she whispered.
+
+"Say so; that is all," he answered gently. "Do you take me for your
+husband?"
+
+"Yes.... Do you t-take me for your--wife?"
+
+"Yes, dear----"
+
+"Don't say _that_!... Is it--over?"
+
+"All over," he said, forcing a gayety that rang hollow in the pathos of
+the mockery and farce.... But he smiled to be kind to her; and, to make
+the poor, clouded mind a little happier still, he took her hand again and
+said very gently:
+
+"Will it surprise you to know that you are now a princess?"
+
+"A--_what?_" she asked sharply.
+
+"A princess." He smiled benignly on her, and, still beaming, struck a not
+ungraceful attitude.
+
+"I," he said, "am the Crown Prince of Rumtifoo."
+
+She stared at him without a word; gradually he lost countenance; a vague
+misgiving stirred within him that he had rather overdone the thing.
+
+"Of course," he began cheerfully, "I am an exile in disguise--er--
+disinherited and all that, you know."
+
+She continued to stare at him.
+
+"Matters of state--er--revolution--and that sort of thing," he mumbled,
+eying her; "but I thought it might gratify you to know that I am Prince
+George of Rumtifoo----"
+
+"_What!_"
+
+The silence was deadly.
+
+"Do you know," she said deliberately, "that I believe you think I am
+mentally unsound. _Do_ you?"
+
+"I--you--" he began to stutter fearfully.
+
+"_Do_ you?"
+
+"W-well, either you or I----"
+
+"Nonsense! I _thought_ that marriage ceremony was a miserably inadequate
+affair!... And I am hurt--grieved--amazed that you should do such a--a
+cowardly----"
+
+"What!" he exclaimed, stung to the quick.
+
+"Yes, it is cowardly to deceive a woman."
+
+"I meant it kindly--supposing----"
+
+"That I am mentally unsound? Why do you suppose that?"
+
+"Because--Good Heavens--because in this century, and in this city, people
+who never before saw one another don't begin to talk of marrying----"
+
+"I explained to you"--she was half crying now, and her voice broke
+deliciously--"I told you what I'd done, didn't I?"
+
+"You said you had got a spark," he admitted, utterly bewildered by her
+tears. "Don't cry--please don't. Something is all wrong here--there is
+some terrible misunderstanding. If you will only explain it to me----"
+
+She dried her eyes mechanically: "Come here," she said. "I don't believe
+I did explain it clearly."
+
+And, very carefully, very minutely, she began to tell him about the
+psychic waves, and the instrument, and the new company formed to exploit
+it on a commercial basis.
+
+She told him what had happened that morning to her; how her disobedience
+had cost her so much misery. She informed him about her father, and that
+florid and rotund gentleman's choleric character.
+
+"If you are here when I tell him I'm married," she said, "he will
+probably frighten you to death; and that's one of the reasons why I wish
+to get it over and get you safely away before he returns. As for me, now
+that I know the worst, I want to get the worst over and--and live out my
+life quietly somewhere.... So now you see why I am in such a hurry, don't
+you?"
+
+He nodded as though stunned, leaning there on the table, hands folded,
+head bent.
+
+"I am so very sorry--for you," she said. "I know how you must feel about
+it. But if we are obliged to marry some time had we not better get it
+over and then--never--see--one another----"
+
+He lifted his head, then stood upright.
+
+Her soft lips were mute, but the question still remained in her eyes.
+
+So, for a long while, they looked at each other; and the color under his
+cheekbones deepened, and the pink in her cheeks slowly became pinker.
+
+"Suppose," he said, under his breath, "that I--wish--to return--to you?"
+
+"_I_ do not wish it----"
+
+"Try."
+
+"Try to--to wish for----"
+
+"For my return. Try to wish that you also desire it. Will you?"
+
+"If you are going to--to talk that way--" she stammered.
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"Then--then----"
+
+"Is there any reason why I should not, if we are engaged?" he asked. "We
+_are_--engaged, are we not?"
+
+"Engaged?"
+
+"Yes. Are we?"
+
+"I--yes--if you call it----"
+
+"I do.... And we are to be--married?" He could scarcely now speak the
+word which but a few moments since he pronounced so easily; for a totally
+new significance attached itself to every word he uttered.
+
+"Are we?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then--if I--if I find that I----"
+
+"Don't say it," she whispered. She had turned quite white.
+
+"Will you listen----"
+
+"No. It--it isn't true--it cannot be."
+
+"It is coming truer every moment.... It is very, very true--even now....
+It is almost true.... And now it has come true. Sybilla!"
+
+White, dismayed, she gazed at him, her hands instinctively closing her
+ears. But she dropped them as he stepped forward.
+
+"I love you, Sybilla. I wish to marry you.... Will you try to care for
+me--a little----"
+
+"I couldn't--I can't even try----"
+
+"Dear----"
+
+He had her hands now; she twisted them free; he caught them again. Over
+their interlocked hands she bowed her head, breathless, cheeks aflame,
+seeking to cover her eyes.
+
+"Will you love me, Sybilla?"
+
+She struggled silently, desperately.
+
+"_Will_ you?"
+
+"No.... Let me go----"
+
+"Don't cry--please, dear--" His head, bowed beside hers over their
+clasped hands, was more than she could endure; but her upflung face,
+seeking escape, encountered his. There was a deep, indrawn breath, a sob,
+and she lay, crying her heart out, in his arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Darling!"
+
+"W-what?"
+
+It is curious how quickly one recognizes unfamiliar forms of address.
+
+"You won't cry any more, will you?" he whispered.
+
+"N-n-o," sighed Sybilla.
+
+"Because we _do_ love each other, don't we?"
+
+"Y-yes, George." Then, radiant, yet sweetly shamed, confident, yet
+fearful, she lifted her adorable head from his shoulder.
+
+"George," she said, "I am beginning to think that I'd like to get off
+this table."
+
+"You poor darling!"
+
+"And," she continued, "if you will go home and change your overalls for
+something more conventional, you shall come and dine with us this
+evening, and I will be waiting for you in the drawing-room.... And,
+George, although some of your troubles are now over----"
+
+"All of them, dearest!" he cried with enthusiasm.
+
+"No," she said tenderly, "you are yet to meet Pa-_pah_."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS
+
+
+_A Chapter Concerning Drusilla, Pa-pah and a Minion_
+
+Capital had now been furnished for The Green Mouse, Limited; a great
+central station of white marble was being built, facing Madison Avenue
+and occupying the entire block front between Eighty-second and Eighty-
+third streets.
+
+The building promised to be magnificent; the plans provided for a
+thousand private operating rooms, each beautifully furnished in Louis XVI
+style, a restaurant, a tea room, a marriage licence bureau, and an
+emergency chapel where first aid clergymen were to be always in
+attendance.
+
+In each of the thousand Louis XVI operating rooms a Destyn-Carr wireless
+instrument was to stand upon a rococo table. A maid to every two rooms, a
+physician to every ten, and smelling salts to each room, were provided
+for in this gigantic enterprise.
+
+Millions of circulars were being prepared to send broadcast over the
+United States. They read as follows:
+
+ARE YOU IN LOVE? IF NOT, WHY NOT?
+
+Wedlock by Wireless. Marriage by Machinery. A Wondrous Wooer Without
+Words! No more doubt; no more hesitation; no more uncertainty. The
+Destyn-Carr Wireless Apparatus does it all for you. Happy Marriage
+Guaranteed or money eagerly refunded!
+
+Psychical Science says that for every man and woman on earth there is a
+predestined mate!
+
+That mate can be discovered for you by The Green Mouse, Limited.
+
+Why waste time with costly courtship? Why frivol? Why fuss?
+
+There is only ONE mate created for YOU. You pay us; We find that ONE,
+thereby preventing mistakes, lawsuits, elopements, regrets, grouches,
+alimony.
+
+Divorce Absolutely Eliminated
+
+By Our Infallible Wireless Method
+
+Success Certain
+
+It is now known the world over that Professor William Augustus Destyn has
+discovered that the earth we live on is enveloped in Psychical Currents.
+By the Destyn-Carr instrument these currents may be tapped, controlled
+and used to communicate between two people of opposite sex whose
+subconscious and psychic personalities are predestined to affinity and
+amorous accord. In other words, when psychic waves from any individual
+are collected or telegraphed along these wireless psychical currents,
+only that one affinity attuned to receive them can properly respond.
+
+_We catch your psychic waves for you. We send them out into the world._
+
+WATCH THAT SPARK!
+
+When you see a tiny bluish-white spark tip the tentacle of the Destyn-
+Carr transmitter,
+
+THE WORLD IS YOURS!
+
+for $25.
+
+Our method is quick, painless, merciful and certain. Fee, twenty-five
+dollars in advance. Certified checks accepted.
+
+THE GREEN MOUSE, Limited.
+
+President              PROF. WM. AUGUSTUS DESTYN.
+Vice-Presidents        THE HON. KILLIAN VAN K. VANDERDYNK.
+                       THE HON. GEORGE GRAY, 3D.
+Treasurer              THE HON. BUSHWYCK CARR.
+
+These circulars were composed, illuminated and printed upon vellum by
+what was known as an "Art" community in West Borealis, N.J. Several tons
+were expected for delivery early in June.
+
+Meanwhile, the Carr family and its affiliations had invested every cent
+they possessed in Green Mouse, Limited; and those who controlled the
+stock were Bushwyck Carr; William Augustus Destyn and Mrs. Destyn, née
+Ethelinda Carr; Mr. Killian Van K. Vanderdynk and Mrs. Vanderdynk, née
+Sacharissa Carr; George Gray and Mrs. Gray, very lately Sybilla Carr; and
+the unmarried triplets, Flavilla and Drusilla Carr.
+
+Remembering with a shudder how Bell Telephone and Standard Oil might once
+have been bought for a song, Bushwyck Carr determined that in this case
+his pudgy fingers should not miss the forelock of Time and the divided
+skirts of Chance.
+
+Squinting at the viewless ether through his monocle he beheld millions in
+it; so did William Augustus Destyn and the other sons-in-law.
+
+Only the unmarried triplets, Flavilla and Drusilla, remained amiably
+indifferent in the midst of all these family financial scurryings and
+preparations to secure world patents in a monopoly which promised the
+social regeneration of the globe.
+
+The considerable independent fortunes that their mother had left them
+they invested in Green Mouse, at their father's suggestion; but further
+than that they took no part in the affair.
+
+For a while the hurry and bustle and secret family conferences mildly
+interested them. Very soon, however, the talk of psychic waves and
+millions bored them; and as soon as the villa at Oyster Bay was opened
+they were glad enough to go.
+
+Here, at Oyster Bay, there was some chance of escaping their money-mad
+and wave-intoxicated family; they could entertain and be entertained by
+both of the younger sets in that dignified summer resort; they could
+wander about their own vast estate alone; they could play tennis, sail,
+swim, ride, and drive their tandem.
+
+But best of all--for they were rather seriously inclined at the age of
+eighteen, or, rather, on the verge of nineteen--they adored sketching, in
+water colors, out of doors.
+
+Scrubby forelands set with cedars, shadow-flecked paths under the scrub
+oak, meadows where water glimmered, white sails off Center Island and
+Cooper's Bluff--Cooper's Bluff from the north, northeast, east,
+southeast, south--this they painted with never-tiring, Pecksniffian
+patience, boxing the compass around it as enthusiastically as that
+immortal architect circumnavigated Salisbury Cathedral.
+
+And one delicious morning in early June, when the dew sparkled on the
+poison ivy and the air was vibrant with the soft monotone of mosquitoes
+and the public road exhaled a delicate aroma of crude oil, Drusilla and
+Flavilla, laden with sketching-blocks, color-boxes, camp-stools, white
+umbrellas and bonbons, descended to the great hall, on sketching bent.
+
+Mr. Carr also stood there, just outside on the porch, red, explosive,
+determined legs planted wide apart, defying several courtly reporters,
+who for a month had patiently and politely appeared every hour to learn
+whether Mr. Carr had anything to say about the new invention, rumors of
+which were flying thick about Park Row.
+
+"No, I haven't!" he shouted in his mellow and sonorously musical bellow.
+"I have told you one hundred times that when I have anything to say I'll
+send for you. Now, permit me to inform you, for the hundred and first
+consecutive time, that I have nothing to say--which won't prevent you
+from coming back in an hour and standing in exactly the same ridiculous
+position you now occupy, and asking me exactly the same unmannerly
+questions, and taking the same impertinent snapshots at my house and my
+person!"
+
+He executed a ferocious facial contortion, clapped the monocle into his
+left eye, and squinted fiercely.
+
+"I'm getting tired of this!" he continued. "When I wake in the morning
+and look out of my window there are always anywhere from one to twenty
+reporters decorating my lawn! That young man over there is the worst and
+most persistent offender!"--scowling at a good-looking youth in white
+flannels, who immediately blushed distressingly. "Yes, you are, young
+man! I'm amazed that you have the decency to blush! Your insolent sheet,
+the Evening Star, refers to my Trust Company as a Green Mouse Trap and a
+_Mouse_leum. It also publishes preposterous pictures of myself and
+family. Dammit, sir, they even produce a photograph of Orlando, the
+family cat! You did it, I am told. Did you?"
+
+"I am trying to do what I can for my paper, Mr. Carr," said the young
+man. "The public is interested."
+
+Mr. Carr regarded him with peculiar hatred.
+
+"Come here," he said; "I _have_ got something to say to _you_."
+
+The young man cautiously left the ranks of his fellows and came up on the
+porch. Behind Mr. Carr, in the doorway, stood Drusilla and Flavilla. The
+young man tried not to see them; he pretended not to. But he flushed
+deeply.
+
+"I want to know," demanded Mr. Carr, "why the devil you are always around
+here blushing. You've been around here blushing for a month, and I want
+to know why you do it."
+
+The youth stood speechless, features afire to the tips of his glowing
+ears.
+
+"At first," continued Mr. Carr, mercilessly, "I had a vague hope that you
+might perhaps be blushing for shame at your profession; I heard that you
+were young at it, and I was inclined to be sorry for you. But I'm not
+sorry any more!"
+
+The young man remained crimson and dumb.
+
+"Confound it," resumed Mr. Carr, "I want to know why the deuce you come
+and blush all over my lawn. I won't stand it! I'll not allow anybody to
+come blushing around me----"
+
+Indignation choked him; he turned on his heel to enter the house and
+beheld Flavilla and Drusilla regarding him, wide-eyed.
+
+He went in, waving them away before him.
+
+"I've taught that young pup a lesson," he said with savage satisfaction.
+"I'll teach him to blush at me! I'll----"
+
+"But why," asked Drusilla, "are you so cruel to Mr. Yates? We like him."
+
+"Mr.--Mr. _Yates!_" repeated her father, astonished. "Is that his name?
+And who told _you?_"
+
+"He did," said Drusilla, innocently.
+
+"He--that infernal newspaper bantam----"
+
+"Pa-_pah!_ Please don't say that about Mr. Yates. He is really
+exceedingly kind and civil to us. Every time you go to town on business
+he comes and sketches with us at----"
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Carr, with the calm of deadly fury, "so he goes to
+Cooper's Bluff with you when I'm away, does he?"
+
+Flavilla said: "He doesn't exactly go with us; but he usually comes there
+to sketch. He makes sketches for his newspaper."
+
+"Does he?" asked her father, grinding his teeth.
+
+"Yes," said Drusilla; "and he sketches so beautifully. He made such
+perfectly charming drawings of Flavilla and of me, and he drew pictures
+of the house and gardens, and of all the servants, and"--she laughed--"I
+once caught a glimpse in his sketch-book of the funniest caricature of
+you----"
+
+The expression on her father's face was so misleading in its terrible
+calm that she laughed again, innocently.
+
+"It was not at all an offensive caricature, you know--really it was not a
+caricature at all--it was _you_--just the way you stand and look at
+people when you are--slightly--annoyed----"
+
+"Oh, he is so clever," chimed in Flavilla, "and is so perfectly well-bred
+and so delightful to us--to Drusilla particularly. He wrote the prettiest
+set of verses--To Drusilla in June--just dashed them off while he was
+watching her sketch Cooper's Bluff from the southwest----"
+
+"He is really quite wonderful," added Drusilla, sincerely, "and so
+generous and helpful when my drawing becomes weak and wobbly----"
+
+"Mr. Yates shows Drusilla how to hold her pencil," said Flavilla,
+becoming warmly earnest in her appreciation of this self-sacrificing
+young man. "He often lays aside his own sketching and guides Drusilla's
+hand while she holds the pencil----"
+
+"And when I'm tired," said Drusilla, "and the water colors get into a
+dreadful mess, Mr. Yates will drop his own work and come and talk to me
+about art--and other things----"
+
+"He is _so_ kind!" cried Flavilla in generous enthusiasm.
+
+"And _so_ vitally interesting," said Drusilla.
+
+"And so talented!" echoed Flavilla.
+
+"And so--" Drusilla glanced up, beheld something in the fixed stare of
+her parent that frightened her, and rose in confusion. "Have I said--
+done--anything?" she faltered.
+
+With an awful spasm Mr. Carr jerked his congested features into the
+ghastly semblance of a smile.
+
+"Not at all," he managed to say. "This is very interesting--what you tell
+me about this p-pu--this talented young man. Does he--does he seem--
+attracted toward you--unusually attracted?"
+
+"Yes," said Drusilla, smiling reminiscently.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because he once said so."
+
+"S-said--w-what?"
+
+"Why, he said quite frankly that he thought me the most delightful girl
+he had ever met."
+
+"What--else?" Mr. Carr's voice was scarcely audible.
+
+"Nothing," said Drusilla; "except that he said he cared for me very much
+and wished to know whether I ever could care very much for him.... I told
+him I thought I could. Flavilla told him so, too.... And we all felt
+rather happy, I think; at least I did."
+
+Her parent emitted a low, melodious sort of sound, a kind of mellifluous
+howl.
+
+"Pa-pah!" they exclaimed in gentle consternation.
+
+He beat at the empty air for a moment like a rotund fowl about to seek
+its roost. Suddenly he ran distractedly at an armchair and kicked it.
+
+They watched him in sorrowful amazement.
+
+"If we are going to sketch Cooper's Bluff this morning," observed
+Drusilla to Flavilla, "I think we had better go--quietly--by way of the
+kitchen garden. Evidently Pa-pah does not care for Mr. Yates."
+
+Orlando, the family cat, strolled in, conciliatory tail hoisted. Mr. Carr
+hurled a cushion at Orlando, then beat madly upon his own head with both
+hands. Servants respectfully gave him room; some furniture was
+overturned--a chair or two--as he bounced upward and locked and bolted
+himself in his room.
+
+What transports of fury he lived through there nobody else can know; what
+terrible visions of vengeance lit up his outraged intellect, what cold
+intervals of quivering hate, what stealthy schemes of reprisal, what
+awful retribution for young Mr. Yates were hatched in those dreadful
+moments, he alone could tell. And as he never did tell, how can I know?
+
+However, in about half an hour his expression of stony malignity changed
+to a smile so cunningly devilish that, as he caught sight of himself in
+the mirror, his corrugated countenance really startled him.
+
+"I must smooth out--smooth out!" he muttered. "Smoothness does it!" And
+he rang for a servant and bade him seek out a certain Mr. Yates among the
+throng of young men who had been taking snapshots.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+DRUSILLA
+
+
+_During Which Chapter Mr. Carr Sings and One of His Daughters Takes her
+Postgraduate_
+
+Mr. Yates came presently, ushered by Ferdinand, and looking extremely
+worried. Mr. Carr received him in his private office with ominous
+urbanity.
+
+"Mr. Yates," he said, forcing a distorted smile, "I have rather abruptly
+decided to show you exactly how one of the Destyn-Carr instruments is
+supposed to work. Would you kindly stand here--close by this table?"
+
+Mr. Yates, astounded, obeyed.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Carr, with a deeply creased smile, "here is the famous
+Destyn-Carr apparatus. That's quite right--take a snapshot at it without
+my permission----"
+
+"I--I thought----"
+
+"Quite right, my boy; I intend you shall know all about it. You see it
+resembles the works of a watch.... Now, when I touch this spring the
+receiver opens and gathers in certain psychic waves which emanate from
+the subconscious personality of--well, let us say you, for example!...
+And now I touch this button. You see that slender hairspring of Rosium
+uncurl and rise, trembling and waving about like a tentacle?"
+
+Young Yates, notebook in hand, recovered himself sufficiently to nod. Mr.
+Carr leered at him:
+
+"That tentacle," he explained, "is now seeking some invisible, wireless,
+psychic current along which it is to transmit the accumulated psychic
+waves. As soon as the wireless current finds the subconscious personality
+of the woman you are destined to love and marry some day----"
+
+"I?" exclaimed young Yates, horrified.
+
+"Yes, you. Why not? Do you mind my trying it on you?"
+
+"But I am already in love," protested the young man, turning, as usual, a
+ready red. "I don't care to have you try it on me. Suppose that machine
+should connect me with--some other--girl----"
+
+"It has!" cried Carr with a hideous laugh as a point of bluish-white fire
+tipped the tentacle for an instant. "You're tied fast to something
+feminine! Probably a flossy typewriter--or a burlesque actress--somebody
+you're fitted for, anyway!" He clapped on his monocle, and glared
+gleefully at the stupefied young man.
+
+"That will teach you to enter my premises and hold my daughter's hand
+when she is drawing innocent pictures of Cooper's Bluff!" he shouted.
+"That will teach you to write poems to my eighteen-year-old daughter,
+Drusilla; that will teach you to tell her you are in love with her--you
+young pup!"
+
+"I am in love with her!" said Yates, undaunted; but he was very white
+when he said it. "I do love her; and if you had behaved halfway decently
+I'd have told you so two weeks ago!"
+
+Mr. Carr turned a delicate purple, then, recovering, laughed horribly.
+
+"Whether or not you were once in love with my daughter is of no
+consequence now. That machine has nullified your nonsense! That
+instrument has found you your proper affinity--doubtless below stairs----"
+
+"I _am_ still in love with Drusilla," repeated Yates, firmly.
+
+"I tell you, you're not!" retorted Carr. "Didn't I turn that machine on
+you? It has never missed yet! The Green Mouse has got _you_ in the
+Mouseleum!"
+
+"You are mistaken," insisted Yates, still more firmly. "I was in love
+with your daughter Drusilla before you started the machine; and I love
+her yet! Now! At the present time! This very instant I am loving her!"
+
+"You can't!" shouted Carr.
+
+"Yes, I can. And I do!"
+
+"No, you don't! I tell you it's a scientific and psychical impossibility
+for you to continue to love her! Your subconscious personality is now in
+eternal and irrevocable accord and communication with the subconscious
+personality of some chit of a girl who is destined to love and marry you!
+And she's probably a ballet-girl, at that!"
+
+"I shall marry Drusilla!" retorted the young man, very pale; "because I
+am quite confident that she loves me, though very probably she doesn't
+know it yet."
+
+"You talk foolishness!" hissed Carr. "This machine has settled the whole
+matter! Didn't you see that spark?"
+
+"I saw a spark--yes!"
+
+"And do you mean to tell me you are not beginning to feel queer?"
+
+"Not in the slightest."
+
+"Look me squarely in the eye, young man, and tell me whether you do not
+have a sensation as though your heart were cutting capers?"
+
+"Not in the least," said Yates, calmly. "If that machine worked at all it
+wouldn't surprise me if you yourself had become entangled in it--caught
+in your own machine!"
+
+"W-what!" exclaimed Carr, faintly.
+
+"It wouldn't astonish me in the slightest," repeated Yates, delighted to
+discover the dawning alarm in the older man's features. "_You_ opened the
+receiver; _you_ have psychic waves as well as I. _I_ was in love at the
+time; _you_ were not. What was there to prevent your waves from being
+hitched to a wireless current and, finally, signaling the subconscious
+personality of--of some pretty actress, for example?"
+
+Mr. Carr sank nervously onto a chair; his eyes, already wild, became
+wilder as he began to realize the risk he had unthinkingly taken.
+
+"Perhaps _you_ feel a little--queer. You look it," suggested the young
+man, in a voice made anxious by an ever-ready sympathy. "Can I do
+anything? I am really very sorry to have spoken so."
+
+A damp chill gathered on the brow of Bushwyck Carr. He _did_ feel a
+trifle queer. A curious lightness--a perfectly inexplicable buoyancy
+seemed to possess him. He was beginning to feel strangely youthful; the
+sound of his own heart suddenly became apparent. To his alarm it was
+beating playfully, skittishly. No--it was not even beating; it was
+skipping.
+
+"Y-Yates," he stammered, "you don't think that I could p-possibly have
+become inadvertently mixed up with that horrible machine--do you?"
+
+Now Yates was a generous youth; resentment at the treatment meted out to
+him by this florid, bad-tempered and pompous gentleman changed to
+instinctive sympathy when he suddenly realized the plight his future
+father-in-law might now be in.
+
+"Yates," repeated Mr. Carr in an agitated voice, "tell me honestly: _do_
+you think there is anything unusual the matter with me? I--I seem to
+f-feel unusually--young. Do I look it? Have I changed? W-watch me while
+I walk across the room."
+
+Mr. Carr arose with a frightened glance at Yates, put on his hat, and
+fairly pranced across the room. "Great Heavens!" he faltered; "my hat's
+on one side and my walk is distinctly jaunty! Do you notice it, Yates?"
+
+"I'm afraid I do, Mr. Carr."
+
+"This--this is infamous!" gasped Mr. Carr. "This is--is outrageous! I'm
+forty-five! I'm a widower! I detest a jaunty widower! I don't want to be
+one; I don't want to----"
+
+Yates gazed at him with deep concern.
+
+"Can't you help lifting your legs that way when you walk--as though a
+band were playing? Wait, I'll straighten your hat. Now try it again."
+
+Mr. Carr pranced back across the room.
+
+"I _know_ I'm doing it again," he groaned, "but I can't help it! I--I
+feel so gay--dammit!--so frivolous--it's--it's that infernal machine.
+W-what am I to do, Yates," he added piteously, "when the world looks
+so good to me?"
+
+"Think of your family!" urged Yates. "Think of--of Drusilla."
+
+"Do you know," observed Carr, twirling his eyeglass and twisting his
+mustache, "that I'm beginning not to care what my family think!... Isn't
+it amazing, Yates? I--I seem to be somebody else, several years younger.
+Somewhere," he added, with a flourish of his monocle--"somewhere on earth
+there is a little birdie waiting for me."
+
+"Don't talk that way!" exclaimed Yates, horrified.
+
+"Yes, I will, young man. I repeat, with optimism and emphasis, that
+_somewhere_ there is a birdie----"
+
+"Mr. Carr!"
+
+"Yes, merry old Top!"
+
+"May I use your telephone?"
+
+"I don't care what you do!" said Carr, gayly. "Use my telephone if you
+like; pull it out by the roots and throw it over Cooper's Bluff, for all
+I care! But"--and a sudden glimmer of reason seemed to come over him--"if
+you have one grain of human decency left in you, you won't drag me and my
+terrible plight into that scurrilous New York paper of yours."
+
+"No," said Yates, "I won't. And that ends my career on Park Row. I'm
+going to telephone my resignation."
+
+Mr. Carr gazed calmly around and twisted his mustache with a satisfied
+and retrospective smile.
+
+"That's very decent of you, Yates; you must pardon me; I was naturally
+half scared to death at first; but I realize you are acting very
+handsomely in this horrible dilemma----"
+
+"Naturally," interrupted Yates. "I must stand by the family into which I
+am, as you know, destined to marry."
+
+"To be sure," nodded Carr, absently; "it really looks that way, doesn't
+it! And, Yates, you have no idea how I hated you an hour ago."
+
+"Yes, I have," said Yates.
+
+"No, you really have not, if you will permit me to contradict you, merry
+old Top. I--but never mind now. You have behaved in an unusually
+considerate manner. Who the devil are you, anyway?"
+
+Yates informed him modestly.
+
+"Well, why didn't you say so, instead of letting me bully you! I've known
+your father for twenty years. Why didn't you tell me you wanted to marry
+Drusilla, instead of coming and blushing all over the premises? I'd have
+told you she was too young; and she is! I'd have told you to wait; and
+you'd have waited. You'd have been civil enough to wait when I explained
+to you that I've already lost, by marriage, two daughters through that
+accursed machine. You wouldn't entirely denude me of daughters, would
+you?"
+
+"I only want one," said John Yates, simply.
+
+"Well, all right; I'm a decent father-in-law when I've got to be. I'm
+really a good sport. You may ask all my sons-in-law; they'll admit it."
+He scrutinized the young man and found him decidedly agreeable to look
+at, and at the same time a vague realization of his own predicament
+returned for a moment.
+
+"Yates," he said unsteadily, "all I ask of you is to keep this terrible
+n-news from my innocent d-daughters until I can f-find out what sort of a
+person is f-fated to lead me to the altar!"
+
+Yates took the offered hand with genuine emotion.
+
+"Surely," he said, "your unknown intended must be some charming leader in
+the social activities of the great metropolis."
+
+"Who knows! She may be m-my own l-laundress for all I know. She may be
+anything, Yates! She--she might even be b-black!"
+
+"Black!"
+
+Mr. Carr nodded, shuddered, dashed the unmanly moisture from his
+eyeglass.
+
+"I think I'd better go to town and tell my son-in-law, William Destyn,
+exactly what has happened to me," he said. "And I think I'll go through
+the kitchen garden and take my power boat so that those devilish
+reporters can't follow me. Ferdinand!" to the man at the door, "ring up
+the garage and order the blue motor, and tell those newspaper men I'm
+going to town. That, I think, will glue them to the lawn for a while."
+
+"About--Drusilla, sir?" ventured Yates; but Mr. Carr was already gone,
+speeding noiselessly out the back way, through the kitchen garden, and
+across the great tree-shaded lawn which led down to the boat landing.
+
+Across the distant hedge, from the beautiful grounds of his next-door
+neighbor, floated sounds of mirth and music. Gay flags fluttered among
+the trees. The Magnelius Grandcourts were evidently preparing for the
+brilliant charity bazaar to be held there that afternoon and evening.
+
+"To think," muttered Carr, "that only an hour ago I was agreeably and
+comfortably prepared to pass the entire afternoon there with my
+daughters, amid innocent revelry. And now I'm in flight--pursued by
+furies of my own invoking--threatened with love in its most hideous form--
+matrimony! Any woman I now look upon may be my intended bride for all I
+know," he continued, turning into the semiprivate driveway, bordered
+heavily by lilacs; "and the curious thing about it is that I really don't
+care; in fact, the excitement is mildly pleasing."
+
+He halted; in the driveway, blocking it, stood a red motor car--a little
+runabout affair; and at the steering-wheel sat a woman--a lady's maid by
+her cap and narrow apron, and an exceedingly pretty one, at that.
+
+When she saw Mr. Carr she looked up, showing an edge of white teeth in
+the most unembarrassed of smiles. She certainly was an unusually
+agreeable-looking girl.
+
+"Has something gone wrong with your motor?" inquired Mr. Carr,
+pleasantly.
+
+"I am afraid so." She didn't say "sir"; probably because she was too
+pretty to bother about such incidentals. And she looked at Carr and
+smiled, as though he were particularly ornamental.
+
+"Let me see," began Mr. Carr, laying his hand on the steering-wheel;
+"perhaps I can make it go."
+
+"It won't go," she said, a trifle despondently and shaking her charming
+head. "I've been here nearly half an hour waiting for it to do something;
+but it won't."
+
+Mr. Carr peered wisely into the acetylenes, looked carefully under the
+hood, examined the upholstery. He didn't know anything about motors.
+
+"I'm afraid," he said sadly, "that there's something wrong with the
+magne-e-to!"
+
+"Do you think it is as bad as that?"
+
+"I fear so," he said gravely. "If I were you I'd get out--and keep well
+away from that machine."
+
+"Why?" she asked nervously, stepping to the grass beside him.
+
+"It _might_ blow up."
+
+They backed away rather hastily, side by side. After a while they backed
+farther away, hand in hand.
+
+"I--I hate to leave it there all alone," said the maid, when they had
+backed completely out of sight of the car. "If there was only some safe
+place where I could watch and see if it is going to explode."
+
+They ventured back a little way and peeped at the motor.
+
+"You could take a rowboat and watch it from the water," said Mr. Carr.
+
+"But I don't know how to row."
+
+Mr. Carr looked at her. Certainly she was the most prepossessing specimen
+of wholesome, rose-cheeked and ivory-skinned womanhood that he had ever
+beheld; a trifle nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, he thought, but so
+sweet and fresh and with such charming eyes and manners.
+
+"I have," said Mr. Carr, "several hours at my disposal before I go to
+town on important business. If you like I will row you out in one of my
+boats, and then, from a safe distance, we can sit and watch your motor
+blow up. Shall we?"
+
+"It is most kind of you----"
+
+"Not at all. It would be most kind of you."
+
+She looked sideways at the motor, sideways at the water, sideways at Mr.
+Carr.
+
+It was a very lovely morning in early June.
+
+As Mr. Carr handed her into the rowboat with ceremony she swept him a
+courtesy. Her apron and manners were charmingly incongruous.
+
+When she was gracefully seated in the stern Mr. Carr turned for a moment,
+stared all Oyster Bay calmly in the face through his monocle, then,
+untying the painter, fairly skipped into the boat with a step distinctly
+frolicsome.
+
+"It's curious how I feel about this," he observed, digging both oars into
+the water.
+
+"_How_ do you feel, Mr. Carr?"
+
+"Like a bird," he said softly.
+
+And the boat moved off gently through the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay.
+
+At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gently
+caressing the classic contours of Cooper's Bluff, and upon that
+monumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla and
+Drusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates,
+in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod and
+looked at Drusilla.
+
+Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, brooded
+over Cooper's Bluff.
+
+"There's no use," said Drusilla at last; "one can draw a landscape from
+every point of view except looking _down_ hill. Mr. Yates, how on earth
+am I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?"
+
+"Perhaps," he said, "I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?"
+
+"Do you think that would help?"
+
+"I think it helps--somehow."
+
+Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed over
+it. She looked at the pad on her knees.
+
+After a while she said: "I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don't
+you?"
+
+They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers,
+and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.
+
+"It is very pleasant to have you here," she said dreamily.
+
+"It is very heavenly to be here," he said.
+
+"How generous you are to give us so much of your time!" murmured
+Drusilla.
+
+"I think so, too," said Flavilla, washing a badger brush. "And I am
+becoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is."
+
+"Don't you like him as well as I do?" asked Drusilla.
+
+Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.
+
+"Not quite as well," she said frankly. "You know, Drusilla, you are very
+nearly in love with him." And she resumed her sketching.
+
+Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarrassed. "Am I?" she said
+absently.
+
+[Illustration: "Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil
+again'"]
+
+"Are you?" he repeated, close to her shoulder.
+
+She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.
+
+"What is it--to love? Is it"--she looked at him undisturbed--"is it to be
+quite happy and lazy with a man like you?"
+
+He was silent.
+
+"I thought," she continued, "that there would be some hesitation, some
+shyness about it--some embarrassment. But there, has been none between
+you and me."
+
+He said nothing.
+
+She went on absently:
+
+"You said, the other day, very simply, that you cared a great deal for
+me; and I was not very much surprised. And I said that I cared very much
+for you.... And, by the way, I meant to ask you yesterday; are we
+engaged?"
+
+"Are we?" he asked.
+
+"Yes--if you wish.... Is _that_ all there is to an engagement?"
+
+"There's a ring," observed Flavilla, dabbing on too much ultramarine and
+using a sponge. "You've got to get her one, Mr. Yates."
+
+Drusilla looked at the man beside her and smiled.
+
+"How simple it is, after all!" she said. "I have read in the books Pa-pah
+permits us to read such odd things about love and lovers.... Are we
+lovers, Mr. Yates? But, of course, we must be, I fancy."
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"Some time or other, when it is convenient," observed Flavilla, "you
+ought to kiss each other occasionally."
+
+"That doesn't come until I'm a bride, does it?" asked Drusilla.
+
+"I believe it's a matter of taste," said Flavilla, rising and naively
+stretching her long, pretty limbs.
+
+She stood a moment on the edge of the bluff, looking down.
+
+"How curious!" she said after a moment. "There is Pa-pah on the water
+rowing somebody's maid about."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Yates, springing to his feet.
+
+"How extraordinary," said Drusilla, following him to the edge of the
+bluff; "and they're singing, too, as they row!"
+
+From far below, wafted across the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Mr.
+Carr's rich and mellifluous voice was wafted shoreward:
+
+"_I der-reamt that I dwelt in ma-arble h-a-l-ls._"
+
+The sunlight fell on the maid's coquettish cap and apron, and sparkled
+upon the buckle of one dainty shoe. It also glittered across the monocle
+of Mr. Carr.
+
+"Pa-_pah!_" cried Flavilla.
+
+Far away her parent waved a careless greeting to his offspring, then
+resumed his oars and his song.
+
+"How extraordinary!" said Flavilla. "Why do you suppose that Pa-_pah_ is
+rowing somebody's maid around the bay, and singing that way to her?"
+
+"Perhaps it's one of our maids," said Drusilla; "but that would be rather
+odd, too, wouldn't it, Mr. Yates?"
+
+"A--little," he admitted. And his heart sank.
+
+Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.
+
+"I'm going to see whose maid it is," she called back.
+
+Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried grass and watched her sister.
+
+Yates stood beside her in bitter dejection.
+
+So _this_ was the result! His unfortunate future father-in-law was done
+for. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answer
+had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by
+mistake, summoned his own affinity! And _what_ an affinity! A saucy
+soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the _coulisse_ of a
+Parisian theater!
+
+Yates looked at Drusilla. What an awful blow was impending! She never
+could have suspected it, but there, in that boat, sat her future
+stepmother in cap and apron!--his own future stepmother-in-law!
+
+And in the misery of that moment's realization John Chillingham Yates
+showed the material of which he was constructed.
+
+"Dear," he said gently.
+
+"Do you mean me?" asked Drusilla, looking up in frank surprise.
+
+And at the same time she saw on his face a look which she had never
+before encountered there. It was the shadow of trouble; and it drew her
+to her feet instinctively.
+
+"What is it, Jack?" she asked.
+
+She had never before called him anything but Mr. Yates.
+
+"What is it?" she repeated, turning away beside him along the leafy path;
+and with every word another year seemed, somehow, to be added to her
+youth. "Has anything happened, Jack? Are you unhappy--or ill?"
+
+He did not speak; she walked beside him, regarding him with wistful eyes.
+
+So there was more of love than happiness, after all; she began to half
+understand it in a vague way as she watched his somber face. There
+certainly was more of love than a mere lazy happiness; there was
+solicitude and warm concern, and desire to comfort, to protect.
+
+"Jack," she said tremulously.
+
+He turned and took her unresisting hands. A quick thrill shot through
+her. Yes, there _was_ more to love than she had expected.
+
+"Are you unhappy?" she asked. "Tell me. I can't bear to see you this way.
+I--I never did--before."
+
+"Will you love me; Drusilla?"
+
+"Yes--yes, I will, Jack."
+
+"Dearly?"
+
+"I do--dearly." The first blush that ever tinted her cheek spread and
+deepened.
+
+"Will you marry me, Drusilla?"
+
+"Yes.... You frighten me."
+
+She trembled, suddenly, in his arms. Surely there were more things to
+love than she had dreamed of in her philosophy. She looked up as he bent
+nearer, understanding that she was to be kissed, awaiting the event which
+suddenly loomed up freighted with terrific significance.
+
+There was a silence, a sob.
+
+"Jack--darling--I--I love you so!"
+
+Flavilla was sketching on her camp-stool when they returned.
+
+"I'm horridly hungry," she said. "It's luncheon time, isn't it? And, by
+the way, it's all right about that maid. She was on her way to serve in
+the tea pavilion at Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's bazaar, and her runabout
+broke down and nearly blew up."
+
+"What on earth are you talking about?" exclaimed Drusilla.
+
+"I'm talking about Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's younger sister from
+Philadelphia, who looks perfectly sweet as a lady's maid. Tea," she
+added, "is to be a dollar a cup, and three if you take sugar. And," she
+continued, "if you and I are to sell flowers there this afternoon we'd
+better go home and dress.... _What_ are you smiling at, Mr. Yates?"
+
+Drusilla naturally supposed she could answer that question.
+
+"Dearest little sister," she said shyly and tenderly, "we have something
+very wonderful to tell you."
+
+"What is it?" asked Flavilla.
+
+"We--we are--engaged," whispered Drusilla, radiant.
+
+"Why, I knew that already!" said Flavilla.
+
+"Did you?" sighed her sister, turning to look at her tall, young lover.
+"I didn't.... Being in love is a much more complicated matter than you
+and I imagined, Flavilla. Is it not, Jack?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+FLAVILLA
+
+
+_Containing a Parable Told with Such Metaphorical Skill that the Author
+Is Totally Unable to Understand It_
+
+The Green Mouse now dominated the country; the entire United States was
+occupied in getting married. In the great main office on Madison Avenue,
+and in a thousand branch offices all over the Union, Destyn-Carr machines
+were working furiously; a love-mad nation was illuminated by their
+sparks.
+
+Marriage-license bureaus had been almost put out of business by the
+sudden matrimonial rush; clergymen became exhausted, wedding bells in the
+churches were worn thin, California and Florida reported no orange crops,
+as all the blossoms had been required for brides; there was a shortage of
+solitaires, traveling clocks, asparagus tongs; and the corner in rice
+perpetrated by some conscienceless captain of industry produced a panic
+equaled only by a more terrible _coup_ in slightly worn shoes.
+
+All America was rushing to get married; from Seattle to Key West the
+railroads were blocked with bridal parties; a vast hum of merrymaking
+resounded from the Golden Gate to Governor's Island, from Niagara to the
+Gulf of Mexico. In New York City the din was persistent; all day long
+church bells pealed, all day long the rattle of smart carriages and hired
+hacks echoed over the asphalt. A reporter of the _Tribune_ stood on top
+of the New York Life tower for an entire week, devouring cold-slaw
+sandwiches and Marie Corelli, and during that period, as his affidavit
+runs, "never for one consecutive second were his ample ears free from the
+near or distant strains of the Wedding March."
+
+And over all, in approving benediction, brooded the wide smile of the
+greatest of statesmen and the great smile of the widest of statesmen--
+these two, metaphorically, hand in hand, floated high above their people,
+scattering encouraging blessings on every bride.
+
+A tremendous rise in values set in; the newly married required homes;
+architects were rushed to death; builders, real-estate operators,
+brokers, could not handle the business hurled at them by impatient
+bridegrooms.
+
+Then, seizing time by the fetlock, some indescribable monster secured the
+next ten years' output of go-carts. The sins of Standard Oil were
+forgotten in the menace of such a national catastrophe; mothers' meetings
+were held; the excitement became stupendous; a hundred thousand brides
+invaded the Attorney-General's office, but all he could think of to say
+was: "Thirty centuries look down upon you!"
+
+These vague sentiments perplexed the country. People understood that the
+Government meant well, but they also realized that the time was not far
+off when millions of go-carts would be required in the United States. And
+they no longer hesitated.
+
+All over the Union fairs and bazaars were held to collect funds for a
+great national factory to turn out carts. Alarmed, the Trust tried to
+unload; militant womanhood, thoroughly aroused, scorned compromise. In
+every city, town, and hamlet of the nation entertainments were given,
+money collected for the great popular go-cart factory.
+
+The affair planned for Oyster Bay was to be particularly brilliant--a
+water carnival at Center Island with tableaux, fireworks, and
+illuminations of all sorts.
+
+Reassured by the magnificent attitude of America's womanhood, business
+discounted the collapse of the go-cart trust and began to recover from
+the check very quickly. Stocks advanced, fluctuated, and suddenly whizzed
+upward like skyrockets; and the long-expected wave of prosperity
+inundated the country. On the crest of it rode Cupid, bow and arrows
+discarded, holding aloft in his right hand a Destyn-Carr machine.
+
+For the old order of things had passed away; the old-fashioned doubts and
+fears of courtship were now practically superfluous.
+
+Anybody on earth could now buy a ticket and be perfectly certain that
+whoever he or she might chance to marry would be the right one--the one
+intended by destiny.
+
+Yet, strange as it may appear, there still remained, here and there, a
+few young people in the United States who had no desire to be safely
+provided for by a Destyn-Carr machine.
+
+Whether there was in them some sporting instinct, making hazard
+attractive, or, perhaps, a conviction that Fate is kind, need not be
+discussed. The fact remains that there were a very few youthful and
+marriageable folk who had no desire to know beforehand what their fate
+might be.
+
+One of these unregenerate reactionists was Flavilla. To see her entire
+family married by machinery was enough for her; to witness such
+consummate and collective happiness became slightly cloying. Perfection
+can be overdone; a rift in a lute relieves melodious monotony, and when
+discords cease to amuse, one can always have the instrument mended or buy
+a banjo.
+
+"What I desire," she said, ignoring the remonstrances of the family, "is
+a chance to make mistakes. Three or four nice men have thought they were
+in love with me, and I wouldn't take anything for the--experience. Or,"
+she added innocently, "for the chances that some day three or four more
+agreeable young men may think they are in love with me. One learns by
+making mistakes--very pleasantly."
+
+Her family sat in an affectionately earnest row and adjured her--four
+married sisters, four blissful brothers-in-law, her attractive
+stepmother, her father. She shook her pretty head and continued sewing on
+the costume she was to wear at the Oyster Bay Venetian Fête and Go-cart
+Fair.
+
+"No," she said, threading her needle and deftly sewing a shining, silvery
+scale onto the mermaid's dress lying across her knees, "I'll take my
+chances with men. It's better fun to love a man not intended for me, and
+make him love me, and live happily and defiantly ever after, than to have
+a horrid old machine settle you for life."
+
+"But you are wasting time, dear," explained her stepmother gently.
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not. I've been engaged three times and I've enjoyed it
+immensely. That isn't wasting time, is it? And it's _such_ fun!
+He thinks he's in love and you think you're in love, and you have such an
+agreeable time together until you find out that you're spoons on somebody
+else. And then you find out you're mistaken and you say you always want
+him for a friend, and you presently begin all over again with a perfectly
+new man----"
+
+"Flavilla!"
+
+"Yes, Pa-_pah_."
+
+"Are you utterly demoralized!"
+
+"Demoralized? Why? Everybody behaved as I do before you and William
+invented your horrid machine. Everybody in the world married at hazard,
+after being engaged to various interesting young men. And I'm not
+demoralized; I'm only old-fashioned enough to take chances. Please let
+me."
+
+The family regarded her sadly. In their amalgamated happiness they
+deplored her reluctance to enter where perfect bliss was guaranteed.
+
+Her choice of rôle and costume for the Seawanhaka Club water tableaux
+they also disapproved of; for she had chosen to represent a character now
+superfluous and out of date--the Lorelei who lured Teutonic yachtsmen to
+destruction with her singing some centuries ago. And that, in these
+times, was ridiculous, because, fortified by a visit to the nearest
+Destyn-Carr machine, no weak-minded young sailorman would care what a
+Lorelei might do; and she could sing her pretty head off and comb herself
+bald before any Destyn-Carr inoculated mariner would be lured overboard.
+
+But Flavilla obstinately insisted on her scaled and fish-tailed costume.
+When her turn came, a spot-light on the clubhouse was to illuminate the
+float and reveal her, combing her golden hair with a golden comb and
+singing away like the Musical Arts.
+
+"And," she thought secretly, "if there remains upon this machine-made
+earth one young man worth my kind consideration, it wouldn't surprise me
+very much if he took a header off the Yacht Club wharf and requested me
+to be his. And I'd be very likely to listen to his suggestion."
+
+So in secret hopes of this pleasing episode--but not giving any such
+reason to her protesting family--she vigorously resisted all attempts to
+deprive her of her fish scales, golden comb, and rôle in the coming water
+fête. And now the programmes were printed and it was too late for them to
+intervene.
+
+She rose, holding out the glittering, finny garment, which flashed like a
+collapsed fish in the sunshine.
+
+"It's finished," she said. "Now I'm going off somewhere by myself to
+rehearse."
+
+"In the water?" asked her father uneasily.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+As Flavilla was a superb swimmer nobody could object. Later, a maid went
+down to the landing, stowed away luncheon, water-bottles and costume in
+the canoe. Later, Flavilla herself came down to the water's edge,
+hatless, sleeves rolled up, balancing a paddle across her shoulders.
+
+As the paddle flashed and the canoe danced away over the sparkling waters
+of Oyster Bay, Flavilla hummed the threadbare German song which she was
+to sing in her rôle of Lorelei, and headed toward Northport.
+
+"The thing to do," she thought to herself, "is to find some nice, little,
+wooded inlet where I can safely change my costume and rehearse. I must
+know whether I can swim in this thing--and whether I can sing while
+swimming about. It would be more effective, I think, than merely sitting
+on the float, and singing and combing my hair through all those verses."
+
+The canoe danced across the water, the paddle glittered, dipped, swept
+astern, and flashed again. Flavilla was very, very happy for no
+particular reason, which is the best sort of happiness on earth.
+
+There is a sandy neck of land which obstructs direct navigation between
+the sacred waters of Oyster Bay and the profane floods which wash the
+gravelly shores of Northport.
+
+"I'll make a carry," thought Flavilla, beaching her canoe. Then, looking
+around her at the lonely stretch of sand flanked by woods, she realized
+at once that she need seek no farther for seclusion.
+
+First of all, she dragged the canoe into the woods, then rapidly
+undressed and drew on the mermaid's scaly suit, which fitted her to the
+throat as beautifully as her own skin.
+
+It was rather difficult for her to navigate on land, as her legs were
+incased in a fish's tail, but, seizing her comb and mirror, she managed
+to wriggle down to the water's edge.
+
+A few sun-warmed rocks jutted up some little distance from shore; with a
+final and vigorous wriggle Flavilla launched herself and struck out for
+the rocks, holding comb and mirror in either hand.
+
+Fishtail and accessories impeded her, but she was the sort of swimmer who
+took no account of such trifles; and after a while she drew herself up
+from the sea, and, breathless, glittering, iridescent, flopped down upon
+a flat rock in the sunshine. From which she took a careful survey of the
+surroundings.
+
+Certainly nobody could see her here. Nobody would interrupt her either,
+because the route of navigation lay far outside, to the north. All around
+were woods; the place was almost landlocked, save where, far away through
+the estuary, a blue and hazy horizon glimmered in the general direction
+of New England.
+
+So, when she had recovered sufficient breath she let down the flashing,
+golden-brown hair, sat up on the rock, lifted her pretty nose skyward,
+and poured forth melody.
+
+As she sang the tiresome old Teutonic ballad she combed away vigorously,
+and every now and then surveyed her features in the mirror.
+
+  _Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten
+  Dass ich so traurig bin----_
+
+she sang happily, studying her gestures with care and cheerfully flopping
+her tail.
+
+She had a very lovely voice which had been expensively cultivated. One or
+two small birds listened attentively for a while, then started in to help
+her out.
+
+On the veranda of his bungalow, not very far from Northport, stood a
+young man of pleasing aspect, knickerbockers, and unusually symmetrical
+legs. His hands reposed in his pockets, his eyes behind their eyeglasses
+were fixed dreamily upon the skies. Somebody over beyond that screen of
+woods was singing very beautifully, and he liked it--at first.
+
+However, when the unseen singer had been singing the Lorelei for an hour,
+steadily, without intermission, an expression of surprise gradually
+developed into uneasy astonishment upon his clean-cut and unusually
+attractive features.
+
+"That girl, whoever she is, can sing, all right," he reflected, "but why
+on earth does she dope out the same old thing?"
+
+He looked at the strip of woods, but could see nothing of the singer. He
+listened; she continued to sing the Lorelei.
+
+"It can't be a phonograph," he reasoned. "No sane person could endure an
+hour of that fool song. No sane person would sing it for an hour,
+either."
+
+Disturbed, he picked up the marine glasses, slung them over his shoulder,
+walked up on the hill back of the bungalow, selected a promising tree,
+and climbed it.
+
+Astride a lofty limb the lord of Northport gazed earnestly across the
+fringe of woods. Something sparkled out there, something moved,
+glittering on a half-submerged rock. He adjusted the marine glasses and
+squinted through them.
+
+"Great James!" he faltered, dropping them; and almost followed the
+glasses to destruction on the ground below.
+
+How he managed to get safely to earth he never knew. "Either I'm crazy,"
+he shouted aloud, "or there's a--a mermaid out there, and I'm going to
+find out before they chase me to the funny house!"
+
+There was a fat tub of a boat at his landing; he reached the shore in a
+series of long, distracted leaps, sprang aboard, cast off, thrust both
+oars deep into the water, and fairly hurled the boat forward, so that it
+alternately skipped, wallowed, scuttered, and scrambled, like a hen
+overboard.
+
+"This is terrible," he groaned. "If I _didn't_ see what I think I saw,
+I'll eat my hat; if I did see what I'm sure I saw, I'm madder than the
+hatter who made it!"
+
+Nearer and nearer, heard by him distinctly above the frantic splashing of
+his oars, her Lorelei song sounded perilously sweet and clear.
+
+"Oh, bunch!" he moaned; "it's horribly like the real thing; and here I
+come headlong, as they do in the story books----"
+
+He caught a crab that landed him in a graceful parabola in the bow, where
+he lay biting at the air to recover his breath. Then his boat's nose
+plowed into the sandy neck of land; he clambered to his feet, jumped out,
+and ran headlong into the belt of trees which screened the singer. Speed
+and gait recalled the effortless grace of the kangaroo; when he
+encountered logs and gullies he rose grandly, sailing into space, landing
+with a series of soft bounces, which presently brought him to the other
+side of the woods.
+
+And there, what he beheld, what he heard, almost paralyzed him. Weak-
+kneed, he passed a trembling hand over his incredulous eyes; with the
+courage of despair, he feebly pinched himself. Then for sixty sickening
+seconds he closed his eyes and pressed both hands over his ears. But when
+he took his hands away and opened his terrified eyes, the exquisitely
+seductive melody, wind blown from the water, thrilled him in every fiber;
+his wild gaze fell upon a distant, glittering shape--white-armed, golden-
+haired, fish-tailed, slender body glittering with silvery scales.
+
+The low rippling wash of the tide across the pebbly shore was in his
+ears; the salt wind was in his throat. He saw the sun flash on golden
+comb and mirror, as her snowy fingers caressed the splendid masses of her
+hair; her song stole sweetly seaward as the wind veered.
+
+A terrible calm descended upon him.
+
+"This is interesting," he said aloud.
+
+A sickening wave of terror swept him, but he straightened up, squaring
+his shoulders.
+
+"I may as well face the fact," he said, "that I, Henry Kingsbury, of
+Pebble Point, Northport, L.I., and recently in my right mind, am now,
+this very moment, looking at a--a mermaid in Long Island Sound!"
+
+He shuddered; but he was sheer pluck all through. Teeth might chatter,
+knees smite together, marrow turn cold; nothing on earth or Long Island
+could entirely stampede Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point.
+
+His clutch on his self-control in any real crisis never slipped; his
+mental steering-gear never gave way. Again his pallid lips moved in
+speech:
+
+"The--thing--to--do," he said very slowly and deliberately, "is to swim
+out and--and touch it. If it dissolves into nothing I'll probably feel
+better----"
+
+He began to remove coat, collar, and shoes, forcing himself to talk
+calmly all the while.
+
+"The thing to do," he went on dully, "is to swim over there and get a
+look at it. Of course, it isn't really there. As for drowning--it really
+doesn't matter.... In the midst of life we are in Long Island.... And, if
+it _is_ there--I c-c-can c-capture it for the B-B-Bronx----"
+
+Reason tottered; it revived, however, as he plunged into the s. w.[A] of
+Oyster Bay and struck out, silent as a sea otter for the shimmering shape
+on the ruddy rocks.
+
+[Footnote A: Sparkling Waters or Sacred Waters.]
+
+Flavilla was rehearsing with all her might; her white throat swelled with
+the music she poured forth to the sky and sea; her pretty fingers played
+with the folds of burnished hair; her gilded hand-mirror flashed, she
+gently beat time with her tail.
+
+So thoroughly, so earnestly, did she enter into the spirit of the siren
+she was representing that, at moments, she almost wished some fisherman
+might come into view--just to see whether he'd really go overboard after
+her.
+
+However, audacious as her vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely
+unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the
+floating weeds almost at her feet.
+
+"Goodness," she said faintly, and attempted to rise. But her fish tail
+fettered her.
+
+"Are you real!" gasped Kingsbury.
+
+"Y-yes.... Are you?"
+
+"Great James!" he half shouted, half sobbed, "are you _human?_"
+
+"V-very. Are _you?_"
+
+He clutched at the weedy rock and dragged himself up. For a moment he lay
+breathing fast, water dripping from his soaked clothing. Once he feebly
+touched the glittering fish tail that lay on the rock beside him. It
+quivered, but needle and thread had been at work there; he drew a deep
+breath and closed his eyes.
+
+When he opened them again she was looking about for a likely place to
+launch herself into the bay; in fact, she had already started to glide
+toward the water; the scraping of the scales aroused him, and he sat up.
+
+"I heard singing," he said dreamily, "and I climbed a tree and saw--you!
+Do you blame me for trying to corroborate a thing like _you?_"
+
+"You thought I was a _real_ one?"
+
+"I thought that I thought I saw a real one."
+
+She looked at him hopefully.
+
+"Tell me, _did_ my singing compel you to swim out here?"
+
+"I don't know what compelled me."
+
+"But--you _were_ compelled?"
+
+"I--it seems so----"
+
+"O-h!" Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin
+and gazed at him.
+
+"To think," she said softly, "that you believed me to be a real siren,
+and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock! Isn't
+it exciting?"
+
+He looked at her, then turned red:
+
+"Yes, it is," he said.
+
+Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she
+surveyed him with intense interest. He was at a disadvantage; the sleek,
+half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not
+exhibit him at his best.
+
+But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had
+actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human
+being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.
+
+"Please fix your hair," she said, handing him her comb and mirror.
+
+"My hair?"
+
+"Certainly. I want to look at you."
+
+He thought her request rather extraordinary, but he sat up and with the
+aid of the mirror, scraped away at his wet hair, parting it in the middle
+and combing it deftly into two gay little Mercury wings. Then, fishing in
+the soaked pockets of his knickerbockers, he produced a pair of smart
+pince-nez, which he put on, and then gazed up at her.
+
+"Oh!" she said, with a quick, indrawn breath, "you _are_ attractive!"
+
+At that he turned becomingly scarlet.
+
+Leaning on one lovely, bare arm, burnished hair clustering against her
+cheeks, she continued to survey him in delighted approval which sometimes
+made him squirm inwardly, sometimes almost intoxicated him.
+
+"To think," she murmured, "that _I_ lured _you_ out here!"
+
+"I _am_ thinking about it," he said.
+
+She laid her head on one side, inspecting him with frankest approval.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "what your name is. I am Flavilla Carr."
+
+"Not one of the Carr triplets!"
+
+"Yes--but," she added quickly, "I'm not married. Are you?"
+
+"Oh, no, no, no!" he said hastily. "I'm Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point,
+Northport----"
+
+"Master and owner of the beautiful but uncertain _Sappho?_ Oh, tell me,
+_are_ you the man who has tipped over so many times in Long Island Sound?
+Because I--I adore a man who has the pluck to continue to capsize every
+day or two."
+
+"Then," he said, "you can safely adore me, for I am that yachtsman who
+has fallen off the _Sappho_ more times than the White Knight fell off his
+horse."
+
+"I--I _do_ adore you!" she exclaimed impulsively.
+
+"Of course, you d-d-don't mean that," he stammered, striving to smile.
+
+"Yes--almost. Tell me, you--I know you are not like other men! _You_
+never have had anything to do with a Destyn-Carr machine, have you?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Neither have I.... And so you are not in love--are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Neither am I. Oh, I am so glad that you and I have waited, and not
+become engaged to somebody by machinery.... I wonder whom you are
+destined for."
+
+"Nobody--by machinery."
+
+She clapped her hands. "Neither am I. It is too stupid, isn't it? I
+_don't_ want to marry the man I ought to marry. I'd rather take chances
+with a man who attracts me and who is attracted by me.... There was, in
+the old days--before everybody married by machinery--something not
+altogether unworthy in being a siren, wasn't there?... It's perfectly
+delightful to think of your seeing me out here on the rocks, and then
+instantly plunging into the waves and tearing a foaming right of way to
+what might have been destruction!"
+
+Her flushed, excited face between its clustering curls looked straight
+into his.
+
+"It _was_ destruction," he said. His own voice sounded odd to him. "Utter
+destruction to my peace of mind," he said again.
+
+"You--don't think that you love me, do you?" she asked. "That would be
+too--too perfect a climax.... _Do_ you?" she asked curiously.
+
+"I--think so."
+
+"Do--do you _know_ it?" He gazed bravely at her: "Yes."
+
+She flung up both arms joyously, then laughed aloud:
+
+"Oh, the wonder of it! It is too perfect, too beautiful! You really love
+me? Do you? Are you _sure_?"
+
+"Yes.... Will you try to love me?"
+
+"Well, you know that sirens don't care for people.... I've already been
+engaged two or three times.... I don't mind being engaged to you."
+
+"Couldn't you care for me, Flavilla?"
+
+"Why, yes. I do.... Please don't touch me; I'd rather not. Of course, you
+know, I couldn't really love you so quickly unless I'd been subjected to
+one of those Destyn-Carr machines. You know that, don't you? But," she
+added frankly, "I wouldn't like to have you get away from me. I--I feel
+like a tender-hearted person in the street who is followed by a lost
+cat----"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Oh, I _didn't_ mean anything unpleasant--truly I didn't. You know how
+tenderly one feels when a poor stray cat comes trotting after one----"
+
+He got up, mad all through.
+
+"_Are_ you offended?" she asked sorrowfully. "When I didn't mean anything
+except that my heart--which is rather impressionable--feels very warmly
+and tenderly toward the man who swam after me.... Won't you understand,
+please? Listen, we have been engaged only a minute, and here already is
+our first quarrel. You can see for yourself what would happen if we ever
+married."
+
+"It wouldn't be machine-made bliss, anyway," he said.
+
+That seemed to interest her; she inspected him earnestly.
+
+"Also," he added, "I thought you desired to take a sportsman's chances?"
+
+"I--do."
+
+"And I thought you didn't want to marry the man you ought to marry."
+
+"That is--true."
+
+"Then you certainly ought not to marry me--but, will you?"
+
+"How can I when I don't--love you."
+
+"You don't love me because you ought not to on such brief
+acquaintance.... But _will_ you love me, Flavilla?"
+
+She looked at him in silence, sitting very still, the bright hair veiling
+her cheeks, the fish's tail curled up against her side.
+
+"_Will_ you?"
+
+"I don't know," she said faintly.
+
+"Try."
+
+"I--am."
+
+"Shall I help you?"
+
+Evidently she had gazed at him long enough; her eyes fell; her white
+fingers picked at the seaweed pods. His arm closed around her; nothing
+stirred but her heart.
+
+"Shall I help you to love me?" he breathed.
+
+"No--I am--past help." She raised her head.
+
+"This is all so--so wrong," she faltered, "that I think it must be
+right.... Do you truly love me?... Don't kiss me if you do.... Now I
+believe you.... Lift me; I can't walk in this fish's tail.... Now set me
+afloat, please."
+
+He lifted her, walked to the water's edge, bent and placed her in the
+sea. In an instant she had darted from his arms out into the waves,
+flashing, turning like a silvery salmon.
+
+"Are you coming?" she called back to him.
+
+He did not stir. She swam in a circle and came up beside the rock. After
+a long, long silence, she lifted up both arms; he bent over. Then, very
+slowly, she drew him down into the water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I am quite sure," she said, as they sat together at luncheon on the
+sandspit which divides Northport Bay from the s.w. of Oyster Bay, "that
+you and I are destined for much trouble when we marry; but I love you so
+dearly that I don't care."
+
+"Neither do I," he said; "will you have another sandwich?"
+
+And, being young and healthy, she took it, and biting into it, smiled
+adorably at her lover.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+OTHER BOOKS BY
+
+ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+
+It was Mr. Chambers himself who wrote of the caprices of the Mystic
+Three--Fate, Chance, and Destiny--and how it frequently happened that a
+young man "tripped over the maliciously extended foot of Fate and fell
+plump into the open arms of Destiny." Perhaps it was due to one of the
+pranks of the mystic sisters that Mr. Chambers himself should lay down
+his brush and palette and take up the pen. Mr. Chambers studied art in
+Paris for seven years. At twenty-four his paintings were accepted at the
+Salon; at twenty-eight he had returned to New York and was busy as an
+illustrator for _Life, Truth_, and other periodicals. But already the
+desire to write was coursing through him. The Latin Quarter of Paris,
+where he had studied so long, seemed to haunt him; he wanted to tell its
+story. So he did write the story and, in 1893, published it under the
+title of "In the Quarter." The same year he published another book, "The
+King in Yellow," a grewsome tale, but remarkably successful. The easel
+was pushed aside; the painter had become writer.
+
+Writing of Mr. Chambers's novel of last fall
+
+THE DANGER MARK
+
+in _The Bookman_, Dr. Frederic Taber Cooper said, "In this last field
+(the society novel) it would seem as though Mr. Chambers had, at length,
+found himself; and the fact that the last of the four books is the best
+and most sustained and most honest piece of work he has yet done affords
+solid ground for the belief that he has still better and maturer volumes
+yet to come. There is no valid reason why Mr. Chambers should not
+ultimately be remembered as the novelist who left behind him a
+comprehensive human comedy of New York."
+
+This is another novel of society life like "The Fighting Chance" and "The
+Firing Line." The chief characters in the story are a boy and a girl,
+inheritors of a vast fortune, whose parents are dead, and who have been
+left in the guardianship of a large Trust Company. They are brought up
+with no companions of their own age and are a unique pair when turned
+out, on coming of age, into New York society--two children educated by a
+great machine, possessors of fabulous wealth, with every inherited
+instinct for good and evil set free for the first time. The fact that the
+girl has acquired the habit of dropping a little cologne on a lump of
+sugar and nibbling it when tired or depressed gives an indication of the
+struggle that the children have before them, a struggle of their own, in
+the midst of their luxurious surroundings, more vital, more real,
+perhaps, than any that Mr. Chambers has yet depicted. It is a tense,
+powerful, highly dramatic story, handling a delicate subject without
+offense to the taste or the judgment of the most critical reader.
+
+Mr. Chambers's third novel of society life is
+
+THE FIRING LINE
+
+Its scenes are laid principally at Palm Beach, and no more distinct yet
+delicately tinted picture of an American fashionable resort, in the full
+blossom of its brief, recurrent glory, has ever been drawn. In this book,
+Mr. Chambers's purpose is to show that the salvation of society lies in
+the constant injection of new blood into its veins. His heroine, the
+captivating Shiela Cardross, of unknown parentage, yet reared in luxury,
+suddenly finds herself on life's firing line, battling with one of the
+most portentous problems a young girl ever had to face. Only a master
+writer could handle her story; Mr. Chambers does it most successfully.
+
+THE YOUNGER SET
+
+is the second of Mr. Chambers's society novels. It takes the reader into
+the swirling society life of fashionable New York, there to wrestle with
+that ever-increasing evil, the divorce question. As a student of life,
+Mr. Chambers is thorough; he knows society; his pictures are so accurate
+that he enables the reader to imbibe the same atmosphere as if he had
+been born and brought up in it. Moreover, no matter how intricate the
+plot may be or how great the lesson to be taught, the romance in the
+story is always foremost. For "The Younger Set," Mr. Chambers has
+provided a hero with a rigid code of honor and the grit to stick to it,
+even though it be unfashionable and out of date. He is a man whom
+everyone would seek to emulate.
+
+The earliest of Mr. Chambers's society novels is
+
+THE FIGHTING CHANCE
+
+It is the story of a young man who has inherited with his wealth a
+craving for liquor, and a girl who has inherited a certain rebelliousness
+and a tendency toward dangerous caprice. The two, meeting on the brink of
+ruin, fight out their battles--two weaknesses joined with love to make a
+strength.
+
+It is sufficient to say of this novel that more than five million people
+have read it. It has taken a permanent place among the best fiction of
+the period.
+
+SPECIAL MESSENGER
+
+is the title of Mr. Chambers's novel just preceding "The Danger Mark." It
+is the romance of a young woman spy and scout in the Civil War. As a
+special messenger in the Union service, she is led into a maze of
+critical situations, but her coolness and bravery and winsome personality
+always carry her on to victory. The story is crowded with dramatic
+incident, the roar of battle, the grim realities of war; and, at times,
+in sharp contrast, comes the tenderest of romance. It is written with an
+understanding and sympathy for the viewpoint of the partisans on both
+sides of the conflict.
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+is a novel of the Revolutionary War. It is the fourth, chronologically,
+of a series of which "Cardigan" and "The Maid-at-Arms" were the first
+two. The third has not yet been written. These novels of New York in the
+Revolutionary days are another striking example of the enthusiasm which
+Mr. Chambers puts into his work. To write an accurate and successful
+historical novel, one must be a historian as well as a romancer. Mr.
+Chambers is an authority on New York State history during the Colonial
+period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up
+old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The
+facts are not obtrusive, but they are there, interwoven in the gauzy woof
+of the artist's imagination. That is why these romances carry conviction
+always, why we breathe the very air of the period as we read them.
+
+IOLE
+
+Another splendid example of the author's versatility is this farcical,
+humorous satire on the _art nouveau_ of to-day, Mr. Chambers, with all
+his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a
+pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the
+Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and eat nuts and fruit, and
+listen to him while he lectures them and everybody else on art. It is
+easy to imagine what happens when several rich and practical young New
+Yorkers stumble upon this group. Everybody is happy in the end.
+
+One might run on for twenty books more, but there is not space enough
+more than to mention "The Tracer of Lost Persons," "The Tree of Heaven,"
+"Some Ladies in Haste," and Mr. Chambers's delightful nature books for
+children, telling how _Geraldine_ and _Peter_ go wandering through
+"Outdoor-Land," "Mountain-Land," "Orchard-Land," "River-Land," "Forest-
+Land," and "Garden-Land." They, in turn, are as different from his novels
+in fancy and conception as each of his novels from the other.
+
+Mr. Chambers is a born optimist. The labor of writing is a natural
+enjoyment to him. In reading anything he has written, one is at once
+impressed with the ease with which it moves along. There is no straining
+after effects, no affectations, no hysteria; but always there is a
+personality, an individuality that appeals to the best side of the
+reader's nature and somehow builds up a personal relation between him and
+the author. Perhaps it is this consummate skill, this remarkable ability
+to win the reader that has enabled Mr. Chambers to increase his audience
+year after year, until it now numbers millions; and it is only just that
+critics should, as they frequently do, proclaim him "the most popular
+writer in the country."
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10441 ***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Green Mouse, by Robert W. Chambers</title>
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10441 ***</div>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Green Mouse, by Robert W. Chambers,
+Illustrated by Edmund Frederick</h1>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<hr class="full">
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_a.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/frontis.jpg"><img src="images/frontis_th.jpg" alt="She almost wished some fisherman might come into view."></a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_b.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h1>THE GREEN MOUSE</h1>
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>ROBERT W. CHAMBERS</h2>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_c.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<h3>ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY</h3>
+
+<h3>EDMUND FREDERICK</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_d.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h3>1910</h3>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h3>TO</h3>
+
+<h3>MY FRIEND</h3>
+
+<h3>JOHN CORBIN</h3>
+
+<br><br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+Folly and Wisdom, Heavenly twins,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Sons of the god Imagination,<br>
+Heirs of the Virtues--which were Sins<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Till Transcendental Contemplation<br>
+Transmogrified their outer skins--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Friend, do you follow me? For I<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Have lost myself, I don't know why.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+Resuming, then, this erudite<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And decorative Dedication,--<br>
+Accept it, John, with all your might<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;In Cinquecentic resignation.<br>
+You may not understand it, quite,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;But if you've followed me all through,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;You've done far more than I could do.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_e.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_f.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>
+To the literary, literal, and scientific mind purposeless fiction is
+abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined;
+the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to
+believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works
+suitable for man, woman, child, and suffragette, are to adorn the
+lingerie-laden counters in our great department shops.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is, then, with animation and confidence that the author politely
+offers to a regenerated nation this modern, moral, literary, and highly
+scientific work, thinly but ineffectually disguised as fiction, in
+deference to the prejudices of a few old-fashioned story-readers who
+still survive among us.
+</p>
+
+<h3>R. W. C.</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_g.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_xi.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_xii.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<a href="#i">I.    An Idyl of the Idle</a><br>
+<a href="#ii">II.   The Idler</a><br>
+<a href="#iii">III.  The Green Mouse</a><br>
+<a href="#iv">IV.   An Ideal Idol</a><br>
+<a href="#v">V.    Sacharissa</a><br>
+<a href="#vi">VI.   In Wrong</a><br>
+<a href="#vii">VII.  The Invisible Wire</a><br>
+<a href="#viii">VIII. "In Heaven and Earth"</a><br>
+<a href="#ix">IX.   A Cross-town Car</a><br>
+<a href="#x">X.    The Lid Off</a><br>
+<a href="#xi">XI.   Betty</a><br>
+<a href="#xii">XII.  Sybilla</a><br>
+<a href="#xiii">XIII. The Crown Prince</a><br>
+<a href="#xiv">XIV.  Gentlemen of the Press</a><br>
+<a href="#xv">XV.   Drusilla</a><br>
+<a href="#xvi">XVI.  Flavilla</a><br>
+</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_xiii.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/frontis.jpg">"She almost wished some fisherman might come into view"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp012.jpg">"'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp086.jpg">"'Are you not terribly impatient?' she inquired"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp122.jpg">"The lid of the basket tilted a little.... Then a plaintive voice said 'Meow-w!'"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp198.jpg">"'I'm afraid,' he ventured, 'that I may require that table for cutting'"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp248.jpg">"'Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil again'"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp001.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h2><a name="i">I</a></h2>
+
+<h3>AN IDYL OF THE IDYL</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>In Which a Young Man Arrives at His Last Ditch and a Young Girl Jumps
+Over It</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Utterly unequipped for anything except to ornament his environment, the
+crash in Steel stunned him. Dazed but polite, he remained a passive
+observer of the sale which followed and which apparently realized
+sufficient to satisfy every creditor, but not enough for an income to
+continue a harmlessly idle career which he had supposed was to continue
+indefinitely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had never earned a penny; he had not the vaguest idea of how people
+made money. To do something, however, was absolutely necessary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wasted some time in finding out just how much aid he might expect from
+his late father's friends, but when he understood the attitude of society
+toward a knocked-out gentleman he wisely ceased to annoy society, and
+turned to the business world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here he wasted some more time. Perhaps the time was not absolutely
+wasted, for during that period he learned that he could use nobody who
+could not use him; and as he appeared to be perfectly useless, except for
+ornament, and as a business house is not a kindergarten, and furthermore,
+as he had neither time nor money to attend any school where anybody could
+teach him anything, it occurred to him to take a day off for minute and
+thorough self-examination concerning his qualifications and even his
+right to occupy a few feet of space upon the earth's surface.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four years at Harvard, two more in postgraduate courses, two more in
+Europe to perfect himself in electrical engineering, and a year at home
+attempting to invent a wireless apparatus for intercepting and
+transmitting psychical waves had left him pitifully unfit for wage
+earning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There remained his accomplishments; but the market was overstocked with
+assorted time-killers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His last asset was a trivial though unusual talent--a natural manual
+dexterity cultivated since childhood to amuse himself--something he never
+took seriously. This, and a curious control over animals, had, as the
+pleasant years flowed by, become an astonishing skill which was much more
+than sleight of hand; and he, always as good-humored as well-bred, had
+never refused to amuse the frivolous, of which he was also one, by
+picking silver dollars out of space and causing the proper card to fall
+fluttering from the ceiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Day by day, as the little money left him melted away, he continued his
+vigorous mental examination, until the alarming shrinkage in his funds
+left him staring fixedly at his last asset. Could he use it? Was it an
+asset, after all? How clever was he? Could he face an audience and
+perform the usual magician tricks without bungling? A slip by a careless,
+laughing, fashionable young amateur amusing his social equals at a house
+party is excusable; a bungle by a hired professional meant an end to hope
+in that direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he rented a suite of two rooms on Central Park West, furnished them
+with what remained from better days, bought the necessary paraphernalia
+of his profession, and immured himself for practice before entering upon
+his contemplated invasion of Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbor. And one very
+lovely afternoon in May, when the Park from his windows looked like a
+green forest, and puff on puff of perfumed air fluttered the curtains at
+his opened windows, he picked up his gloves and stick, put on his hat,
+and went out to walk in the Park; and when he had walked sufficiently he
+sat down on a bench in a flowery, bushy nook on the edge of a bridle
+path.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Few people disturbed the leafy privacy; a policeman sauntering southward
+noted him, perhaps for future identification. The spectacle of a
+well-built, well-groomed, and fashionable young man sitting moodily upon a
+park bench was certainly to be noted. It is not the fashion for
+fashionable people to sit on park benches unless they contemplate self,
+as well as social, destruction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the policeman lingered for a while in the vicinity, but not hearing
+any revolver shot, presently sauntered on, buck-skinned fist clasped
+behind his broad back, squinting at a distant social gathering composed
+entirely of the most exclusive nursemaids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man looked up into the pleasant blue above, then his
+preoccupied gaze wandered from woodland to thicket, where the scarlet
+glow of Japanese quince mocked the colors of the fluttering scarlet
+tanagers; where orange-tinted orioles flashed amid tangles of golden
+Forsythia; and past the shrubbery to an azure corner of water, shimmering
+under the wooded slope below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That sense of languor and unrest, of despondency threaded by hope which
+fair skies and sunshine and new leaves bring with the young year to the
+young, he felt. Yet there was no bitterness in his brooding, for he was a
+singularly generous young man, and there was no vindictiveness mixed with
+the memories of his failures among those whose cordial respect for his
+father had been balanced between that blameless gentleman's wealth and
+position.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A gray squirrel came crawling and nosing through the fresh grass; he
+caught its eyes, and, though the little animal was plainly bound
+elsewhere on important business, the young man soon had it curled up on
+his knee, asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a while he amused himself by using his curious power, alternately
+waking the squirrel and allowing it to bound off, tail twitching, and
+then calling it back, slowly but inexorably to climb his trousers and
+curl up on his knee and sleep an uncanny and deep sleep which might end
+only at the young man's pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He, too, began to feel the subtle stillness of the drowsing woodland;
+musing there, caressing his short, crisp mustache, he watched the purple
+grackle walking about in iridescent solitude, the sun spots waning and
+glowing on the grass; he heard the soft, garrulous whimper of waterfowl
+along the water's edge, the stir of leaves above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought of various personal matters: his poverty, the low ebb of his
+balance at the bank, his present profession, his approaching début as an
+entertainer, the chances of his failure. He thought, too, of the
+astounding change in his life, the future, vacant of promise, devoid of
+meaning, a future so utterly new and blank that he could find in it
+nothing to speculate upon. He thought also, and perfectly impersonally,
+of a girl whom he had met now and then upon the stairs of the apartment
+house which he now inhabited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Evidently there had been an ebb in her prosperity; the tumble of a New
+Yorker's fortune leads from the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence
+through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she painted
+pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt sienna; and
+her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful
+beauty he had known--might still know if he chose; for a man who can pay
+for his evening clothes need never deny himself the society he was bred
+to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She certainly did resemble that girl--she had the same bluish violet
+eyes, the same white and deeply fringed lids, the same free grace of
+carriage, a trifle too boyish at times--the same firmly rounded, yet
+slender, figure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, as a matter of fact," he mused aloud, stroking the sleeping
+squirrel on his knee, "I could have fallen in love with either of those
+girls--before Copper blew up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like
+the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints
+portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I
+have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes
+of that waking Aphrodite in the Luxembourg. If she would only just look
+at me once instead of looking through me when we pass one another in the
+hall----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The deadened gallop of a horse on the bridle path caught his ear. The
+horse was coming fast--almost too fast. He laid the sleeping squirrel on
+the bench, listened, then instinctively stood up and walked to the
+thicket's edge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What happened was too quick for him to comprehend; he had a vision of a
+big black horse, mane and tail in the wind, tearing madly, straight at
+him--a glimpse of a white face, desperate and set, a flutter of loosened
+hair; then a storm of wind and sand roared in his ears; he was hurled,
+jerked, and flung forward, dragged, shaken, and left half senseless,
+hanging to nose and bit of a horse whose rider was picking herself out of
+a bush covered with white flowers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Half senseless still, he tightened his grip on the bit, released the
+grasp on the creature's nose, and, laying his hand full on the forelock,
+brought it down twice and twice across the eyes, talking to the horse in
+halting, broken whispers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he had the trembling animal under control he looked around; the girl
+stood on the grass, dusty, dirty, disheveled, bleeding from a cut on the
+cheek bone; the most bewildered and astonished creature he had ever
+looked upon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It will be all right in a few minutes," he said, motioning her to the
+bench on the asphalt walk. She nodded, turned, picked up his hat, and,
+seating herself, began to smooth the furred nap with her sleeve, watching
+him intently all the while. That he already had the confidence of a horse
+that he had never before seen was perfectly apparent. Little by little
+the sweating, quivering limbs were stilled, the tense muscles in the neck
+relaxed, the head sank, dusty velvet lips nibbled at his hand, his
+shoulder; the heaving, sunken flanks filled and grew quiet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bareheaded, his attire in disorder and covered with slaver and sand, the
+young man laid the bridle on the horse's neck, held out his hand, and,
+saying "Come," turned his back and walked down the bridle path. The horse
+stretched a sweating neck, sniffed, pricked forward both small ears, and
+slowly followed, turning as the man turned, up and down, crowding at heel
+like a trained dog, finally stopping on the edge of the walk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man looped the bridle over a low maple limb, and leaving the
+horse standing sauntered over to the bench.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That horse," he said pleasantly, "is all right now; but the question is,
+are you all right?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose, handing him his hat, and began to twist up her bright hair. For
+a few moments' silence they were frankly occupied in restoring order to
+raiment, dusting off gravel and examining rents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm tremendously grateful," she said abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am, too," he said in that attractive manner which sets people of
+similar caste at ease with one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you; it's a generous compliment, considering your hat and
+clothing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked up; she stood twisting her hair and doing her best with the few
+remaining hair pegs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm a sight for little fishes," she said, coloring. "Did that wretched
+beast bruise you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You limped!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did I?" he said vaguely. "How do you feel?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is," she said, "a curious, breathless flutter all over me; if that
+is fright, I suppose I'm frightened, but I don't mind mounting at once--
+if you would put me up----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Better wait a bit," he said; "it would not do to have that horse feel a
+fluttering pulse, telegraphing along the snaffle. Tell me, are you
+spurred?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lifted the hem of her habit; two small spurs glittered on her
+polished boot heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's it, you see," he observed; "you probably have not ridden cross
+saddle very long. When your mount swerved you spurred, and he bolted, bit
+in teeth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's exactly it," she admitted, looking ruefully at her spurs. Then
+she dropped her skirt, glanced interrogatively at him, and, obeying his
+grave gesture, seated herself again upon the bench.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't stand," she said civilly. He took the other end of the seat,
+lifting the still slumbering squirrel to his knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I haven't said very much," she began; "I'm impulsive enough to be
+overgrateful and say too much. I hope you understand me; do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course; you're very good. It was nothing; you could have stopped your
+horse yourself. People do that sort of thing for one another as a matter
+of course."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But not at the risk you took----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No risk at all," he said hastily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thought otherwise, and thought it so fervently that, afraid of
+emotion, she turned her cold, white profile to him and studied her horse,
+haughty lids adroop. The same insolent sweetness was in her eyes when
+they again reverted to him. He knew the look; he had encountered it often
+enough in the hallway and on the stairs. He knew, too, that she must
+recognize him; yet, under the circumstances, it was for her to speak
+first; and she did not, for she was at that age when horror of overdoing
+anything chokes back the scarcely extinguished childish instinct to say
+too much. In other words, she was eighteen and had had her first season
+the winter past--the winter when he had not been visible among the
+gatherings of his own kind.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp012.jpg"><img src="images/illp012_th.jpg" alt="'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly."></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Those squirrels are very tame," she observed calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not always," he said. "Try to hold this one, for example."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her pretty eyebrows, then accepted the lump of fluffy fur from
+his hands. Instantly an electric shock seemed to set the squirrel
+frantic, there was a struggle, a streak of gray and white, and the
+squirrel leaped from her lap and fairly flew down the asphalt path.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Gracious!" she exclaimed faintly; "what was the matter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Some squirrels are very wild," he said innocently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know--but you held him--he was asleep on your knee. Why didn't he stay
+with me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, perhaps because I have a way with animals."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With horses, too," she added gayly. And the smile breaking from her
+violet eyes silenced him in the magic of a beauty he had never dreamed
+of. At first she mistook his silence for modesty; then--because even as
+young a maid as she is quick to divine and fine of instinct--she too fell
+silent and serious, the while the shuttles of her reason flew like
+lightning, weaving the picture of him she had conceived--a gentleman, a
+man of her own sort, rather splendid and wise and bewildering. The
+portrait completed, there was no room for the hint of presumption she had
+half sensed in the brown eyes' glance that had set her alert; and she
+looked up at him again, frankly, a trifle curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am going to thank you once more," she said, "and ask you to put me up.
+There is not a flutter of fear in my pulse now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you quite sure?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perfectly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They arose; he untied the horse and beckoned it to the walk's edge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I forgot," she said, laughing, "that I am riding cross saddle. I can
+mount without troubling you--" She set her toe to the stirrup which he
+held, and swung herself up into the saddle with a breezy "Thanks,
+awfully," and sat there gathering her bridle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had she said enough? How coldly her own thanks rang in her ears--for
+perhaps he had saved her neck--and perhaps not. Busy with curb and
+snaffle reins, head bent, into her oval face a tint of color crept. Did
+he think she treated lightly, flippantly, the courage which became him
+so? Or was he already bored by her acknowledgment of it? Sensitive,
+dreading to expose youth and inexperience to the amused smile of this
+attractive young man of the world, she sat fumbling with her bridle,
+conscious that he stood beside her, hat in hand, looking up at her. She
+could delay no longer; the bridle had been shifted and reshifted to the
+last second of procrastination. She must say something or go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meeting his eyes, she smiled and leaned a little forward in her saddle as
+though to speak, but his brown eyes troubled her, and all she could say
+was "Thank you--good-by," and galloped off down the vista through dim,
+leafy depths heavy with the incense of lilac and syringa.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp015.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp016.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="ii">II</a></h2>
+
+<h3>THE IDLER</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Concerning the Young Man in the Ditch and His Attempts to Get Out of It</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although he was not vindictive, he did not care to owe anything to
+anybody who might be inclined to give him a hearing on account of former
+obligations or his social position. Everybody knew he had gone to smash;
+everybody, he very soon discovered, was naturally afraid of being
+bothered by him. The dread of the overfed that an underfed member of the
+community may request a seat at the table he now understood perfectly. He
+was learning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he solicited aid from nobody whom he had known in former days; neither
+from those who had aided him when he needed no aid, nor those who owed
+their comfortable position to the generosity of his father--a gentleman
+notorious for making fortunes for his friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Therefore he wrote to strangers on a purely business basis--to amazing
+types lately emerged from the submerged, bulging with coal money, steel
+money, copper money, wheat money, stockyard money--types that galloped
+for Fifth Avenue to build town houses; that shook their long cars and
+frisked into the country and built "cottages." And this was how he put
+it:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Madam:</i> In case you desire to entertain guests with the professional
+services of a magician it would give me pleasure to place my very unusual
+accomplishments at your disposal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And signed his name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a dreadful drain on his bank account to send several thousand
+engraved cards about town and fashionable resorts. No replies came. Day
+after day, exhausted with the practice drill of his profession, he walked
+to the Park and took his seat on the bench by the bridle path. Sometimes
+he saw her cantering past; she always acknowledged his salute, but never
+drew bridle. At times, too, he passed her in the hall; her colorless
+"Good morning" never varied except when she said "Good evening." And all
+this time he never inquired her name from the hall servant; he was that
+sort of man--decent through instinct; for even breeding sometimes permits
+sentiment to snoop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a week he had been airily dispensing with more than one meal a day;
+to keep clothing and boots immaculate required a sacrifice of breakfast
+and luncheon--besides, he had various small pensioners to feed, white
+rabbits with foolish pink eyes, canary birds, cats, albino mice,
+goldfish, and other collaborateurs in his profession. He was obliged to
+bribe the janitor, too, because the laws of the house permitted neither
+animals nor babies within its precincts. This extra honorarium deprived
+him of tobacco, and he became a pessimist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides, doubts as to his own ability arose within him; it was all very
+well to practice his magic there alone, but he had not yet tried it on
+anybody except the janitor; and when he had begun by discovering several
+red-eyed rabbits in the janitor's pockets that intemperate functionary
+fled with a despondent yell that brought a policeman to the area gate
+with a threat to pull the place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, however, a letter came engaging him for one evening. He was
+quite incredulous at first, then modestly scared, perplexed, exultant and
+depressed by turns. Here was an opening--the first. And because it was
+the first its success or failure meant future engagements or consignments
+to the street, perhaps as a white-wing. There must be no faltering now,
+no bungling, no mistakes, no amateurish hesitation. It is the
+empty-headed who most strenuously demand intelligence in others. One yawn from
+such an audience meant his professional damnation--he knew that; every
+second must break like froth in a wine glass; an instant's perplexity, a
+slackening of the tension, and those flaccid intellects would relax into
+native inertia. Incapable of self-amusement, depending utterly upon
+superior minds for a respite from ennui, their caprice controlled his
+fate; and he knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sitting there by the sunny window with a pair of magnificent white
+Persian cats purring on either knee, he read and reread the letter
+summoning him on the morrow to Seabright. He knew who his hostess was--a
+large lady lately emerged from a corner in lard, dragging with her some
+assorted relatives of atrophied intellects and a husband whose only
+mental pleasure depended upon the speed attained by his racing car--the
+most exacting audience he could dare to confront.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like the White Knight he had had plenty of practice, but he feared that
+warrior's fate; and as he sat there he picked up a bunch of silver hoops,
+tossed them up separately so that they descended linked in a glittering
+chain, looped them and unlooped them, and, tiring, thoughtfully tossed
+them toward the ceiling again, where they vanished one by one in mid-air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cats purred; he picked up one, molded her carefully in his handsome
+hands; and presently, under the agreeable massage, her purring increased
+while she dwindled and dwindled to the size of a small, fluffy kitten,
+then vanished entirely, leaving in his hand a tiny white mouse. This
+mouse he tossed into the air, where it became no mouse at all but a white
+butterfly that fluttered 'round and 'round, alighting at last on the
+window curtain and hung there, opening and closing its snowy wings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's all very well," he reflected, gloomily, as, at a pass of his
+hand, the air was filled with canary birds; "that's all very well, but
+suppose I should slip up? What I need is to rehearse to somebody before I
+face two or three hundred people."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought he heard a knocking on his door, and listened a moment. But as
+there was an electric bell there he concluded he had been mistaken; and
+picking up the other white cat, he began a gentle massage that stimulated
+her purring, apparently at the expense of her color and size, for in a
+few moments she also dwindled until she became a very small, coal-black
+kitten, changing in a twinkling to a blackbird, when he cast her
+carelessly toward the ceiling. It was well done; in all India no magician
+could have done it more cleverly, more casually.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaning forward in his chair he reproduced the two white cats from behind
+him, put the kittens back in their box, caught the blackbird and caged
+it, and was carefully winding up the hairspring in the white butterfly,
+when again he fancied that somebody was knocking.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp022.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp023.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="iii">III</a></h2>
+
+<h3>THE GREEN MOUSE</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Showing the Value of a Helping Hand When It Is White and Slender</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time he went leisurely to the door and opened it; a girl stood
+there, saying, "I beg your pardon for disturbing you--" It was high time
+she admitted it, for her eyes had been disturbing him day and night since
+the first time he passed her in the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She appeared to be a trifle frightened, too, and, scarcely waiting for
+his invitation, she stepped inside with a hurried glance behind her, and
+walked to the center of the room holding her skirts carefully as though
+stepping through wet grass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I am annoyed," she said in a voice not perfectly under command. "If
+you please, would you tell me whether there is such a thing as a
+pea-green mouse?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he did a mean thing; he could have cleared up that matter with a
+word, a smile, and--he didn't.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A green mouse?" he repeated gently, almost pitifully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded, then paled; he drew a big chair toward her, for her knees
+trembled a little; and she sat down with an appealing glance that ought
+to have made him ashamed of himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What has frightened you?" inquired that meanest of men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was in my studio--and I must first explain to you that for weeks and
+weeks I--I have imagined I heard sounds--" She looked carefully around
+her; nothing animate was visible. "Sounds," she repeated, swallowing a
+little lump in her white throat, "like the faint squealing and squeaking
+and sniffing and scratching of--of live things. I asked the janitor, and
+he said the house was not very well built and that the beams and
+wainscoting were shrinking."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did he say that?" inquired the young man, thinking of the bribes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, and I tried to believe him. And one day I thought I heard about one
+hundred canaries singing, and I know I did, but that idiot janitor said
+they were the sparrows under the eaves. Then one day when your door was
+open, and I was coming up the stairway, and it was dark in the entry,
+something big and soft flopped across the carpet, and--it being
+exceedingly common to scream--I didn't, but managed to get past it, and"--
+her violet eyes widened with horror--"do you know what that soft, floppy
+thing was? It was an owl!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was aware of it; he had managed to secure the escaped bird before her
+electric summons could arouse the janitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I called the janitor," she said, "and he came and we searched the entry;
+but there was no owl."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He appeared to be greatly impressed; she recognized the sympathy in his
+brown eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That wretched janitor declared I had seen a cat," she resumed; "and I
+could not persuade him otherwise. For a week I scarcely dared set foot on
+the stairs, but I had to--you see, I live at home and only come to my
+studio to paint."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought you lived here," he said, surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no. I have my studio--" she hesitated, then smiled. "Everybody makes
+fun of me, and I suppose they'll laugh me out of it, but I detest
+conventions, and I did hope I had talent for something besides
+frivolity."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her gaze wandered around his room; then suddenly the possible
+significance of her unconventional situation brought her to her feet,
+serious but self-possessed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I beg your pardon again," she said, "but I was really driven out of my
+studio--quite frightened, I confess."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What drove you out?" he asked guiltily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something--you can scarcely credit it--and I dare not tell the janitor
+for fear he will think me--queer." She raised her distressed and lovely
+eyes again: "Oh, please believe that I <i>did</i> see a bright green mouse!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do believe it," he said, wincing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you. I--I know perfectly well how it sounds--and I know that
+horrid people see things like that, but"--she spoke piteously--"I had
+only one glass of claret at luncheon, and I am perfectly healthy in body
+and mind. How could I see such a thing if it was not there?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was there," he declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you really think so? A green--bright green mouse?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Haven't a doubt of it," he assured her; "saw one myself the other day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On the floor--" he made a vague gesture. "There's probably a crack
+between your studio and my wall, and the little rascal crept into your
+place."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood looking at him uncertainly: "Are there really such things as
+green mice?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," he explained, "I fancy this one was originally white. Somebody
+probably dyed it green."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But who on earth would be silly enough to do such a thing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His ears grew red--he felt them doing it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a moment she said: "I am glad you told me that you, too, saw this
+unspeakable mouse. I have decided to write to the owners of the house and
+request an immediate investigation. Would--would it be too much to ask
+you to write also?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you--you going to write?" he asked, appalled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly. Either some dreadful creature here keeps a bird store and
+brings home things that escape, or the house is infested. I don't care
+what the janitor says; I did hear squeals and whines and whimpers!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Suppose--suppose we wait," he began lamely; but at that moment her blue
+eyes widened; she caught him convulsively by the arm, pointing, one snowy
+finger outstretched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh-h!" she said hysterically, and the next instant was standing upon a
+chair, pale as a ghost. It was a wonder she had not mounted the dresser,
+too, for there, issuing in creepy single file from the wainscoting, came
+mice--mice of various tints. A red one led the grewsome rank, a black and
+white one came next, then in decorous procession followed the guilty
+green one, a yellow one, a blue one, and finally--horror of horrors!--a
+red-white-and-blue mouse, carrying a tiny American flag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned a miserable face toward her; she, eyes dilated, frozen to a
+statue, saw him advance, hold out a white wand--saw the uncanny
+procession of mice mount the stick and form into a row, tails hanging
+down--saw him carry the creatures to a box and dump them in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was trying to speak now. She heard him stammer something about the
+escape of the mice; she heard him asking her pardon. Dazed, she laid her
+hand in his as he aided her to descend to the floor; nerveless,
+speechless, she sank into the big chair, horror still dilating her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's all up with me," he said slowly, "if you write to the owners. I've
+bribed the janitor to say nothing. I'm dreadfully mortified that these
+things have happened to annoy you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The color came back into her face; amazement dominated her anger. "But
+why--why do you keep such creatures?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why shouldn't I?" he asked. "It is my profession."
+
+"Your--what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My profession," he repeated doggedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh," she said, revolted, "that is not true! You are a gentleman--I know
+who you are perfectly well!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who am I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She called him by name, almost angrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," he said sullenly, "what of it? If you have investigated my record
+you must know I am as poor as these miserable mice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I know it. But you are a gentleman----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am a mountebank," he said; "I mean a mountebank in its original
+interpretation. There's neither sense nor necessity for me to deny it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I don't understand you," she whispered, shocked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, I do monkey tricks to entertain people," he replied, forcing a
+laugh, "or rather, I hope to do a few--and be paid for them. I fancy
+every man finds his own level; I've found mine, apparently."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face was inscrutable; she lay back in the great chair, watching him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have a little money left," he said; "enough to last a day or two. Then
+I am to be paid for entertaining some people at Seabright; and," he added
+with that very attractive smile of his from which all bitterness had
+departed, "and that will be the first money I ever earned in all my
+life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was young enough to be fascinated, child enough to feel the little
+lump in her throat rising. She knew he was poor; her sisters had told her
+that; but she had supposed it to be only comparative poverty--just as her
+cousins, for instance, had scarcely enough to keep more than two horses
+in town and only one motor. But want--actual need--she had never dreamed
+of in his case--she could scarcely understand it even now--he was so well
+groomed, so attractive, fairly radiating good breeding and the easy
+financial atmosphere she was accustomed to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you see," he continued gayly, "if you complain to the owners about
+green mice, why, I shall have to leave, and, as a matter of fact, I
+haven't enough money to go anywhere except--" he laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where?" she managed to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Park. I was joking, of course," he hastened to add, for she had
+turned rather white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," she said, "you were not joking." And as he made no reply: "Of
+course, I shall not write--now. I had rather my studio were overrun with
+multicolored mice--" She stopped with something almost like a sob. He
+smiled, thinking she was laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But oh, the blow for her! In her youthful enthusiasm she had always, from
+the first time they had encountered one another, been sensitively aware
+of this tall, clean-cut, attractive young fellow. And by and by she
+learned his name and asked her sisters about him, and when she heard of
+his recent ruin and withdrawal from the gatherings of his kind her youth
+flushed to its romantic roots, warming all within her toward this
+splendid and radiant young man who lived so nobly, so proudly aloof. And
+then--miracle of Manhattan!--he had proved his courage before her dazed
+eyes--rising suddenly out of the very earth to save her from a fate which
+her eager desire painted blacker every time she embellished the incident.
+And she decorated the memory of it every day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now! Here, beside her, was this prince among men, her champion,
+beaten to his ornamental knees by Fate, and contemplating a miserable,
+uncertain career to keep his godlike body from actual starvation. And
+she--she with more money than even she knew what to do with, powerless to
+aid him, prevented from flinging open her check book and bidding him to
+write and write till he could write no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A memory--a thought crept in. Where had she heard his name connected with
+her father's name? In Ophir Steel? Certainly; and was it not this young
+man's father who had laid the foundation for her father's fortune? She
+had heard some such thing, somewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: "I had no idea of boring anybody--you least of all--with my
+woes. Indeed, I haven't any sorrows now, because to-day I received my
+first encouragement; and no doubt I'll be a huge success. Only--I thought
+it best to make it clear why it would do me considerable damage just now
+if you should write."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell me," she said tremulously, "is there anything--anything I can do
+to--to balance the deep debt of gratitude I owe you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What debt?" he asked, astonished. "Oh! that? Why, that is no debt--
+except that I was happy--perfectly and serenely happy to have had that
+chance to--to hear your voice----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You were brave," she said hastily. "You may make as light of it as you
+please, but I know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So do I," he laughed, enchanted with the rising color in her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you don't; you don't know how I felt--how afraid I was to show how
+deeply--deeply I felt. I felt it so deeply that I did not even tell my
+sisters," she added naively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your sisters?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; you know them." And as he remained silent she said: "Do you not
+know who I am? Do you not even know my name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'd have given all I had to know; but, of course, I could not ask the
+servants!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Surprise, disappointment, hurt pride that he had had no desire to know
+gave quick place to a comprehension that set a little thrill tingling her
+from head to foot. His restraint was the nicest homage ever rendered her;
+she saw that instantly; and the straight look she gave him out of her
+clear eyes took his breath away for a second.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you remember Sacharissa?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do--certainly! I always thought----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?" she said, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He muttered something about eyes and white skin and a trick of the heavy
+lids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was perfectly at ease now; she leaned back in her chair, studying him
+calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Suppose," she said, "people could see me here now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It would end your artistic career," he replied, laughing; "and fancy! I
+took you for the sort that painted for a bare existence!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I--I took you for----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something very different than what I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In one way--not in others."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh! I look the mountebank?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall not explain what I mean," she said with heightened color, and
+rose from her chair. "As there are no more green mice to peep out at me
+from behind my easel," she added, "I can have no excuse from abandoning
+art any longer. Can I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trailing sweetness of the inquiry was scarcely a challenge, yet he
+dared take it up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You asked me," he said, "whether you could do anything for me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can I?" she exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will--I am glad--tell me what to do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, it's only this. I've got to go before an audience of two hundred
+people and do things. I've had practice here by myself, but--but if you
+don't mind I should like to try it before somebody--you. Do you mind?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood there, slim, blue-eyed, reflecting; then innocently: "If I've
+compromised myself the damage was done long ago, wasn't it? They're going
+to take away my studio anyhow, so I might as well have as much pleasure
+as I can."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she sat down, gracefully, linking her white fingers over her knees.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp036.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp037.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="iv">IV</a></h2>
+
+<h3>AN IDEAL IDOL</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>A Chapter Devoted to the Proposition that All Mankind Are Born of Woman</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began by suddenly filling the air with canary birds; they flew and
+chirped and fluttered about her head, until, bewildered, she shrank back,
+almost frightened at the golden hurricane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To reassure her he began doing incredible things with the big silver
+hoops, forming chains and linked figures under her amazed eyes, although
+each hoop seemed solid and without a break in its polished circumference.
+Then, one by one, he tossed the rings up and they vanished in mid-air
+before her very eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How did you do that?" she cried, enchanted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed and produced the big, white Persian cats, changed them into
+kittens, then into birds and butterflies, and finally into a bowl full of
+big, staring goldfish. Then he picked up a ladle, dipped out the fish,
+carefully fried them over an electric lamp, dumped them from the smoking
+frying pan back into the water, where they quietly swam off again,
+goggling their eyes in astonishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That," said the girl, excitedly, "is miraculous!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't it?" he said, delighted as a boy at her praise. "What card will
+you choose?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he handed her a pack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The ace of hearts, if you please."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Draw it from the pack."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any card?" she inquired. "Oh! how on earth did you make me draw the ace
+of hearts?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hold it tightly," he warned her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She clutched it in her pretty fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you sure you hold it?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perfectly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked and found that it was the queen of diamonds she held so
+tightly; but, looking again to reassure herself, she was astonished to
+find that the card was the jack of clubs. "Tear it up," he said. She tore
+it into small pieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Throw them into the air!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She obeyed, and almost cried out to see them take fire in mid-air and
+float away in ashy flakes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Face flushed, eyes brilliant, she turned to him, hanging on his every
+movement, every expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before her rapt eyes the multicolored mice danced jigs on slack wires,
+then were carefully rolled up into little balls of paper which
+immediately began to swell until each was as big as a football. These
+burst open, and out of each football of white paper came kittens,
+turtles, snakes, chickens, ducks, and finally two white rabbits with
+silly pink eyes that began gravely waltzing round and round the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please stand up and shake your skirts," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose hastily and obeyed; a rain of silver coins fell, then gold, then
+banknotes, littering the floor. Then precious stones began to drop about
+her; she shook them from her hair, her collar, her neck; she clenched her
+hands in nervous amazement, but inside each tight little fist she felt
+something, and opening her fingers she fairly showered the floor with
+diamonds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can't you save one for me?" he asked. "I really need it." But when again
+she looked for the glittering heap at her feet, it was gone; and, search
+as she might, not one coin, not one gem remained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Glancing up in dismay she found herself in a perfect storm of white
+butterflies--no, they were red--no, green!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there anything in this world you desire?" he asked her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--a glass of water----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was already holding it in her hands, and she cried out in amazement,
+spilling the brimming glass; but no water fell, only a rain of little
+crimson flames.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't--can't drink this--can I?" she faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With perfect safety," he smiled, and she tasted it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Taste it again," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tried it; it was lemonade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was ginger ale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Once more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stared at the glass, frothing with ice-cream soda; there was a long
+silver spoon in it, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Enchanted, she lay back, savoring her ice, shyly watching him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went on gayly doing uncanny or charming things; her eyes were tired,
+dazzled, but not too weary to watch him, though she scarcely followed the
+marvelous objects that appeared and vanished and glittered and flamed
+under his ceaselessly busy hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did notice with a shudder the appearance of an owl that sat for a
+while on his shoulder and then turned into a big fur muff which was all
+right as long as he held it, but walked away on four legs when he tossed
+it to the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A shower of brilliant things followed like shooting stars; two or three
+rose trees grew, budded, and bloomed before her eyes; and he laid the
+fresh, sweet blossoms in her hands. They turned to violets later, but
+that did not matter; nothing mattered any longer as long as she could lie
+there and gaze at him--the most splendid man her maiden eyes had ever
+unclosed upon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About two thousand yards of brilliant ribbons suddenly fell from the
+ceiling; she looked at him with something perilously close to a sigh. Out
+of an old hat he produced a cage full of parrots; every parrot repeated
+her first name decorously, monotonously, until packed back into the hat
+and stuffed into a box which was then set on fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her heart was pretty full now; for she was only eighteen and she had been
+considering his poverty. So when in due time the box burned out and from
+the black and charred <i>débris</i> the parrots stepped triumphantly forth,
+gravely repeating her name in unison; and when she saw that the
+entertainment was at an end, she rose, setting her ice-cream soda upon a
+table, and, although the glass instantly changed into a teapot, she
+walked straight up to him and held out her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've had a perfectly lovely time," she said. "And I want to say to you
+that I have been thinking of several things, and one is that it is
+perfectly ridiculous for you to be poor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is rather ridiculous," he admitted, surprised. "Isn't it! And no need
+of it at all. Your father made a fortune for my father. All you have to
+do is to let my father make a fortune for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that all?" he asked, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course. Why did you not tell him so? Have you seen him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," he said gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I saw others--I did not care to try--any more--friends."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you--now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please don't," he said quietly. Her hand still lay in his; she looked up
+at him; her eyes were starry bright and a little moist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I simply can't stand this," she said, steadying her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your--your distress--" She choked; her sensitive mouth trembled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good Heavens!" he breathed; "do you care!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Care--care," she stammered. "You saved my life with a laugh! You face
+st-starvation with a laugh! Your father made mine! Care? Yes, I care!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she had bent her head; a bright tear fell, spangling his polished
+shoes; the pulsating seconds passed; he laid his other hand above both of
+hers which he held, and stood silent, stunned, scarcely daring to
+understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor was it here he could understand or even hope--his instinct held him
+stupid and silent. Presently he released her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said "Good-by" calmly enough; he followed her to the door and opened
+it, watching her pass through the hall to her own door. And there she
+paused and looked back; and he found himself beside her again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Only," she began, "only don't do all those beautiful magic things for
+any--anybody else--will you? I wish to have--have them all for myself--to
+share them with no one----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He held her hands imprisoned again. "I will never do one of those things
+for anybody but you," he said unsteadily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Truly?" Her face caught fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, truly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how--how, then, can you--can----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't care what happens to me!" he said. To look at him nobody would
+have thought him young enough to say that sort of thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I care," she said, releasing her hands and stepping back into her
+studio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment her lovely, daring face swam before his eyes; then, in the
+next moment, she was in his arms, crying her eyes out against his
+shoulder, his lips pressed to her bright hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And that was all right in its way, too; madder things have happened in
+our times; but nothing madder ever happened than a large, bald gentleman
+who came up the stairs in a series of bounces and planted his legs apart
+and tightened his pudgy grip upon his malacca walking stick, and
+confronted them with distended eyes and waistband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In vigorous but incoherent English he begged to know whether this scene
+was part of an education in art.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Papah," she said calmly, "you are just in time. Go into the studio and
+I'll come in one moment."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then giving her lover both hands and looking at him with all her soul in
+her young eyes: "I love you; I'll marry you. And if there's trouble"--she
+smiled upon her frantic father--"if there is trouble I will follow you
+about the country exhibiting green mice----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!" thundered her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Green mice," she repeated with an adorable smile at her lover--"unless
+my father finds a necessity for you in his business--with a view to
+partnership. And I'm going to let you arrange that together. Good-by."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she entered her studio, closing the door behind her, leaving the two
+men confronting one another in the entry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For one so young she had much wisdom and excellent taste; and listening,
+she heard her father explode in one lusty Saxon word. He always said it
+when beaten; it was the beginning of the end, and the end of the sweetest
+beginning that ever dawned on earth for a maid since the first sunbeam
+stole into Eden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she sat down on her little camp stool before her easel and picked up a
+hand glass; and, sitting there, carefully removed all traces of tears
+from her wet and lovely eyes with the cambric hem of her painting apron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Damnation!" repeated Mr. Carr, "am I to understand that the only thing
+you can do for a living is to go about with a troupe of trained mice?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've invented a machine," observed the young man, modestly. "It ought to
+be worth millions--if you'd care to finance it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The idea is utterly repugnant to me!" shouted her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man reddened. "If you wouldn't mind examining it--" He drew
+from his pocket a small, delicately contrived bit of clockwork. "This is
+the machine----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want to see it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You <i>have</i> seen it. Do you mind sitting down a moment? Be careful of
+that kitten! Kindly take this chair. Thank you. Now, if you would be good
+enough to listen for ten minutes----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want to be good enough! Do you hear!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I hear," said young Destyn, patiently. "And as I was going to
+explain, the earth is circumscribed by wireless currents of
+electricity----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--dammit, sir----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But those are not the only invisible currents that are ceaselessly
+flowing around our globe!" pursued the young man, calmly. "Do you see
+this machine?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't!" snarled the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--" And, leaning closer, William Augustus Destyn whispered into
+Bushwyck Carr's fat, red ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!!!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can't <i>prove</i> it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Watch me."
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+Ethelinda had dried her eyes. Every few minutes she glanced anxiously at
+the little French clock over her easel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What on earth can they be doing?" she murmured. And when the long hour
+struck she arose with resolution and knocked at the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come in," said her father, irritably, "but don't interrupt. William and
+I are engaged in a very important business transaction."
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp048.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp049.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="v">V</a></h2>
+
+<h3>SACHARISSA</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Treating of Certain Scientific Events Succeeding the Wedding Journey of
+William and Ethelinda</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa took the chair. She knew nothing about parliamentary
+procedure; neither did her younger, married sister, Ethelinda, nor the
+recently acquired family brother-in-law, William Augustus Destyn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The meeting will come to order," said Sacharissa, and her brother-in-law
+reluctantly relinquished his new wife's hand--all but one finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Chairman," he began, rising to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chair recognized him and bit into a chocolate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I move that our society be known as The Green Mouse, Limited."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why limited?" asked Sacharissa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?" replied her sister, warmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, what does your young man mean by limited?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose," said Linda, "that he means it is to be the limit. Don't you,
+William?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly," said Destyn, gravely; and the motion was put and carried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rissa, dear!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chair casually recognized her younger sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I propose that the object of this society be to make its members very,
+very wealthy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The motion was carried; Linda picked up a scrap of paper and began to
+figure up the possibility of a new touring car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Destyn arose; the chair nodded to him and leaned back, playing a
+tattoo with her pencil tip against her snowy teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began in his easy, agreeable voice, looking across at his pretty wife:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know, dearest--and Sacharissa, over there, is also aware--that, in
+the course of my economical experiments in connection with your father's
+Wireless Trust, I have accidentally discovered how to utilize certain
+brand-new currents of an extraordinary character."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa's expression became skeptical; Linda watched her husband in
+unfeigned admiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"These new and hitherto unsuspected currents," continued Destyn modestly,
+"are not electrical but psychical. Yet, like wireless currents, their
+flow eternally encircles the earth. These currents, I believe, have their
+origin in that great unknown force which, for lack of a better name, we
+call fate, or predestination. And I am convinced that by intercepting one
+of these currents it is possible to connect the subconscious
+personalities of two people of opposite sex who, although ultimately
+destined for one another since the beginning of things, have, through
+successive incarnations, hitherto missed the final consummation--
+marriage!--which was the purpose of their creation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bill, dear," sighed Linda, "how exquisitely you explain the infinite."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fudge!" said Sacharissa; "go on, William."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's all," said Destyn. "We agreed to put in a thousand dollars apiece
+for me to experiment with. I've perfected the instrument--here it is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, flat jeweler's case and took
+out a delicate machine resembling the complicated interior of a watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," he said, "with this tiny machine concealed in my waistcoat pocket,
+I walk up to any man and, by turning a screw like the stem of a watch,
+open the microscopical receiver. Into the receiver flow all psychical
+emanations from that unsuspicious citizen. The machine is charged,
+positively. Then I saunter up to some man, place the instrument on a
+table--like that--touch a lever. Do you see that hair wire of Rosium
+uncoil like a tentacle? It is searching, groping for the invisible,
+negative, psychical current which will carry its message."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To whom?" asked Sacharissa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To the subconscious personality of the only woman for whom he was
+created, the only woman on earth whose psychic personality is properly
+attuned to intercept that wireless greeting and respond to it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can you tell whether she responds?" asked Sacharissa, incredulously.
+He pointed to the hair wire of Rosium:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I watch that. The instant that the psychical current reaches and awakens
+her, crack!--a minute point of blue incandescence tips the tentacle. It's
+done; psychical communication is established. And that man and that
+woman, wherever they may be on earth, surely, inexorably, will be drawn
+together, even from the uttermost corners of the world, to fulfill that
+for which they were destined since time began."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a semirespectful silence; Linda looked at the little jewel-like
+machine with a slight shudder; Sacharissa shrugged her young shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How much of this," said she, "is theory and how much is fact?--for,
+William, you always were something of a poet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know. A month ago I tried it on your father's footman, and in a
+week he'd married a perfectly strange parlor maid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, they do such things, anyway," observed Sacharissa, and added,
+unconvinced: "Did that tentacle burn blue?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It certainly did," said Destyn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Linda murmured: "I believe in it. Let's issue stock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To issue stock is one thing," said Destyn, "to get people to buy it is
+another. You and I may believe in Green Mouse, Limited, but the rest of
+the world is always from beyond the Mississippi."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," said Linda, "is to prove your theory by practicing on
+people. They may not like the idea, but they'll be so grateful, when
+happily and unexpectedly married, that they'll buy stock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Or give us testimonials," added Sacharissa, "that their bliss was
+entirely due to a single dose of Green Mouse, Limited."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be flippant," said Linda. "Think what William's invention means to
+the world! Think of the time it will save young men barking up wrong
+trees! Think of the trouble saved--no more doubt, no timidity, no
+hesitation, no speculation, no opposition from parents."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any of our clients," added Destyn, "can be instantly switched on to a
+private psychical current which will clinch the only girl in the world.
+Engagements will be superfluous; those two simply can't get away from
+each other."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If that were true," observed Sacharissa, "it would be most unpleasant.
+There would be no fun in it. However," she added, smiling, "I don't
+believe in your theory or your machine, William. It would take more than
+that combination to make me marry anybody."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then we're not going to issue stock?" asked Linda. "I do need so many
+new and expensive things."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We've got to experiment a little further, first," said Destyn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa laughed: "You blindfold me, give me a pencil and lay the
+Social Register before me. Whatever name I mark you are to experiment
+with."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't mark any of our friends," began Linda.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can I tell whom I may choose. It's fair for everybody. Come; do you
+promise to abide by it--you two?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They promised doubtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So do I, then," said Sacharissa. "Hurry up and blindfold me, somebody.
+The bus will be here in half an hour, and you know how father acts when
+kept waiting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Linda tied her eyes with a handkerchief, gave her a pencil and seated
+herself on an arm of the chair watching the pencil hovering over the
+pages of the Social Register which her sister was turning at hazard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>This</i> page," announced Sacharissa, "and <i>this</i> name!" marking it with a
+quick stroke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Linda gave a stifled cry and attempted to arrest the pencil; but the
+moving finger had written.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whom have I selected?" inquired the girl, whisking the handkerchief from
+her eyes. "What are you having a fit about, Linda?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, looking at the page, she saw that she had marked her own name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We must try it again," said Destyn, hastily. "That doesn't count. Tie
+her up, Linda."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But--that wouldn't be fair," said Sacharissa, hesitating whether to take
+it seriously or laugh. "We all promised, you know. I ought to abide by
+what I've done."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be silly," said Linda, preparing the handkerchief and laying it
+across her sister's forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa pushed it away. "I can't break my word, even to myself," she
+said, laughing. "I'm not afraid of that machine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mean to say you are willing to take silly chances?" asked Linda,
+uneasily. "I believe in William's machine whether you do or not. And I
+don't care to have any of the family experimented with."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I were willing to try it on others it would be cowardly for me to
+back out now," said Sacharissa, forcing a smile; for Destyn's and Linda's
+seriousness was beginning to make her a trifle uncomfortable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unless you want to marry somebody pretty soon you'd better not risk it,"
+said Destyn, gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You--you don't particularly care to marry anybody, just now, do you,
+dear?" asked Linda. "No," replied her sister, scornfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a silence; Sacharissa, uneasy, bit her underlip and sat looking
+at the uncanny machine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was a tall girl, prettily formed, one of those girls with long limbs,
+narrow, delicate feet and ankles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That sort of girl, when she also possesses a mass of chestnut hair, a
+sweet mouth and gray eyes, is calculated to cause trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there she sat, one knee crossed over the other, slim foot swinging,
+perplexed brows bent slightly inward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't see any honorable way out of it," she said resolutely. "I said
+I'd abide by the blindfolded test."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When we promised we weren't thinking of ourselves," insisted Ethelinda.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That doesn't release us," retorted her Puritan sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?" demanded Linda. "Suppose, for example, your pencil had marked
+William's name! That would have been im--immoral!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Would</i> it?" asked Sacharissa, turning her honest, gray eyes on her
+brother-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't believe it would," he said; "I'd only be switched on to Linda's
+current again." And he smiled at his wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa sat thoughtful and serious, swinging her foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," she said, at length, "I might as well face it at once. If there's
+anything in this instrument we'll all know it pretty soon. Turn on your
+receiver, Billy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh," cried Linda, tearfully, "don't you do it, William!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Turn it on," repeated Sacharissa. "I'm not going to be a coward and
+break faith with myself, and you both know it! If I've got to go through
+the silliness of love and marriage I might as well know who the bandarlog
+is to be.... Anyway, I don't really believe in this thing.... I can't
+believe in it.... Besides, I've a mind and a will of my own, and I fancy
+it will require more than amateur psychical experiments to change either.
+Go on, Billy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean it?" he asked, secretly gratified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly," with superb affectation of indifference. And she rose and
+faced the instrument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Destyn looked at his wife. He was dying to try it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will!" she exclaimed, "suppose we are not going to like Rissa's possible
+f--fiance! Suppose father doesn't like him!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll all probably like him as well as I shall," said her sister
+defiantly. "Willy, stop making frightened eyes at your wife and start
+your infernal machine!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a vicious click, a glitter of shifting clockwork, a snap, and
+it was done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you now, <i>theoretically</i>, got my psychical current bottled up?" she
+asked disdainfully. But her lip trembled a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded, looking very seriously at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now you are going to switch me on to this unknown gentleman's
+psychical current?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't let him!" begged Linda. "Billy, dear, how <i>can</i> you when nobody
+has the faintest idea who the creature may turn out to be!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go ahead!" interrupted her sister, masking misgiving under a careless
+smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Click! Up shot the glittering, quivering tentacle of Rosium, vibrating
+for a few moments like a thread of silver. Suddenly it was tipped with a
+blue flash of incandescence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! There he is!" cried Linda, excitedly. "Rissy! Rissy,
+little sister, <i>what</i> have you done?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing," she said, catching her breath. "I don't believe that flash
+means anything. I don't feel a bit different--not the least bit. I feel
+perfectly well and perfectly calm. I don't love anybody and I'm not going
+to love anybody--until I want to, and that will probably never happen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, she permitted her sister to take her in her arms and pet her. It
+was rather curious how exceedingly young and inexperienced she felt. She
+found it agreeable to be fussed over and comforted and cradled, and for a
+few moments she suffered Linda's solicitude and misgivings in silence.
+After a while, however, she became ashamed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing is going to happen, Linda," she said, looking dreamily up at the
+ceiling; "don't worry, dear; I shall escape the bandarlog."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If something doesn't happen," observed Destyn, pocketing his instrument,
+"the Green Mouse, Limited, will go into liquidation with no liabilities
+and no assets, and there'll be no billions for you or for me or for
+anybody."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"William," said his wife, "do you place a low desire for money before
+your own sister-in-law's spiritual happiness?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, darling, of course not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then you and I had better pray for the immediate bankruptcy of the Green
+Mouse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her husband said, "By all means," without enthusiasm, and looked out of
+the window. "Still," he added, "I made a happy marriage. I'm for wedding
+bells every time. Sacharissa will like it, too. I don't know why you and
+I shouldn't be enthusiastic optimists concerning wedded life; I can't see
+why we shouldn't pray for Sacharissa's early marriage."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"William!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, darling."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You <i>are</i> considering money before my sister's happiness!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But in her case I don't see why we can't conscientiously consider both."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Linda cast one tragic glance at her material husband, pushed her sister
+aside, arose and fled. After her sped the contrite Destyn; a distant door
+shut noisily; all the elements had gathered for the happy, first quarrel
+of the newly wedded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fudge," said Sacharissa, walking to the window, slim hands clasped
+loosely behind her back.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp062.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp063.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="vi">VI</a></h2>
+
+<h3>IN WRONG</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Wherein Sacharissa Remains In and a Young Man Can't Get Out</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The snowstorm had ceased; across Fifth Avenue the Park resembled the
+mica-incrusted view on an expensive Christmas card. Every limb, branch,
+and twig was outlined in clinging snow; crystals of it glittered under
+the morning sun; brilliantly dressed children, with sleds, romped and
+played over the dazzling expanse. Overhead the characteristic deep blue
+arch of a New York sky spread untroubled by a cloud. Her family--that is,
+her father, brother-in-law, married sister, three unmarried sisters and
+herself--were expecting to leave for Tuxedo about noon. Why? Nobody knows
+why the wealthy are always going somewhere. However, they do, fortunately
+for story writers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's quite as beautiful here," thought Sacharissa to herself, "as it is
+in the country. I'm sorry I'm going."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Idling there by the sunny window and gazing out into the white expanse,
+she had already dismissed all uneasiness in her mind concerning the
+psychical experiment upon herself. That is to say, she had not exactly
+dismissed it, she used no conscious effort, it had gone of itself--or,
+rather, it had been crowded out, dominated by a sudden and strong
+disinclination to go to Tuxedo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she stood there the feeling grew and persisted, and, presently, she
+found herself repeating aloud: "I don't want to go, I <i>don't</i> want to go.
+It's stupid to go. Why should I go when it's stupid to go and I'd rather
+stay here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Ethelinda and Destyn were having a classical reconciliation in
+a distant section of the house, and the young wife had got as far as:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling, I am <i>so</i> worried about Rissa. I <i>do</i> wish she were not going
+to Tuxedo. There are so many attractive men expected at the Courlands'."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She can't escape men anywhere, can she?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no; but there will be a concentration of particularly good-looking and
+undesirable ones at Tuxedo this week. That idle, horrid, cynical crowd is
+coming from Long Island, and I <i>don't</i> want her to marry any of them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then, make her stay at home."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She wants to go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's the good of an older sister if you can't make her mind you?" he
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She won't. She's set her heart on going. All those boisterous winter
+sports appeal to her. Besides, how can one member of the family be absent
+on New Year's Day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arm in arm they strolled out into the great living room, where a large,
+pompous, vividly colored gentleman was laying down the law to the
+triplets--three very attractive young girls, dressed precisely alike, who
+said, "Yes, pa-<i>pah!</i>" and "No pa-<i>pah!</i>" in a grave and silvery-voiced
+chorus whenever filial obligation required it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And another thing," continued the pudgy and vivid old gentleman, whose
+voice usually ended in a softly mellifluous shout when speaking
+emphatically: "that worthless Westbury--Cedarhurst--Jericho--
+Meadowbrook set are going to be in evidence at this housewarming, and I
+caution you now against paying anything but the slightest, most
+superficial and most frivolous attention to anything that any of those
+young whip-snapping, fox-hunting cubs may say to you. Do you hear?" with
+a mellow shout like a French horn on a touring car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, pa-<i>pah!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old gentleman waved his single eyeglass in token of dismissal, and
+looked at his watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The bus is here," he said fussily. "Come on, Will; come, Linda, and you,
+Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla, get your furs on. Don't take the
+elevator. Go down by the stairs, and hurry! If there's one thing in this
+world I won't do it is to wait for anybody on earth!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flunkies and maids flew distractedly about with fur coats, muffs, and
+stoles. In solemn assemblage the family expedition filed past the
+elevator, descended the stairs to the lower hall, and there drew up for
+final inspection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A mink-infested footman waited outside; valets, butlers, second-men and
+maids came to attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where's Sacharissa?" demanded Mr. Carr, sonorously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here, dad," said his oldest daughter, strolling calmly into the hall,
+hands still linked loosely behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why haven't you got your hat and furs on?" demanded her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because I'm not going, dad," she said sweetly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The family eyed her in amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not going?" shouted her father, in a mellow bellow. "Yes, you are! Not
+<i>going!</i> And why the dickens not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I really don't know, dad," she said listlessly. "I don't want to go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father waved both pudgy arms furiously. "Don't you feel well? You
+look well. You <i>are</i> well. Don't you <i>feel</i> well?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perfectly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you don't! You're pale! You're pallid! You're peaked! Take a tonic
+and lie down. Send your maid for some doctors--all kinds of doctors--and
+have them fix you up. Then come to Tuxedo with your maid to-morrow
+morning. Do you hear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well, dad."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And keep out of that elevator until it's fixed. It's likely to do
+anything. Ferdinand," to the man at the door, "have it fixed at once.
+Sacharissa, send that maid of yours for a doctor!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well, dad!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She presented her cheek to her emphatic parent; he saluted it
+explosively, wheeled, marshaled the family at a glance, started them
+forward, and closed the rear with his own impressive person. The iron
+gates clanged, the door of the opera bus snapped, and Sacharissa strolled
+back into the rococo reception room not quite certain why she had not
+gone, not quite convinced that she was feeling perfectly well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the first few minutes her face had been going hot and cold,
+alternately flushed and pallid. Her heart, too, was acting in an unusual
+manner--making sufficient stir for her to become uneasily aware of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Probably," she thought to herself, "I've eaten too many chocolates." She
+looked into the large gilded box, took another and ate it reflectively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A curious languor possessed her. To combat it she rang for her maid,
+intending to go for a brisk walk, but the weight of the furs seemed to
+distress her. It was absurd. She threw them off and sat down in the
+library.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A little while later her maid found her lying there, feet crossed, arms
+stretched backward to form a cradle for her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you ill, Miss Carr?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Sacharissa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid cast an alarmed glance at her mistress' pallid face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you see Dr. Blimmer, miss?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid hesitated:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Beg pardon, but Mr. Carr said you was to see some doctors."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well," she said indifferently. "And please hand me those
+chocolates. I don't care for any luncheon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No luncheon, miss?" in consternation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa had never been known to shun sustenance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The symptom thoroughly frightened her maid, and in a few minutes she had
+Dr. Blimmer's office on the telephone; but that eminent practitioner was
+out. Then she found in succession the offices of Doctors White, Black,
+and Gray. Two had gone away over New Year's, the other was out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid, who was clever and resourceful, went out to hunt up a doctor.
+There are, in the cross streets, plenty of doctors between the Seventies
+and Eighties. She found one without difficulty--that is, she found the
+sign in the window, but the doctor was out on his visits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made two more attempts with similar results, then, discovering a
+doctor's sign in a window across the street, started for it regardless of
+snowdrifts, and at the same moment the doctor's front door opened and a
+young man, with a black leather case in his hand, hastily descended the
+icy steps and hurried away up the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid ran after him and arrived at his side breathless, excited:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, <i>could</i> you come--just for a moment, if you please, sir! Miss Carr
+won't eat her luncheon!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!" said the young man, surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Carr wishes to see you--just for a----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Carr?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Sacharissa!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sacharissa?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes, sir--she----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't know any Miss Sacharissa!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I understand that, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look here, young woman, do you know my name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, sir, but that doesn't make any difference to Miss Carr."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She wishes to see <i>me!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I'm in a hurry to catch a train." He looked hard at the maid, at his
+watch, at the maid again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you perfectly sure you're not mistaken?" he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, sir, I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A certain Miss Sacharissa Carr desires to see <i>me?</i> Are you certain of
+that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, sir--she----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where does she live?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One thousand eight and a half Fifth Avenue, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've got just three minutes. Can you run?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--yes!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come on, then!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And away they galloped, his overcoat streaming out behind, the maid's
+skirts flapping and her narrow apron flickering in the wind. Wayfarers
+stopped to watch their pace--a pace which brought them to the house in
+something under a minute. Ferdinand, the second man, let them in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, then," panted the young man, "which way? I'm in a hurry, remember!"
+And he started on a run for the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please follow me, sir; the elevator is quicker!" gasped the maid,
+opening the barred doors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man sprang into the lighted car, the maid turned to fling off
+hat and jacket before entering; something went fizz-bang! snap! clink!
+and the lights in the car were extinguished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!" shrieked the maid, "it's running away again! Jump, sir!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ornate, rococo elevator, as a matter of fact, was running away,
+upward, slowly at first. Its astonished occupant turned to jump out--too
+late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"P-push the third button, sir! Quick!" cried the maid, wringing her
+hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-where is it!" stammered the young man, groping nervously in the dark
+car. "I can't see any."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cr-rack!" went something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's stopped! It's going to fall!" screamed the maid. "Run, Ferdinand!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man at the door ran upstairs for a few steps, then distractedly slid
+to the bottom, shouting:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you hurt, sir?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," came a disgusted voice from somewhere up the shaft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every landing was now noisy with servants, maids sped upstairs, flunkeys
+sped down, a butler waddled in a circle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is anybody going to get me out of this?" demanded the voice in the
+shaft. "I've a train to catch."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The perspiring butler poked his head into the shaft from below:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Ow far hup, sir, might you be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How the devil do I know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can't you see nothink, sir?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I can see a landing and a red room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'E's stuck hunder the library!" exclaimed the butler, and there was a
+rush for the upper floors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rush was met and checked by a tall, young girl who came leisurely
+along the landing, nibbling a chocolate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is all this noise about?" she asked. "Has the elevator gone wrong
+again?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Glancing across the landing at the grille which screened the shaft she
+saw the gilded car--part of it--and half of a perfectly strange young man
+looking earnestly out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's the doctor!" wailed her maid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That isn't Dr. Blimmer!" said her mistress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, miss, it's a perfectly strange doctor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am <i>not</i> a doctor," observed the young man, coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa drew nearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If that maid of yours had asked me," he went on, "I'd have told her. She
+saw me coming down the steps of a physician's house--I suppose she
+mistook my camera case for a case of medicines."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did--oh, I did!" moaned the maid, and covered her head with her apron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," said Sacharissa, calmly, "is to send for the nearest
+plumber. Ferdinand, go immediately!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Meanwhile," said the imprisoned young man, "I shall miss my train. Can't
+somebody break that grille? I could climb out that way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sparks," said Miss Carr, "can you break that grille?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sparks tried. A kitchen maid brought a small tackhammer--the only "'ammer
+in the 'ouse," according to Sparks, who pounded at the foliated steel
+grille and broke the hammer off short.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did it 'it you in the 'ead, sir?" he asked, panting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly," replied the young man, grinding his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sparks 'oped as 'ow it didn't 'urt the gentleman. The gentleman stanched
+his wound in terrible silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently Ferdinand came back to report upon the availability of the
+family plumber. It appeared that all plumbers, locksmiths, and similar
+indispensable and free-born artisans had closed shop at noon and would
+not reopen until after New Year's, subject to the Constitution of the
+United States.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But this gentleman cannot remain here until after New Year's," said
+Sacharissa. "He says he is in a hurry. Do you hear, Sparks?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The servants stood in a helpless row.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ferdinand," she said, "Mr. Carr told you to have that elevator fixed
+before it was used again!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ferdinand stared wildly at the grille and ran his thumb over the bars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Clark"--to her maid--"I am astonished that you permitted this
+gentleman to risk the elevator."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He was in a hurry--I thought he was a doctor." The maid dissolved into
+tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is now," broke in the voice from the shaft, "an utter impossibility
+for me to catch any train in the United States."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am dreadfully sorry," said Sacharissa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't there an ax in the house?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The butler mournfully denied it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then get the furnace bar."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was fetched; nerve-racking blows rained on the grille; puffing
+servants applied it as a lever, as a battering-ram, as a club. The house
+rang like a boiler factory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't stand any more of that!" shouted the young man. "Stop it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa looked about her, hands closing both ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Send them away," said the young man, wearily. "If I've got to stay here
+I want a chance to think."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After she had dismissed the servants Sacharissa drew up a chair and
+seated herself a few feet from the grille. She could see half the car and
+half the man--plainer, now that she had come nearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a young and rather attractive looking fellow, cheek tied up in his
+handkerchief, where the head of the hammer had knocked off the skin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me get some witch-hazel," said Sacharissa, rising.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want to write a telegram first," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she brought some blanks, passed them and a pencil down to him through
+the grille, and reseated herself.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp078.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+<h2><a name="vii">VII</a></h2>
+
+<h3>THE INVISIBLE WIRE</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>In Which the Telephone Continues Ringing</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he had finished writing he sorted out some silver, and handed it and
+the yellow paper to Sacharissa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's dark in here. Would you mind reading it aloud to me to see if I've
+made it plain?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly," said Sacharissa; and she read:
+</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+MRS. DELANCY COURLAND,
+
+<p>
+Tuxedo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I'm stuck in an idiotic elevator at 1008-1/2 Fifth Avenue. If I don't
+appear by New Year's you'll know why. Be careful that no reporters get
+hold of this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KILLIAN VAN K. VANDERDYNK.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa flushed deeply. "I can't send this," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?" demanded the young man, irritably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because, Mr. Vanderdynk, my father, brother-in-law, married sister, and
+three younger sisters are expected at the Courlands'. Imagine what effect
+such a telegram would have on them!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then cross out the street and number," he said; "just say I'm stuck in a
+strange elevator."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did so, rang, and a servant took away the telegram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," said the heir apparent to the Prince Regency of Manhattan, "there
+are two things still" possible. First, you might ring up police
+headquarters and ask for aid; next, request assistance from fire
+headquarters."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I do," she said, "wouldn't the newspapers get hold of it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are perfectly right," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had now drawn her chair so close to the gilded grille that, hands
+resting upon it, she could look down into the car where sat the scion of
+the Vanderdynks on a flimsy Louis XV chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't express to you how sorry I am," she said. "Is there anything I
+can do to--to ameliorate your imprisonment?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her in a bewildered way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't expect me to remain here until after New Year's, do you?" he
+inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't see how you can avoid it. Nobody seems to want to work until
+after New Year's."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stay in a cage--two days and a night!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps I had better call up the police."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no! Wait. I'll tell you what to do. Start that man, Ferdinand, on a
+tour of the city. If he hunts hard enough and long enough he'll find some
+plumber or locksmith or somebody who'll come."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rang for Ferdinand; together they instructed him, and he went away,
+promising to bring salvation in some shape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which promise made the young man more cheerful and smoothed out the
+worried pucker between Sacharissa's straight brows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose," she said, "that you will never forgive my maid for this--or
+me either."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed. "After all," he admitted, "it's rather funny."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't believe you think it's funny."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Didn't you want to go to Tuxedo?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I!" He looked up at the pretty countenance of Sacharissa. "I <i>did</i> want
+to--a few minutes ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now that you can't your philosophy teaches you that you <i>don't</i> want
+to?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They laughed at each other in friendly fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps it's my philosophy," he said, "but" I really don't care very
+much.... I'm not sure that I care at all.... In fact, now that I think of
+it, why should I have wished to go to Tuxedo? It's stupid to want to go
+to Tuxedo when New York is so attractive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," she said reflectively, "that I came to the same
+conclusion?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Be-before you--I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes," she said rather hastily, "before you came----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She broke off, pink with consternation. What a ridiculous thing to say!
+What on earth was twisting her tongue to hint at such an absurdity?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said, gravely, with heightened color: "I was standing by the window
+this morning, thinking, and it occurred to me that I didn't care to go to
+Tuxedo.... When did you change <i>your</i> mind?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A few minutes a--that is--well, I never <i>really</i> wanted to go. It's
+jollier in town. Don't you think so? Blue sky, snow--er--and all that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she said, "it is perfectly delightful in town to-day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He assented, then looked discouraged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps you would like to go out?" he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I? Oh, no.... The sun on the snow is bad for one's eyes; don't you think
+so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very.... I'm terribly sorry that I'm giving you so much trouble."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't mind--really. If only I could do something for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; you are being exceedingly nice to me. I am afraid you feel under
+obligations to remain indoors and----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Truly, I don't. I was not going out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She leaned nearer and looked through the bars: "Are you quite sure you
+feel comfortable?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I feel like something in a zoo!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed. "That reminds me," she said, "have you had any luncheon?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not, it appeared, after a little polite protestation, so she rang
+for Sparks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her own appetite, too, had returned when the tray was brought; napkin and
+plate were passed through the grille to him, and, as they lunched, he in
+his cage, she close to the bars, they fell into conversation, exchanging
+information concerning mutual acquaintances whom they had expected to
+meet at the Delancy Courlands'.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you see," she said, "that if I had not changed my mind about going to
+Tuxedo this morning you would not be here now. Nor I.... And we would
+never have--lunched together."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That didn't alter things," he said, smiling. "If you hadn't been ill you
+would have gone to Tuxedo, and I should have seen you there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then, whatever I did made no difference," she assented, thoughtfully,
+"for we were bound to meet, anyway."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He remained standing close to the grille, which, as she was seated,
+brought his head on a level with hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It would seem," he said laughingly, "as though we were doomed to meet
+each other, anyway. It looks like a case of Destiny to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She started slightly: "What did you say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I said that it looks as though Fate intended us to meet, anyhow. Don't
+you think so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She remained silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He added cheerfully: "I never was afraid of Fate."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you care for a--a book--or anything?" she asked, aware of a new
+constraint in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't believe I could see to read in here.... Are you--going?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--ought to." Vexed at the feeble senselessness of her reply she found
+herself walking down the landing, toward nowhere in particular. She
+turned abruptly and came back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you want a book?" she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I forgot that you can't see to read. But perhaps you might care to
+smoke."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you going away?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--don't mind your smoking."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lighted a cigarette; she looked at him irresolutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mustn't think of remaining," he said. Whereupon she seated herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose I ought to try to amuse you--till Ferdinand returns with a
+plumber," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He protested: "I couldn't think of asking so much from you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Anyway, it's my duty," she insisted. "I ought."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because you are under my roof--a guest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please don't think----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I really don't mind! If there is anything I can do to make your
+imprisonment easier----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is easy. I rather like being here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is very amiable of you to say so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I really mean it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can you <i>really</i> mean it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know, but I do." In their earnestness they had come close to the
+bars; she stood with both hands resting on the grille, looking in; he in
+a similar position, looking out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: "I feel like an occupant of the Bronx, and it rather astonishes
+me that you haven't thrown me in a few peanuts."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed, fetched her box of chocolates, then began seriously: "If
+Ferdinand doesn't find anybody I'm afraid you might be obliged to remain
+to dinner."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That prospect," he said, "is not unpleasant. You know when one becomes
+accustomed to one's cage it's rather a bore to be let out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sampled the chocolates, she sitting close to the cage, and as the
+box would not go through the bars she was obliged to hand them to him,
+one by one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder," she mused, "how soon Ferdinand will find a plumber?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bent her adorable head, chose a chocolate and offered it to him.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp086.jpg"><img src="images/illp086_th.jpg" alt="'Are you not terribly impatient?' she inquired"></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you not terribly impatient?" she inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not--terribly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their glances encountered and she said hurriedly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sure you must be perfectly furious with everybody in this house.
+I--I think it is most amiable of you to behave so cheerfully about it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As a matter of fact," he said, "I'm feeling about as cheerful as I ever
+felt in my life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cooped up in a cage?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Which may fall at any--" The idea was a new one to them both. She leaned
+forward in sudden consternation. "I never thought of that!" she
+exclaimed. "You don't think there's any chance of its falling, do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the startled, gray eyes so earnestly fixed on his. The sweet
+mouth quivered a little--just a little--or he thought it did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," he replied, with a slight catch in his voice, "I don't believe it's
+going to fall."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps you had better not move around very much in it. Be careful, I
+beg of you. You will, won't you, Mr. Vanderdynk?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please don't let it bother you," he said, stepping toward her
+impulsively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, don't, don't move!" she exclaimed. "You really must keep perfectly
+still. Won't you promise me you will keep perfectly still?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll promise you anything," he said a little wildly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither seemed to notice that he had overdone it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drew her chair as close as it would go to the grille and leaned
+against it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You <i>will</i> keep up your courage, won't you?" she asked anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly. By the way, how far is it to the b-basement?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned quite white for an instant, then:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think I'd better go and ring up the police."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No! A thousand times no! I couldn't stand that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the car might--drop before----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Better decently dead than publicly paragraphed.... I haven't the least
+idea that this thing is going to drop.... Anyway, it's worth it," he
+added, rather vaguely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Worth--what?" she asked, looking into his rather winning, brown eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Being here," he said, looking into her engaging gray ones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a startling silence she said calmly: "Will you promise me not to
+move or shake the car till I return?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You won't be very long, will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not--very," she replied faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked into the library, halted in the center of the room, hands
+clasped behind her. Her heart was beating like a trip hammer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I might as well face it," she said to herself; "he is--by far--the most
+thoroughly attractive man I have ever seen.... I--I <i>don't</i> know what's
+the matter," she added piteously.... "if it's that machine William made I
+can't help it; I don't care any longer; I wish----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sharp crack from the landing sent her out there in a hurry, pale and
+frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something snapped somewhere," explained the young man with forced
+carelessness, "some unimportant splinter gave way and the thing slid down
+an inch or two."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"D-do you think----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't. But it's perfectly fine of you to care."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"C-care? I'm a little frightened, of course.... Anybody would be.... Oh,
+I wish you were out and p-perfectly safe." "If I thought you could ever
+really care what became of a man like me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Killian Van K. Vanderdynk's aristocratic senses began gyrating; he
+grasped the bars, the back of his hand brushed against hers, and the
+momentary contact sent a shock straight through the scion of that
+celebrated race.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She seated herself abruptly; a delicate color grew, staining her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither spoke. A long, luminous sunbeam fell across the landing, touching
+the edge of her hair till it glimmered like bronze afire. The sensitive
+mouth was quiet, the eyes, very serious, were lifted from time to time,
+then lowered, thoughtfully, to the clasped fingers on her knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Could it be possible? How could it be possible?--with a man she had never
+before chanced to meet--with a man she had seen for the first time in her
+life only an hour or so ago! Such things didn't happen outside of short
+stories. There was neither logic nor common decency in it. Had she or had
+she not any ordinary sense remaining?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her eyes and looked at the heir of the Vanderdynks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course anybody could see he was unusually attractive--that he had that
+indefinable something about him which is seldom, if ever, seen outside of
+fiction or of Mr. Gibson's drawings--perhaps it is entirely confined to
+them--except in this one very rare case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa's eyes fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another unusual circumstance was engaging her attention, namely, that his
+rather remarkable physical perfection appeared to be matched by a
+breeding quite as faultless, and a sublimity of courage in the face of
+destruction itself, which----
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa lifted her gray eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There he stood, suspended over an abyss, smoking a cigarette, bravely
+forcing himself to an attitude of serene insouciance, while the basement
+yawned for him! Machine or no machine, how could any girl look upon such
+miraculous self-control unmoved? <i>She</i> could not. It was natural that a
+woman should be deeply thrilled by such a spectacle--and William Destyn's
+machine had nothing to do with it--not a thing! Neither had psychology,
+nor demonology, nor anything, with wires or wireless. She liked him,
+frankly. Who wouldn't? She feared for him, desperately. Who wouldn't?
+She----
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"C-r-rack!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh--<i>what</i> is it!" she cried, springing to the grille.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know," he said, somewhat pale. "The old thing seems--to be
+sliding."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Giving way!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--little--I think----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Vanderdynk! I <i>must</i> call the police----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cr-rackle--crack-k-k!" went the car, dropping an inch or two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a stifled cry she caught his hands through the bars, as though to
+hold him by main strength.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you crazy?" he said fiercely, thrusting them away. "Be careful! If
+the thing drops you'll break your arms!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I don't care!" she said breathlessly. "I can't let----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Crack!" But the car stuck again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>will</i> call the police!" she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The papers may make fun of <i>you</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was it for <i>me</i> you were afraid? Oh, Mr. Vanderdynk! What do I care for
+ridicule compared to--to----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The car had sunk so far in the shaft now that she had to kneel and put
+her head close to the floor to see him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will only be a minute at the telephone," she said. "Keep up courage; I
+am thinking of you every moment."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-will you let me say one word?" he stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, what? Be quick, I beg you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's only goodbye--in case the thing drops. May I say it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes--yes! But say it quickly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And if it doesn't drop after all, you won't be angry at what I'm going
+to say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no. Oh, for Heaven's sake, hurry!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--you are the sweetest woman in the world!... Goodbye--Sacharissa--
+dear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sprang up, dazed, and at the same moment a terrific crackling and
+splintering resounded from the shaft, and the car sank out of sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Faint, she swayed for a second against the balustrade, then turned and
+ran downstairs, ears strained for the sickening crash from below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no crash, no thud. As she reached the drawing-room landing, to
+her amazement a normally-lighted elevator slid slowly down, came to a
+stop, and the automatic grilles opened quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Killian Van K. Vanderdynk crept forth from the elevator, Sacharissa's
+nerves gave way; his, also, seemed to disintegrate; and they stood for
+some moments mutually supporting each other, during which interval
+unaccustomed tears fell from the gray eyes, and unaccustomed words,
+breathed brokenly, reassured her; and, altogether unaccustomed to such
+things, they presently found themselves seated in a distant corner of the
+drawing-room, still endeavoring to reassure each other with interclasped
+hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They said nothing so persistently that the wordless minutes throbbed into
+hours; through the windows the red west sent a glowing tentacle into the
+room, searching the gloom for them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It fell, warm, across her upturned throat, in the half light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For her head lay back on his shoulder; his head was bent down, lips
+pressed to the white hands crushed fragrantly between his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A star came out and looked at them with astonishment; in a little while
+the sky was thronged with little stars, all looking through the window at
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her maid knocked, backed out hastily and fled, distracted. Then Ferdinand
+arrived with a plumber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later the butler came. They did not notice him until he ventured to cough
+and announce dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The interruptions were very annoying, particularly when she was summoned
+to the telephone to speak to her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it, dad?" she asked impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you all right?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes," she answered, carelessly; "we are all right, dad. Goodbye."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We? Who the devil is 'We'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Vanderdynk and I. We're taking my maid and coming down to Tuxedo
+this evening together. I'm in a hurry now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!!!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, it's all right, dad. Here, Killian, please explain things to my
+father."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vanderdynk released her hand and picked up the receiver as though it had
+been a live wire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that you, Mr. Carr?" he began--stopped short, and stood listening,
+rigid, bewildered, turning redder and redder as her father's fluency
+increased. Then, without a word, he hooked up the receiver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it all right?" she asked calmly. "Was dad--vivacious?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man said: "I'd rather go back into that elevator than go to
+Tuxedo.... But--I'm going."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So am I," said Bushwyck Carr's daughter, dropping both hands on her
+lover's shoulders.... "Was he really very--vivid?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The telephone again rang furiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bent his head; she lifted her face and he kissed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a while the racket of the telephone annoyed them, and they slowly
+moved away out of hearing.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp097.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+<h2><a name="viii">VIII</a></h2>
+
+<h3>"IN HEAVEN AND EARTH"</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>The Green Mouse Stirs</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've been waiting half an hour for you," observed Smith, dryly, as
+Beekman Brown appeared at the subway station, suitcase in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was a most extraordinary thing that detained me," said Brown,
+laughing, and edging his way into the ticket line behind his friend where
+he could talk to him across his shoulder; "I was just leaving the office,
+Smithy, when Snuyder came in with a card."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, all right--of course, if----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, it was not a client; I must be honest with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then you had a terrible cheek to keep me here waiting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was a girl," said Beekman Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith cast a cold glance back at him over his left shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What kind of a girl?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A most extraordinary girl. She came on--on a matter----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was it business or a touch?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not exactly business."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ornamental girl?" demanded Smith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--exceedingly; but it wasn't that----
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, it was not that which kept you talking to her half an hour while
+I've sat suffocating in this accursed subway!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, Smith; her undeniably attractive features and her--ah--winning
+personality had nothing whatever to do with it. Buy the tickets and I'll
+tell you all about it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith bought two tickets. A north bound train roared into the station.
+The young men stepped aboard, seated themselves, depositing their
+suitcases at their feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now what about that winning-looker who really didn't interest you?"
+suggested Smith in tones made slightly acid by memory of his half hour
+waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Smith, it was a most unusual episode. I was just leaving the office to
+keep my appointment with you when Snuyder came in with a card----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You've said that already."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I didn't tell you what was on that card, did I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can guess."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you can't. Her name was not on the card. She was not an agent; she
+had nothing to sell; she didn't want a position; she didn't ask for a
+subscription to anything. And what do you suppose was on that card?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, what was on the card, for the love of Mike?" snapped Smith. "I'll
+tell you. The card seemed to be an ordinary visiting card; but down in
+one corner was a tiny and beautifully drawn picture of a green mouse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A mouse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"G-green?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pea green.... Come, now, Smith, if you were just leaving your office and
+your clerk should come in, looking rather puzzled and silly, and should
+hand you a card with nothing on it but a little green mouse, wouldn't it
+give you pause?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown removed his straw hat, touched his handsome head with his
+handkerchief, and continued:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I said to Snuyder: 'What the mischief is this?' He said: 'It's for you.
+And there's an exceedingly pretty girl outside who expects you to receive
+her for a few moments.' I said: 'But what has this card with a green
+mouse on it got to do with that girl or with me?' Snuyder said he didn't
+know and that I'd better ask her. So I looked at my watch and I thought
+of you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tell you I did. Then I looked at the card with the green mouse on
+it.... And I want to ask you frankly, Smith, what would <i>you</i> have done?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, what you did, I suppose," replied Smith, wearily. "Go on."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm going. She entered----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She was tall and squeenly; you probably forgot that," observed Smith in
+his most objectionable manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Probably not; she was of medium height, as a detail of external
+interest. But, although rather unusually attractive in a merely
+superficial and physical sense, it was instantly evident from her speech
+and bearing, that, in her, intellect dominated; her mind, Smithy, reigned
+serene, unsullied, triumphant over matter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith looked up in amazement, but Brown, a reminiscent smile lighting his
+face, went on:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She had a very winsome manner--a way of speaking--so prettily in
+earnest, so grave. And she looked squarely at me all the time----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you contributed to the Home for Unemployed Patagonians."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you mind shutting up?" asked Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then try to listen respectfully. She began by explaining the
+significance of that pea-green mouse on the card. It seems, Smith, that
+there is a scientific society called The Green Mouse, composed of a few
+people who have determined to apply, practically, certain theories which
+they believe have commercial value."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was she," inquired Smith with misleading politeness, "what is known as
+an 'astrologist'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She was not. She is the president, I believe, of The Green Mouse
+Society. She explained to me that it has been indisputably proven that
+the earth is not only enveloped by those invisible electric currents
+which are now used instead of wires to carry telegraphic messages, but
+that this world of ours is also belted by countless psychic currents
+which go whirling round the earth----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What</i> kind of currents?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Psychic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Which circle the earth?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly. If you want to send a wireless message you hitch on to a
+current, don't you?--or you tap it--or something. Now, they have
+discovered that each one of these numberless millions of psychic currents
+passes through two, living, human entities of opposite sex; that, for
+example, all you have got to do to communicate with the person who is on
+the same psychical current that you are, is to attune your subconscious
+self to a given intensity and pitch, and it will be like communication by
+telephone, no matter how far apart you are."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brown!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did she go to your office to tell you that sort of--of--information?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Partly. She was perfectly charming about it. She explained to me that
+all nature is divided into predestined pairs, and that somewhere, at some
+time, either here on earth or in some of the various future existences,
+this predestined pair is certain to meet and complete the universal
+scheme as it has been planned. Do you understand, Smithy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith sat silent and reflective for a while, then:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You say that her theory is that everybody owns one of those psychic
+currents?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am on a private psychic current whirling around this globe?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And some--ah--young girl is at the other end?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then if I could only get hold of my end of the wire I could--ah--call
+her up?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe that's the idea."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And--she's for muh?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So they say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is--is there any way to get a look at her first?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'd have to take her anyway, sometime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But suppose I didn't like her?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two young men sat laughing for a few moments, then Brown went on:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see, Smith, my interview with her was such a curious episode that
+about all I did was to listen to what she was saying, so I don't know how
+details are worked out. She explained to me that The Green Mouse Society
+has just been formed, not only for the purpose of psychical research, but
+for applying practically and using commercially the discovery of the
+psychic currents. That's what The Green Mouse is trying to do: form
+itself into a company and issue stocks and bonds----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly. It sounds like a madman's dream at first, but when you come
+to look into it--for instance, think of the millions of clients such a
+company would have. As example, a young man, ready for marriage, goes to
+The Green Mouse and pays a fee. The Green Mouse sorts out, identifies,
+and intercepts the young man's own particular current, hitches his
+subconscious self to it, and zip!--he's at one end of an invisible
+telephone and the only girl on earth is at the other.... What's the
+matter with their making a quick date for an introduction?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith said slowly: "Do you mean to tell me that any sane person came to
+you in your office with a proposition to take stock in such an
+enterprise?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She did not even suggest it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did she want, then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She wanted," said Brown, "a perfectly normal, unimaginative business man
+who would volunteer to permit The Green Mouse Society to sort out his
+psychic current, attach him to it, and see what would happen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She wants to experiment on <i>you?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And--you're not going to let her, are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because it's--it's idiotic!" said Smith, warmly. "I don't believe in
+such things--you don't, either--nobody does--but, all the same, you can't
+be perfectly sure in these days what devilish sort of game you might be
+up against."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown smiled. "I told her, very politely, that I found it quite
+impossible to believe in such things; and she was awfully nice about it,
+and said it didn't matter what I believed. It seems that my name was
+chosen by chance--they opened the Telephone Directory at random and she,
+blindfolded, made a pencil mark on the margin opposite one of the names
+on the page. It happened to be my name. That's all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wouldn't let her do it!" said Smith, seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not, as long as there's absolutely nothing in it? Besides, if it
+pleases her to have a try why shouldn't she? Besides, I haven't the
+slightest intention or desire to woo or wed anybody, and I'd like to see
+anybody make me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mean to say that you told her to go ahead?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly," said Brown serenely. "And she thanked me very prettily.
+She's well bred--exceptionally."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh! Then what did you do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We talked a little while."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"About what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, for instance, I mentioned that curiously-baffling sensation which
+comes over everybody at times--the sudden conviction that everything that
+you say and do has been said and done by you before--somewhere. Do you
+understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And she smiled and said that such sensations were merely echoes from the
+invisible psychic wire, and that repetitions from some previous
+incarnation were not unusual, particularly when the other person through
+whom the psychic current passed, was near by."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean to say that when a fellow has that queer feeling that it has
+all happened before, the--the predestined girl is somewhere in your
+neighborhood?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is what my pretty informant told me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who," asked Smith, "is this pretty informant?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She asked permission to withhold her name."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Didn't she ask you to subscribe?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; she merely asked for the use of my name as reference for future
+clients if The Green Mouse Society was successful in my case."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did you say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown laughed. "I said that if any individual or group of individuals
+could induce me, within a year, to fall in love with and pay court to any
+living specimen of human woman I'd cheerfully admit it from the house-
+tops and take pleasure in recommending The Green Mouse to everybody I
+knew who yet remained unmarried."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They both laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What rot we've been talking," observed Smith, rising and picking up his
+suitcase. "Here's our station, and we'd better hustle or we'll lose the
+boat. I wouldn't miss that week-end party for the world!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither would I," said Beekman Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp108.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp109.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ix">IX</a></h2>
+
+<h3>A CROSS-TOWN CAR</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Concerning the Sudden Madness of One Brown</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the two young fellows, carrying their suitcases, emerged from the
+subway at Times Square into the midsummer glare and racket of Broadway
+and Forty-second Street, Brown suddenly halted, pressed his hand to his
+forehead, gazed earnestly up at the sky as though trying to recollect how
+to fly, then abruptly gripped Smith's left arm just above the elbow and
+squeezed it, causing the latter gentleman exquisite discomfort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here! Stop it!" protested Smith, wriggling with annoyance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown only gazed at him and then at the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stop it!" repeated Smith, astonished. "Why do you pinch me and then look
+at the sky? Is--is a monoplane attempting to alight on me? <i>What</i> is the
+matter with you, anyway?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That peculiar consciousness," said Brown, dreamily, "is creeping over
+me. Don't move--don't speak--don't interrupt me, Smith."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let go of me!" retorted Smith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hush! Wait! It's certainly creeping over me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's creeping over you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know what I mean. I am experiencing that strange feeling that all--
+er--all <i>this</i>--has happened before."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All what?--confound it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All <i>this!</i> My standing, on a hot summer day, in the infernal din of
+some great city; and--and I seem to recall it vividly--after a fashion--
+the blazing sun, the stifling odor of the pavements; I seem to remember
+that very hackman over there sponging the nose of his horse--even that
+pushcart piled up with peaches! Smith! What is this maddeningly elusive
+memory that haunts me--haunts me with the peculiar idea that it has all
+occurred before?... Do you know what I mean?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've just admitted to you that everybody has that sort of fidget
+occasionally, and there's no reason to stand on your hindlegs about it.
+Come on or we'll miss our train."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Beekman Brown remained stock still, his youthful and attractive
+features puckered in a futile effort to seize the evanescent memories
+that came swarming--gnatlike memories that teased and distracted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's as if the entire circumstances were strangely familiar," he said;
+"as though everything that you and I do and say had once before been done
+and said by us under precisely similar conditions--somewhere--sometime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll miss that boat at the foot of Forty-second Street," cut in Smith
+impatiently. "And if we miss the boat we lose our train."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown gazed skyward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I never felt this feeling so strongly in all my life," he muttered;
+"it's--it's astonishing. Why, Smith, I <i>knew</i> you were going to say
+that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say what?" demanded Smith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That we would miss the boat and the train. Isn't it funny?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, very. I'll say it again sometime if it amuses you; but, meanwhile,
+as we're going to that week-end at the Carringtons we'd better get into a
+taxi and hustle for the foot of West Forty-second Street. Is there
+anything very funny in that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew <i>that</i>, too. I knew you'd say we must take a taxi!" insisted
+Brown, astonished at his own "clairvoyance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, look here," retorted Smith, thoroughly vexed; "up to five minutes
+ago you were reasonable. What the devil's the matter with you, Beekman
+Brown?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"James Vanderdynk Smith, I don't know. Good Heavens! I knew you were
+going to say that to me, and that I was going to answer that way!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you coming or are you going to talk foolish on this broiling
+curbstone the rest of the afternoon?" inquired Smith, fiercely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim, I tell you that everything we've done and said in the last five
+minutes we have done and said before--somewhere--perhaps on some other
+planet; perhaps centuries ago when you and I were Romans and wore
+togas----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Confound it! What do I care," shouted Smith, "whether we were Romans and
+wore togas? We are due this century at a house party on this planet. They
+expect us on this train. Are you coming? If not--kindly relax that
+crablike clutch on my elbow before partial paralysis ensues."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Smith, wait! I tell you this is somehow becoming strangely portentous.
+I've got the funniest sensation that something is going to happen to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It will," said Smith, dangerously, "if you don't let go my elbow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Beekman Brown, a prey to increasing excitement, clung to his friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait just one moment, Jim; something remarkable is likely to occur! I--I
+never before felt this way--so strongly--in all my life. Something
+extraordinary is certainly about to happen to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It has happened," said his friend, coldly; "you've gone dippy. Also,
+we've lost that train. Do you understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew we would. Isn't that curious? I--I believe I can almost tell you
+what else is going to happen to us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I'll</i> tell <i>you</i>," hissed Smith; "it's an ambulance for yours and
+ding-dong to the funny-house! <i>What</i> are you trying to do now?" With real
+misgiving, for Brown, balanced on the edge of the gutter, began waving
+his arms in a birdlike way as though about to launch himself into aerial
+flight across Forty-second Street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The car!" he exclaimed excitedly, "the cherry-colored cross-town car!
+Where is it? Do you see it anywhere, Smith?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What? What do you mean? There's no cross-town car in sight. Brown, don't
+act like that! Don't be foolish! What on earth----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's coming! There's a car coming!" cried Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think you're a racing runabout and I'm a curve?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown waved him away impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tell you that something most astonishing is going to occur--in a
+cherry-colored tram car.... And somehow there'll be some reason for me to
+get into it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Into what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Into that cherry-colored car, because--because--there'll be a wicker
+basket in it--somebody holding a wicker basket--and there'll be--there'll
+be--a--a--white summer gown--and a big white hat----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith stared at his friend in grief and amazement. Brown stood balancing
+himself on the gutter's edge, pale, rapt, uttering incoherent prophecy
+concerning the advent of a car not yet visible anywhere in the immediate
+metropolitan vista.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Old man," began Smith with emotion, "I think you had better come very
+quietly somewhere with me. I--I want to show you something pretty and
+nice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hark!" exclaimed Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure, I'll hark for you," said Smith, soothingly, "or I'll bark for you
+if you like, or anything if you'll just come quietly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The cherry-colored car!" cried Brown, laboring under tremendous emotion.
+"Look, Smithy! That is the car!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure, it is! I see it, old man. They run 'em every five minutes. What
+the devil is there to astonish anybody about a cross-town cruiser with a
+red water line?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look!" insisted Brown, now almost beside himself. "The wicker basket!
+The summer gown! Exactly as I foretold it! The big straw hat!--the--the
+<i>girl!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And shoving Smith violently away he galloped after the cherry-colored
+car, caught it, swung himself aboard, and sank triumphant and breathless
+into the transverse seat behind that occupied by a wicker basket, a filmy
+summer frock, a big, white straw hat, and--a girl--the most amazingly
+pretty girl he had ever laid eyes on. After him, headlong, like a
+distracted chicken, rushed Smith and alighted beside him, panting,
+menacing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wha'--dyeh--board--this--car--for!" he gasped, sliding fiercely up
+beside Brown. "Get off or I'll drag you off!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Brown only shook his head with an infatuated smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it that girl?" said Smith, incensed. "Are you a--a Broadway Don Juan,
+or are you a respectable lawyer with a glimmering sense of common decency
+and an intention to keep a social engagement at the Carringtons' to-day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Smith drew out his timepiece and flourished it furiously under
+Brown's handsome and sun-tanned nose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Brown only slid along the seat away from him, saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't bother me, Jim; this is too momentous a crisis in my life to have
+a well-intentioned but intellectually dwarfed friend butting into me and
+running about under foot."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Intellectually d-d--do you mean <i>me?</i>" asked Smith, unable to believe
+his ears. "<i>Do</i> you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I do! Because a miracle suddenly happens to me on Forty-second
+Street, and you, with your mind of a stockbroker, unable to appreciate
+it, come clattering and clamoring after me about a house party--a
+common-place, every-day, social appointment, when I have a full-blown
+miracle on my hands!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What miracle?" faltered Smith, stupefied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What miracle? Haven't I been telling you that I've been having that
+queer sense that all this has happened before? Didn't I suddenly begin--
+as though compelled by some unseen power--to foretell things? Didn't I
+prophesy the coming of this cross-town car? Didn't I even name its color
+before it came into sight? Didn't I warn you that I'd probably get into
+it? Didn't I reveal to you that a big straw hat and a pretty summer
+gown----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Confound it!" almost shouted Smith, "There are about five thousand
+cherry-colored cross-town cars in this town. There are about five million
+white hats and dresses in this borough. There are five billion girls
+wearing 'em----!" "Yes; but the <i>wicker basket</i>" breathed Brown. "How do
+you account for <i>that?</i>... And, anyway, you annoy me, Smith. Why don't
+you get out of the car and go somewhere?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want to know where you are going before I knock your head off."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know," replied Brown, serenely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you actually attempting to follow that girl?" whispered Smith,
+horrified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.... It sounds low, doesn't it? But it really isn't. It is something
+I can't explain--you couldn't understand even if I tried to enlighten
+you. The sentiment I harbor is too lofty for some to comprehend, too
+vague, too pure, too ethereal for----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm as lofty and ethereal as you are!" retorted Smith, hotly. "And I
+know a--an ethereal Lothario when I see him, too!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not--though it looks like it--and I forgive you, Smithy, for losing
+your temper and using such language."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, you do?" said Smith, grinning with rage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," nodded Brown, kindly. "I forgive you, but don't call me that
+again. You mean well, but I'm going to find out at last what all this
+maddening, tantalizing, unexplained and mysterious feeling that it all
+has occurred before really is. I'm going to trace it to its source; I'm
+going to compare notes with this highly intelligent girl."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're going to <i>speak</i> to her?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am. I must. How else can I compare data."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hope she'll call the police. If she doesn't <i>I</i> will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't worry. She's part of this strange situation. She'll comprehend as
+soon as I begin to explain. She is intelligent; you only have to look at
+her to understand that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith choking with impotent fury, nevertheless ventured a swift glance.
+Her undeniable beauty only exasperated him. "To think--to <i>think</i>," he
+burst out, "that a modest, decent, law-loving business man like me should
+suddenly awake to find his boyhood friend had turned into a godless
+votary of Venus!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not a votary of Venus!" retorted Brown, turning pink. "I'll punch
+you if you say it again. I'm as decent and respectable a business man as
+you are! And my grammar is better. And, thank Heaven! I've intellect
+enough to recognize a miracle when it happens to me.... Do you think I am
+capable of harboring any sentiments that might bring the blush of
+coquetry to the cheek of modesty? Do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well--well, <i>I</i> don't know what you're up to!" Smith raised his voice in
+bewilderment and despair. "I don't know what possesses you to act this
+way. People don't experience miracles in New York cross-town cars. The
+wildest stretch of imagination could only make a coincidence out of this.
+There are trillions of girls in cross-town cars dressed just like this
+one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the basket!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Another coincidence. There are quadrillions of wicker baskets."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not," said Brown, "with the contents of this one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith instinctively turned to look at the basket balanced daintily on the
+girl's knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He strove to penetrate its wicker exterior with concentrated gaze. He
+could see nothing but wicker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," he began angrily, "what <i>is</i> in that basket? And how do <i>you</i>
+know it--you lunatic?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you believe me if I tell you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you can offer any corroborative evidence----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then--there's a cat in that basket."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A cat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know how I know, but there's a big, gray cat in that basket."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why a <i>gray</i> one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't tell, but it <i>is</i> gray, and it has six toes on every foot."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith truly felt that he was now being trifled with.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brown," he said, trying to speak civilly, "if anybody in the five
+boroughs had come to me with affidavits and told me yesterday how you
+were going to behave this morning----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice, rising unconsciously as the realization of his outrageous
+wrongs dawned upon him, rang out above the rattle and grinding of the
+car, and the girl turned abruptly and looked straight at him and then at
+Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pure, fearless beauty of the gaze, the violet eyes widening a little
+in surprise, silenced both young men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She inspected Brown for an instant, then turned serenely to her calm
+contemplation of the crowded street once more. Yet her dainty, close-set
+ears looked as though they were listening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young men gazed at one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That girl is well bred," said Smith in a low, agitated voice. "You--you
+wouldn't think of venturing to speak to her!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm obliged to, I tell you! This all happened before. I recognize
+everything as it occurs.... Even to your making a general nuisance of
+yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith straightened up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm going to push you forcibly from this car. Do you remember <i>that</i>
+incident?"
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp122.jpg"><img src="images/illp122_th.jpg" alt="The lid of the basket tilted a little. Then a plaintive voice said 'Meow-w'."></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Brown with conviction, "that incident did not happen. You only
+threatened to do it. I remember now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of himself Smith felt a slight chill creep up over his neck and
+inconvenience his spine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said, deeply agitated: "What a terrible position for me to be in--with
+a friend suddenly gone mad in the streets of New York and running after a
+basket containing what he believes to be a cat. A <i>Cat!</i> Good----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown gripped his arm. "Watch it!" he breathed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lid of the basket tilted a little, between lid and rim a soft, furry,
+six-toed gray paw was thrust out. Then a plaintive voice said, "Meow-w!"
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp123.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp124.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="x">X</a></h2>
+
+<h3>THE LID OFF</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>An Alliance, Offensive, Defensive, and Back-Fensive</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith, petrified, looked blankly at the paw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a while he remained stupidly incapable of speech or movement, then,
+as though arousing from a bad dream:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked with an effort. "This car is
+bound to stop sometime, I suppose, and--and then what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know what I'm going to do. Whatever I do will be the thing that
+ought to happen to me, to that cat and to that girl--that is the thing
+which is destined to happen. That's all I know about it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friend passed an unsteady hand across his brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This whole proceeding is becoming a nightmare," he said unsteadily. "Am
+I awake? Is this Forty-second Street? Hold up some fingers, Brown, and
+let me guess how many you hold up, and if I guess wrong I'm home in bed
+asleep and the whole thing is off."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere. And if I don't come go on
+alone to the Carringtons'.... You don't mind going on and fixing things
+up with the Carringtons, do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brown, <i>do</i> you believe that The Green Mouse Society has got hold of
+you? <i>Do</i> you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know and don't care.... Smith, I ask you plainly, did you ever
+before see such a perfectly beautiful girl as that one is?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Beekman, do you believe anything queer is going to result? You don't
+suppose <i>she</i> has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Anything to do with it? How?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I mean," he sank his voice to hoarser depths, "how do you know but that
+this girl, who pretends to pay no attention to us, <i>might</i> be a--a--one
+of those clever, professional mesmerists who force you to follow 'em, and
+get you into their power, and exhibit you, and make you eat raw potatoes
+and tallow candles and tacks before an audience."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He peeped furtively at Brown, who did not appear uneasy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All I'm afraid of," added Smith, sullenly, "is that you'll get yourself
+into vaudeville or the patrol wagon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited, but Brown made no reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, very well," he said, coldly. "I'll take a cab back to the boat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No observation from Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So, <i>good</i>-by, old fellow"--with some emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-by," said Beekman Brown, absently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In fact, he did not even notice when his thoroughly offended partner left
+the car, so intent was he in following the subtly thrilling train of
+thought which tantalized him, mocked him, led him nowhere, yet always
+lured him to fresh endeavor of memory. <i>Where</i> had all this occurred
+before? When? What was going to happen next--happen inexorably, as it had
+once happened, or as it once should have happened, in some dim, bygone
+age when he and that basket and that cat and this same hauntingly lovely
+girl existed together on earth--or perhaps upon some planet, swimming far
+out beyond the ken of men with telescopes?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the girl, strove to consider her impersonally, for her
+youthful beauty began to disturb him. Then cold doubt crept in; something
+of the monstrosity of the proceeding chilled his enthusiasm for occult
+research. Should he speak to her?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly, it was a dreadful thing to do--an offense the enormity of
+which was utterly inexcusable except under the stress of a purely
+impersonal and scientific necessity for investigating a mental phase of
+humanity which had always thrilled him with a curiosity most profound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He folded his arms and began to review in cold blood the circumstances
+which had led to his present situation in a cross-town car. Number one,
+and he held up one finger:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it comes, at times, to every normal human, the odd idea had come to
+him that what he was saying and doing as he emerged from the subway at
+Times Square was what he had, sometime, somewhere, said and done before
+under similar circumstances. That was the beginning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Number two, and he gravely held up a second finger:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Always before when this idea had come to bother him it had faded after a
+moment or two, leaving him merely uneasy and dissatisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time it persisted--intruding, annoying, exasperating him in his
+efforts to remember things which he could not recollect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Number three, and he held up a third finger:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He <i>had</i> begun to remember! As soon as he or Smith said or did anything
+he recollected having said or done it sometime, somewhere, or recollected
+that he <i>ought</i> to have.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Number four--four fingers in air, stiff, determined digits:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not only, by a violent concentration of his memory, succeeded in
+recognizing the things said and done as having been said and done before,
+but suddenly he became aware that he was going to be able to foretell,
+vaguely, certain incidents that were yet to occur--like the prophesied
+advent of the cherry-colored car and the hat, gown, and wicker basket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He now had four fingers in the air; he examined them seriously, and then
+stuck up the fifth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here I am," he thought, "awake, perfectly sane, absolutely respectable.
+Why should a foolish terror of convention prevent me from asking that
+girl whether she knows anything which might throw some light on this most
+interesting mental phenomenon?... I'll do it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl turned her head slightly; speech and the politely perfunctory
+smile froze on his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She held up one finger; Brown's heart leaped. <i>Was</i> that some cabalistic
+sign which he ought to recognize? But she was merely signaling the
+conductor, who promptly pulled the bell and lifted her basket for her
+when she got off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thanked him; Brown heard her, and the crystalline voice began to ring
+in little bell-like echoes all through his ears, stirring endless little
+mysteries of memory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown also got off; his legs struck up a walk of their own volition,
+carrying him across the street, hoisting him into a north-bound Lexington
+Avenue car, and landing him in a seat behind the one where she had
+installed herself and her wicker basket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She seemed to be having some difficulty with the wicker basket;
+beseeching six-toed paws were thrust out persistently; soft meows pleaded
+for the right of liberty and pursuit of feline happiness. Several
+passengers smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Trouble increased as the car whizzed northward; the meows became wilder;
+mad scrambles agitated the basket; the lid bobbed and creaked; the girl
+turned a vivid pink and, bending close over the basket, attempted to
+soothe its enervated inmate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the forties she managed to control the situation; in the fifties a
+frantic rush from within burst a string that fastened the basket lid, but
+the girl held it down with energy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the sixties a tempest broke loose in the basket; harrowing yowls
+pierced the atmosphere; the girl, crimson with embarrassment and
+distress, signaled the conductor at Sixty-fourth Street and descended,
+clinging valiantly to a basket which apparently contained a pack of
+firecrackers in process of explosion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A classical heroine in dire distress invariably exclaims aloud: "Will
+<i>no</i> one aid me?" Brown, whose automatic legs had compelled him to
+follow, instinctively awaited some similar appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It came unexpectedly; the kicking basket escaped from her arms, the lid
+burst open, and an extraordinarily large, healthy and indignant cat flew
+out, tail as big as a duster, and fled east on Sixty-fourth Street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl in the summer gown and white straw hat ran after the cat.
+Brown's legs ran, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was, and is, between the house on the northeast corner of
+Sixty-fourth Street and Lexington Avenue and the next house on
+Sixty-fourth, an open space guarded by an iron railing; through
+this the cat darted, fur on end, and, with a flying leap, took
+to the back fences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!" gasped the girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Brown's legs did an extraordinary thing--they began to scramble and
+kick and shin up the iron railing, hoisting Brown over; and Brown's
+voice, pleasant, calm, reassuring, was busy, too: "If you will look out
+for my suitcase I think I can recover your cat.... It will give me great
+pleasure to recover your cat. I shall be very glad to have, the
+opportunity of recovering--puff--puff--your--puff--puff--c-cat!" And he
+dropped inside the iron railing and paused to recover his breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl came up to the railing and gazed anxiously through at the corner
+of the only back fence she could perceive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What a perfectly dreadful thing to happen!" she said in a voice not very
+steady. "It is exceedingly nice of you to help me catch Clarence. He is
+quite beside himself, poor lamb! You see, he has never before been in the
+city. I--I shall be distressed beyond m-measure if he is lost."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He went over those fences," said Brown, breathing faster. "I think I'd
+better go after him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh--<i>would</i> you mind? I'd be so very grateful. It seems so much to ask
+of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll do it," said Brown, firmly. "Every boy in New York has climbed back
+fences, and I'm only thirty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is most kind of you; but--but I don't know whether you could possibly
+get him to come to you. Clarence is timid with strangers."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown had already clambered on to the wooden fence. He balanced himself
+there, astride. Whitewash liberally decorated coat and trousers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see him," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-what is he doing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Squatting on a trellis three back yards away." And Brown lifted a
+blandishing voice: "Here, Clarence--Clarence--Clarence! Here, kitty--
+kitty--kitty! Good pussy! Nice Clarence!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does he come?" inquired the girl, peering wistfully through the railing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He does not," said Brown. "Perhaps you had better call."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here, puss--puss--puss--puss!" she began gently in that fascinating,
+crystalline voice which seemed to set tiny silvery chimes ringing in
+Brown's ears: "Here, Clarence, darling--Betty's own little kitty-cat!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If he doesn't come to <i>that</i>," thought Brown, "he <i>is</i> a brute." And
+aloud: "If you could only let him see you; he sits there blinking at me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think he'd come if he saw me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who wouldn't?" thought Brown, and answered, calmly: "I think so.... Of
+course, you couldn't get up here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I could.... But I'd better not.... Besides, I live only a few houses
+away--Number 161--and I <i>could</i> go through into the back yard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you'd better not attempt to climb the fence. Have one of the
+servants do it; we'll get the cat between us then and corner him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There are no servants in the house. It's closed for the summer--all
+boarded up!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then how can you get in?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have a key to the basement.... Shall I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And climb up on the fence?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--if I must--if it's necessary to save Clarence.... Shall I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why can't I shoo him into your yard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He doesn't know our yard. He's a country cat; he's never stayed in town.
+I was taking him with me to Oyster Bay.... I came down from a week-end at
+Stockbridge, where some relatives kept Clarence for us while we were
+abroad during the winter.... I meant to stop and get some things in the
+house on my way back to Oyster Bay.... Isn't it a perfectly wretched
+situation?... We--the entire family--adore Clarence--and--I-I'm so
+anxious----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her fascinating underlip trembled, but she controlled it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll get that cat if it takes a month!" said Brown. Then he flushed; he
+had not meant to speak so warmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl flushed too. I am so grateful.... But how----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait," said Brown; and, addressing Clarence in a softly alluring voice,
+he began cautiously to crawl along the fences toward that unresponsive
+animal. Presently he desisted, partly on account of a conspiracy engaged
+in between his trousers and a rusty nail. The girl was now beyond range
+of his vision around the corner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss--ah--Miss--er--er--Betty!" he called.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Clarence has retreated over another back yard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How horrid!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How far down do you live?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She named the number of doors, anxiously adding: "Is Clarence farther
+down the block? Oh, please, be careful. Please, don't drive him past our
+yard. If you will wait I--I'll let myself into the house and--I'll manage
+to get up on the fence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll ruin your gown."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't care about my gown."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"These fences are the limit! Full of spikes and nails.... Will you be
+careful?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, very."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The nails are rusty. I--I am h-horribly afraid of lockjaw."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then don't remain there an instant."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I mean--I'm afraid of it for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a silence; they couldn't see each other. Brown's heart was
+beating fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is very generous of you to--think of me," came her voice, lower but
+very friendly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I ca-can't avoid it," he stammered, and wanted to kick himself for what
+he had blurted out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another pause--longer this time. And then:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am going to enter my house and climb up on the fence.... Would you
+mind waiting a moment?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will wait here," said Beekman Brown, "until I see you." He added to
+himself: "I'm going mad rapidly and I know it and don't care.... <i>What</i>--
+a--girl!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he waited, legs swinging, astride the back fence, he examined his
+injuries--thoughtfully touched the triangular tear in his trousers,
+inspected minor sartorial and corporeal lacerations, set his hat firmly
+upon his head, and gazed across the monotony of the back-yard fences at
+Clarence. The cat eyed him disrespectfully, paws tucked under, tail
+curled up against his well-fed flank--disillusioned, disgusted,
+unapproachable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently, through the palings of a back yard on Sixty-fifth Street,
+Brown saw a small boy, evidently the progeny of some caretaker, regarding
+him intently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say, mister," he began as soon as noticed, "you have tore your pants on
+a nail."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thanks," said Brown, coldly; "will you be good enough to mind your
+business?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought I'd tell you," said the small boy, delightedly aware that the
+information displeased Brown. "They're tore awful, too. That's what you
+get for playin' onto back fences. Y'orter be ashamed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown feigned unconsciousness and folded his arms with dignity; but the
+next moment he straightened up, quivering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You young devil!" he said; "if you pull that slingshot again I'll come
+over there and destroy you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the same moment above the fence line down the block a white straw hat
+appeared; then a youthful face becomingly flushed; then two dainty,
+gloved hands grasping the top of the fence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am here," she called across to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The small boy, who had climbed to the top of his fence, immediately
+joined the conversation:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your girl's a winner, mister," he observed, critically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you going to keep quiet?" demanded Brown, starting across the fence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure," said the small boy, carelessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, settling down on his lofty perch of observation, he began singing:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>"Lum' me an' the woild is mi-on.</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl's cheeks became pinker; she looked at the small boy appealingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Little boy," she said, "if you'll run away somewhere I'll give you ten
+cents."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said the terror, "I want to see him an' you catch that cat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," suggested Brown, inspired. "I'll give you a
+dollar if you'll help us catch the cat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're on!" said the boy, briskly. "What'll I do? Touch her up with this
+bean-shooter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; put that thing into your pocket!" exclaimed Brown, sharply. "Now
+climb across to Sixty-fourth Street and stand by that iron railing so
+that the cat can't bolt out into the street, and," he added, wrapping a
+dollar bill around a rusty nail and tossing it across the fence, "here's
+what's coming to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The small boy scrambled over nimbly, ran squirrel-like across the
+transverse fence, dipped, swarmed over the iron railing and stood on
+guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say, mister," he said, "if the cat starts this way you and your girl
+start a hollerin' like----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right," interrupted Brown, and turned toward the vision of
+loveliness and distress which was now standing on the top of her own back
+fence holding fast to a wistaria trellis and flattering Clarence with low
+and honeyed appeals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cat, however, was either too stupid or too confused to respond; he
+gazed blankly at his mistress, and when Brown began furtively edging his
+way toward him Clarence arose, stood a second in alert indecision, then
+began to back away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We've got him between us!" called out Brown. "If you'll stand ready to
+seize him when I drive him----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a wild scurry, a rush, a leap, frantic clawing for foothold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Miss Betty! Quick!" cried Brown. "Don't let him pass you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spread her skirts, but the shameless Clarence rushed headlong between
+the most delicately ornamental pair of ankles in Manhattan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh-h!" cried the girl in soft despair, and made a futile clutch; but she
+could not arrest the flight of Clarence, she merely upset him, turning
+him for an instant into a furry pinwheel, whirling through mid-air,
+landing in her yard, rebounding like a rubber ball, and disappearing,
+with one flying leap, into a narrow opening in the basement masonry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where is he?" asked Brown, precariously balanced on the next fence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," she said, "this is becoming positively ghastly. He's
+bolted into our cellar."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, that's all right, isn't it?" asked Brown. "All you have to do is to
+go inside, descend to the cellar, and light the gas."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's no gas."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have electric light?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but it's turned off at the main office. The house is closed for the
+summer, you know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown, balancing cautiously, walked the intervening fence like an amateur
+on a tightrope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her pretty hat was a trifle on one side; her cheeks brilliant with
+excitement and anxiety. Utterly oblivious of herself and of appearances
+in her increasing solicitude for the adored Clarence, she sat the fence,
+cross saddle, balancing with one hand and pointing with the other to the
+barred ventilator into which Clarence had darted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wisp of sunny hair blew across her crimson cheek; slender, active,
+excitedly unconscious of self, she seemed like some eager, adorable
+little gamin perched there, intent on mischief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you'll drop into our yard," she said, "and place that soap box
+against the ventilator, Clarence can't get out that way!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was done before she finished the request. She disengaged herself from
+the fencetop, swung over, hung an instant, and dropped into a soft flower
+bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Breathing fast, disheveled, they confronted one another on the grass. His
+blue suit of serge was smeared with whitewash; her gown was a sight. She
+felt for her hat instinctively, repinned it at hazard, looked at her
+gloves, and began to realize what she had done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I couldn't help it," she faltered; "I couldn't leave Clarence in a
+city of five m-million strangers--all alone--terrified out of his senses--
+could I? I had rather--rather be thought--anything than be c-cruel to a
+helpless animal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown dared not trust himself to answer. She was too beautiful and his
+emotion was too deep. So he bent over and attempted to dust his garments
+with the flat of his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice. "Are your clothes quite
+ruined?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I don't mind," he protested happily, "I really don't mind a bit. If
+you'll only let me help you corner that infern--that unfortunate cat I
+shall be perfectly happy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said, with heightened color: "It is exceedingly nice of you to say
+so.... I--I don't quite know--what do you think we had better do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Suppose," he said, "you go into the basement, unlock the cellar door and
+call. He can't bolt this way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded and entered the house. A few moments later he heard her
+calling, so persuasively that it was all he could do not to run to her,
+and why on earth that cat didn't he never could understand.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp144.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h2><a name="xi">XI</a></h2>
+
+<h3>BETTY</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>In Which the Remorseless and Inexorable Results of Psychical Research
+Are Revealed to the Very Young</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At intervals for the next ten minutes her fresh, sweet, fascinating voice
+came to him where he stood in the yard; then he heard it growing fainter,
+more distant, receding; then silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Listening, he suddenly heard a far, rushing sound from subterranean
+depths--like a load of coal being put in--then a frightened cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sprang into the basement, ran through laundry and kitchen. The cellar
+door swung wide open above the stairs which ran down into darkness; and
+as he halted to listen Clarence dashed up out of the depths, scuttled
+around the stairs and fled upward into the silent regions above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty!" he cried, forgetting in his alarm the lesser conventions, "where
+are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, dear--oh, dear!" she wailed. "I am in such a dreadful plight. Could
+you help me, please?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you hurt?" he asked. Fright made his voice almost inaudible. He
+struck a match with shaking fingers and ran down the cellar stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty! Where are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I am here--in the coal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I can't seem to get out; I stepped into the coal pit in the dark and
+it all--all slid with me and over me and I'm in it up to the shoulders."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another match flamed; he saw a stump of a candle, seized it, lighted it,
+and, holding it aloft, gazed down upon the most heart rending spectacle
+he had ever witnessed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next instant he grasped a shovel and leaped to the rescue. She was
+quite calm about it; the situation was too awful, the future too hopeless
+for mere tears. What had happened contained all the dignified elements of
+a catastrophe. They both realized it, and when, madly shoveling, he at
+last succeeded in releasing her she leaned her full weight on his own,
+breathing rapidly, and suffered him to support and guide her through the
+flame-shot darkness to the culinary regions above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here she sank down on a chair for one moment in utter collapse. Then she
+looked up, resolutely steadying her voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Could anything on earth more awful have happened to a girl?" she asked,
+lips quivering in spite of her. She stretched out what had once been a
+pair of white gloves, she looked down at what had been a delicate summer
+gown of white. "How," she asked with terrible calmness, "am I to get to
+Oyster Bay?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dropped on to a kitchen chair opposite her, clasping his coal-stained
+hands between his knees, utterly incapable of speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at her shoes--once snowy white; with a shudder she stripped
+the soiled gloves from elbow to wrist and flung them aside. Her arms and
+hands formed a starling contrast to the remainder of the ensemble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What," she asked, "am I to do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," he said, "is to telephone to your family at Oyster
+Bay."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The telephone has been disconnected. So has the water--we can't even
+w-wash our hands!" she faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: "I can go out and telephone to your family to send a maid with
+some clothes for you--if you don't mind being left alone in an empty
+house for a little while."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't; but," she gazed uncertainly at the black opening of the
+cellar, "but, please, don't be gone very long, will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He promised fervidly. She gave him the number and her family's name, and
+he left by the basement door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was gone a long time, during which, for a while, she paced the floor,
+unaffectedly wringing her hands and contemplating herself and her
+garments in the laundry looking-glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At intervals she tried to turn on the water, hoping for a few drops at
+least; at intervals she sat down to wait for him; then, the inaction
+becoming unendurable, musing goaded her into motion, and she ascended to
+the floor above, groping through the dimness in futile search for
+Clarence. She heard him somewhere in obscurity, scurrying under furniture
+at her approach, evidently too thoroughly demoralized to recognize her
+voice. So, after a while, she gave it up and wandered down to the pantry,
+instinct leading her, for she was hungry and thirsty; but she knew there
+could be nothing eatable in a house closed for the summer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lifted the pantry window and opened the blinds; noon sunshine flooded
+the place, and she began opening cupboards and refrigerators, growing
+hungrier every moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then her eyes fell upon dozens of bottles of Apollinaris, and with a
+little cry of delight she knelt down, gathered up all she could carry,
+and ran upstairs to the bathroom adjoining her own bedchamber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At least," she said to herself, "I can cleanse myself of this dreadful
+coal!" and in a few moments she was reveling, elbow deep, in a marble
+basin brimming with Apollinaris.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the stain of the coal disappeared she remembered a rose-colored
+morning gown reposing in her bedroom clothespress; and she found more
+than that there--rose stockings and slippers and a fragrant pile of
+exquisitely fine and more intimate garments, so tempting in their
+freshness that she hurried with them into the dressing room; then began
+to make rapid journeys up and downstairs, carrying dozens of quarts of
+Apollinaris to the big porcelain tub, into which she emptied them,
+talking happily to herself all the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If he returns I can talk to him over the banisters!... He's a nice
+boy.... Such a funny boy not to remember me.... And I've thought of him
+quite often.... I wonder if I've time for just one, delicious plunge?"
+She listened; ran to the front windows and looked out through the blinds.
+He was nowhere in sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten minutes later, delightfully refreshed, she stood regarding herself in
+her lovely rose-tinted morning gown, patting her bright hair into
+discipline with slim, deft fingers, a half-smile on her lips, lids
+closing a trifle over the pensive violet eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," she said aloud, "I'll talk to him over the banisters when he
+returns; it's a little ungracious, I suppose, after all he has done, but
+it's more conventional.... And I'll sit here and read until they send
+somebody from Sandcrest with a gown I can travel in.... And then we'll
+catch Clarence and call a cab----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A distant tinkling from the area bell interrupted her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "I quite forgot that I had to let him in!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another tinkle. She cast a hurried and doubtful glance over her attire.
+It was designed for the intimacy of her boudoir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I <i>couldn't</i> talk to him out of the window! I've been shocking enough
+as it is!" she thought; and, finger tips on the banisters, she ran down
+the three stairs and appeared at the basement grille, breathless,
+radiant, forgetting, as usual, her self-consciousness in thinking of him,
+a habit of this somewhat harebrained and headlong girl which had its root
+in perfect health of body and wholesomeness of mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I found some clothes--not the sort I can go out in!" she said, laughing
+at his astonishment, as she unlocked the grille. "So, please, overlook my
+attire; I was <i>so</i> full of coal dust! and I found sufficient Apollinaris
+for my necessities.... <i>What</i> did they say at Sandcrest?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said very soberly: "We've got to discuss this situation. Perhaps I had
+better come in for a few minutes--if you don't mind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't mind.... Shall we sit in the drying room?" leading the way.
+"Now tell me what is the matter? You rather frighten me, you know. Is--is
+anything wrong at Sandcrest?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I suppose not." He touched his flushed face with his handkerchief;
+"I couldn't get Oyster Bay on the 'phone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The wires are out of commission as far as Huntington; there's no use--I
+tried everything! Telegraph and telephone wires were knocked out in this
+morning's electric storm, it seems."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gazed at him, hands folded on her knee, left leg crossed over, foot
+swinging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This," she said calmly, "is becoming serious. Will you tell me what I am
+to do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Haven't you anything to travel in?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not one solitary rag."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--you'll have to stay here to-night and send for some of your
+friends--you surely know somebody who is still in town, don't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I really don't. This is the middle of July. I don't know a woman in
+town."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Besides," she said, "we have no light, no water, nothing to eat in the
+house, no telephone to order anything----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: "I foresaw that you would probably be obliged to remain here, so
+when I left the telephone office I took the liberty of calling a taxi and
+visiting the electric light people, the telephone people and the nearest
+plumber. It seems he is your own plumber--Quinn, I believe his name is;
+and he's coming in half an hour to turn on the water."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you think of doing all that?" she asked, astonished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, that wasn't anything. And I ventured to telephone the Plaza to serve
+luncheon and dinner here for you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You <i>did?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I wired to Dooley's Agency to send you a maid for to-day----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That was perfectly splendid of you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They promised to send one as soon as possible.... And I think that may
+be the plumber now," as a tinkle came from the area bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not the plumber; it was waiters bearing baskets full of silver,
+china, table linen, ice, fruits, confections, cut flowers, and, in
+warmers, a most delectable luncheon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four impressive individuals commanded by a butler formed the
+processional, filing solemnly up the basement stairs to the dining room,
+where they instantly began to lay the table with dexterous celerity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the drying room below Betty and Beekman Brown stood confronting each
+other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose," began Brown with an effort, "that I had better go now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty said thoughtfully: "I suppose you must."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unless," continued Brown, "you think I had better remain--somewhere on
+the premises--until your maid arrives."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That might be safer," said Betty, more thoughtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your maid will probably be here in a few minutes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Probably," said Betty, head bent, slim, ringless fingers busy with the
+sparkling drop that glimmered pendant from her neckchain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silence--the ironing board between them--she standing, bright head
+lowered, worrying the jewel with childish fingers; he following every
+movement, fascinated, spellbound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a moment, without looking up: "You have been very, very nice to me--
+in the nicest possible way," she said.... "I am not going to forget it
+easily--even if I might wish to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can never forget <i>you!</i>... I d-don't want to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sparkling pendant escaped her fingers; she picked it up again and
+spoke as though gravely addressing it:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Some day somewhere," she said, looking at the jewel, "perhaps chance--
+the hazard of life--may bring us to--togeth--to acquaintance--a more
+formal acquaintance than this.... I hope so. This has been a little--
+irregular, and perhaps you had better not wait for my maid.... I hope we
+may meet--sometime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hope so, too," he managed to say, with so little fervor and so
+successful an imitation of her politely detached interest in convention
+that she raised her eyes. They dropped immediately, because his quiet
+voice and speech scarcely conformed to the uncontrolled protest in his
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment she stood, passing the golden links through her white
+fingers like a young novice with a rosary. Steps on the stairs disturbed
+them; the recessional had begun; four solemn persons filed out the area
+gate. At the same moment, suave and respectful, her butler pro tem.
+presented himself at the doorway:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Luncheon is served, madam."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you." She looked uncertainly at Brown, hesitated, flushed a
+trifle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will stay here and admit the plumber and then--then--I'll g-go," he
+said with a heartbroken smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose you took the opportunity to lunch when you went out?" she
+said. Her inflection made it a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without answering he stepped back to allow her to pass. She moved
+forward, turned, undecided.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Have</i> you lunched?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please don't feel that you ought to ask me," he began, and checked
+himself as the vivid pink deepened in her cheeks. Then she freed herself
+of embarrassment with a little laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Considering," she said, "that we have been chasing cats on the back
+fences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in my
+own cellar, I can't believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheon
+with me.... Is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is ador--it is," he corrected himself firmly, "exceedingly civil of
+you to ask me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--will you?" almost timidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will. I shall not pretend any more. I'd rather lunch with you than be
+President of this Republic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The butler pro tem. seated her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see," she said, "a place had already been laid for you." And with
+the faintest trace of malice in her voice: "Perhaps your butler had his
+orders to lay two covers. Had he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From me?" he protested, reddening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't suspect <i>me</i>, do you?" she asked, adorably mischievous. Then
+glancing over the masses of flowers in the center and at the corners of
+the lace cloth: "This is deliciously pretty. But you are either
+dreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am. Which is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think both are true," he said, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a little while later when he returned from the basement after
+admitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?" she said, greeting
+his return with delightfully fearless eyes. "Such Astrakan caviar! Such
+salad! Everything I care for most. And how on earth you guessed I can't
+imagine.... I'm beginning to think you are rather wonderful."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They lifted the long, slender glasses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded one
+another over the frosty rims--a long, curious glance from her; a straight
+gaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later, when she gave the signal, they rose as though they had often dined
+together, and moved leisurely out through the dim, shrouded drawing-rooms
+where, in the golden dusk, the odor of camphor hung.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had taken a great cluster of dewy Bride's roses from the centerpiece,
+and as she walked forward, sedately youthful, beside him, her fresh,
+young face brooded over the fragrance of the massed petals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sweet--how sweet!" she murmured to herself, and as they reached the end
+of the vista she half turned to face him, dreamily, listless, confident.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They looked at one another, she with chin brushing the roses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The strangest of all," she said, "is that it <i>seems</i> all right--and--and
+we <i>know</i> that it is all quite wrong.... Had you better go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unless I ought to wait and make sure your maid does not fail you....
+Shall I?" he asked evenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not answer. He drew a linen-swathed armchair toward her; she
+absently seated herself and lay back, caressing the roses with delicate
+lips and chin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twice she looked up at him, standing there by the boarded windows.
+Sunshine filtered through the latticework at the top--enough for them to
+see each other as in a dull afterglow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder how soon my maid will come," she mused, dropping the loose
+roses on her knees. "If she is going to be very long about it perhaps--
+perhaps you might care to find a chair--if you have decided to wait."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew one from a corner and seated himself, pulses hammering his
+throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the stillness of the house sounded at intervals the clink of
+glass from the pantry. Other sounds from above indicated the plumber's
+progress from floor to floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you realize," she said impulsively, "how <i>very</i> nice you have been to
+me? What a perfectly horrid position I might have been in, with poor
+Clarence on the back fence! And suppose I had dared follow him alone to
+the cellar? I--I might have been there yet--up to my neck in coal?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gazed into space with considerable emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now," she said, "I am safe here in my own home. I have lunched
+divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe
+indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light
+and the telephone will be in working order before very long--and it is
+<i>all</i> due to you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I did a few things I almost w-wish I hadn't," stammered Brown,
+"b-because I can't, somehow, decently t-tell you how tremendously
+I--I--" He stuck fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It would look as though I were presuming on a t-trifling service
+rendered, and--oh, I can't say it; I want to, but I can't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say what? Please, I don't mind what you are--are going to say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's--it's that I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-es?" in soft encouragement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-want to know you most tremendously now. I don't want to wait several
+years for chance and hazard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O-h!" as though the information conveyed a gentle shock to her. Her
+low-breathed exclamation nearly finished Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew you'd think it unpardonable for me--at such a time--to venture
+to--to--ask--say--express--convey----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why do you--how can I--where could we--" She recovered herself
+resolutely. "I do not think we ought to take advantage of an accident
+like this.... Do you? Besides, probably, in the natural course of social
+events----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But it may be years! months! weeks!" insisted Brown, losing control of
+himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should hope it would at least be a decently reasonable interval of
+several weeks----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't know what to do if I never see you again for weeks! I c-care
+so much--for--you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shrank back in her chair, and in her altered face he read that he had
+disgraced himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew I was going to," he said in despair. "I couldn't keep it--I
+couldn't stop it. And now that you see what sort of a man I am I'm going
+to tell you more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You need not," she said faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must. Listen! I--I don't even know your full name--all I know is that
+it is Betty, and that your cat's name is Clarence and your plumber's name
+is Quinn. But if I didn't know anything at all concerning you it would
+have been the same. I suppose you will think me insane if I tell you that
+before the car, on which you rode, came into sight I <i>knew</i> you were on
+it. And I--cared--for--you--before I ever saw you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't understand----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know you don't. <i>I</i> don't. All I understand is that what you and I
+have done has been done by us before, sometime, somewhere--part only--
+down to--down to where you changed cars. Up to that moment, before you
+took the Lexington Avenue car, I recognized each incident as it
+occurred.... But when all this happened to us before I must have lost
+courage--for I did not recognize anything after that except that I cared
+for you.... <i>Do</i> you understand one single word of what I have been
+saying?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The burning color in her face had faded slowly while he was speaking; her
+lifted eyes grew softer, serious, as he ended impetuously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him in retrospective silence. There was no mistaking his
+astonishing sincerity, his painfully earnest endeavor to impart to her
+some rather unusual ideas in which he certainly believed. No man who
+looked that way at a woman could mean impertinence; her own intelligence
+satisfied her that he had not meant and could never mean offense to any
+woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell me," she said quietly, "just what you mean. It is not possible for
+you to--care--for--me.... Is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He disclosed to her, beginning briefly with his own name, material and
+social circumstances, a pocket edition of his hitherto uneventful career,
+the advent that morning of the emissary from The Green Mouse, his
+discussion with Smith, the strange sensation which crept over him as he
+emerged from the tunnel at Forty-second Street, his subsequent
+altercation with Smith, and the events that ensued up to the eruption of
+Clarence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke in his most careful attorney's manner, frank, concise,
+convincing, free from any exaggeration of excitement or emotion. And she
+listened, alternately fascinated and appalled as, step by step, his story
+unfolded the links in an apparently inexorable sequence involving this
+young man and herself in a predestined string of episodes not yet ended--
+if she permitted herself to credit this astounding story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sensitively intelligent, there was no escaping the significance of the
+only possible deduction. She drew it and blushed furiously. For a moment,
+as the truth clamored in her brain, the self-evidence of it stunned her.
+But she was young, and the shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous,
+almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lips
+parted in outraged protest--parted and remained so, wordless, silent--the
+soundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had imperceptibly
+begun to tremble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her head sank slowly; she laid her white hands above the roses heaped in
+her lap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a long while she remained so. And he did not speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First the butler went away. Then Mr. Quinn followed. The maid had not yet
+arrived. The house was very still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And after the silence had worn his self-control to the breaking point he
+rose and walked to the dining room and stood looking down into the yard.
+The grass out there was long and unkempt; roses bloomed on the fence;
+wistaria, in its deeper green of midsummer, ran riot over the trellis
+where Clarence had basely dodged his lovely mistress, and, after making a
+furry pin wheel of himself, had fled through the airhole into Stygian
+depths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somewhere above, in the silent house, Clarence was sulkily dissembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose," said Brown, quietly coming back to where the girl was
+sitting in the golden dusk, "that I might as well find Clarence while we
+are waiting for your maid. May I go up and look about?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And taking her silence as assent, he started upstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hunted carefully, thoroughly, opening doors, peeping under furniture,
+investigating clothespresses, listening at intervals, at intervals
+calling with misleading mildness. But, like him who died in malmsey,
+Clarence remained perjured and false to all sentiments of decency so
+often protested purringly to his fair young mistress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mechanically Brown opened doors of closets, knowing, if he had stopped to
+think, that cats don't usually turn knobs and let themselves into tightly
+closed places.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In one big closet on the fifth floor, however, as soon as he opened the
+door there came a rustle, and he sprang forward to intercept the
+perfidious one; but it was only the air stirring the folds of garments
+hanging on the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he turned to step forth again the door gently closed with an ominous
+click, shutting him inside. And after five minutes' frantic fussing he
+realized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strange
+house, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, who might, at
+any moment now that the telephone was in order, call a cab and flee from
+a man who had tried to explain to her that they were irrevocably
+predestined for one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Calling and knocking were dignified and permissible, but they did no
+good. To kick violently at the door was not dignified, but he was obliged
+to do it. Evidently the closet was too remote for the sound to penetrate
+down four flights of stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to break down the door--they do it in all novels. He only
+rebounded painfully, ineffectively, which served him right for reading
+fiction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It irked him to shout; he hesitated for a long while; then sudden
+misgiving lest she might flee the house seized him and he bellowed. It
+was no use.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruising
+himself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes and
+textures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder and
+madder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence of
+which he had never dreamed himself capable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he sat down. He remained perfectly still for a long while, listening
+and delicately feeling his hurts. A curious drowsiness began to irritate
+him; later the irritation subsided and he felt a little sleepy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His heart, however, thumped like an inexpensive clock; the cedar-tainted
+air in the closet grew heavier; he felt stupid, swaying as he rose. No
+wonder, for the closet was as near air-tight as it could be made.
+Fortunately he did not realize it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, meanwhile, downstairs, Betty was preparing for flight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not know where she was going--how far away she could get in a
+rose-silk morning gown. But she had discovered, in a clothespress, an
+automobile duster, cap, and goggles; on the strength of these she tried
+the telephone, found it working, summoned a coupé, and was now awaiting
+its advent. But the maid from Dooley's must first arrive to take charge
+of the house and Clarence until she, Betty, could summon her family to
+her assistance and defy The Green Mouse, Beekman Brown, and Destiny
+behind her mother's skirts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flight was, therefore, imperative--it was absolutely indispensable that
+she put a number of miles between herself and this young man who had just
+informed her that Fate had designed them for one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was no longer considering whether she owed this amazing young man any
+gratitude, or what sort of a man he might be, agreeable, well-bred,
+attractive; all she understood was that this man had suddenly stepped
+into her life, politely expressing his conviction that they could not,
+ultimately, hope to escape from each other. And, beginning to realize the
+awful import of his words, the only thing that restrained her from
+instant flight on foot was the hidden Clarence. She could not abandon her
+cat. She must wait for that maid. She waited. Meanwhile she hunted up
+Dooley's Agency in the telephone book and called them up. They told her
+the maid was on the way--as though Dooley's Agency could thwart Destiny
+with a whole regiment of its employees!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had discarded her roses with a shudder; cap, goggles, duster, lay in
+her lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she'd flee. If Brown came
+back before the maid arrived she'd tell him plainly what she had decided
+on, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering the
+incredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline to
+encourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independent
+affair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series of
+beats which annoyed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is true," she admitted to herself, "that he is a gentleman, and I can
+scarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave him
+without any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I must
+remember that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularly
+as she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and a
+pencil, and wrote rapidly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Dear Mr. Brown:</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can't help it. The maid
+will stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of the
+family. I don't mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you told
+me about our--about what you told me.... I'm sorry you tore your clothes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or your
+conduct, which was perfectly ('charming' scratched out) proper. It is
+only that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to ('marry'
+scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and a
+new line begun).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choice
+in life left her--to be forced, by what you say are occult currents,
+into--friendship--with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So I
+don't think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to present
+us to each other. This doesn't sound right, but you will surely
+understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, and
+childish--but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you are
+perfectly nice--but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifying
+to me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will--won't
+you?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see you
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I am only going to thank you, and say ('with all my heart' crossed
+out) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous and
+considerate--most--most----"
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of Beekman
+Brown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy and
+looked at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mind
+evoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on the
+back of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him for
+many minutes now. Why was he so still?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder,
+listening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? Had
+Clarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can't annihilate
+big, strong young men. But <i>where</i> was he? Had he, pursuing his quest,
+emerged through the scuttle on to the roof--and--and--fallen off?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor,
+listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, opening
+doors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searching
+more quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quite
+steady. There was no reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking up
+her rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet at
+hand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of the
+cedar press and tore it wide open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolled rugs, clothes hangers and
+furs, quite motionless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knew enough to run into the servants' rooms, fling open the windows
+and, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youth
+across the floor and into the fresh air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O-h!" she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she
+took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency,
+performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise
+which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he
+made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became
+articulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. He
+opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that
+were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the
+floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear
+of death, looked back, breathless, trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is a devil of a place, that closet," he said faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed,
+being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips--felt his lips on
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the
+heart, stilling it--silencing pulse and breath--nay, thought itself. She
+heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I cared for you. You give me life--and I adore you.... Let me. It will
+not harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; but
+unless some day you will prove it for me--Betty--the problem of life is
+but a sorry sum--a total of ciphers without end.... No other two people
+in all the world could be what we are and what we have been to each
+other. No other two people could dare to face what we dare face." He
+paused: "Dare we, Betty?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes turned from his. He rose unsteadily, supported on one arm; she
+sprang to her feet, looked at him, and, as he made an awkward effort to
+rise, suddenly bent forward and gave him both hands in aid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait--wait!" she said; "let me try to think, if I can. Don't speak to me
+again--not yet--not now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, at intervals, as they descended the flights of stairs, she turned
+instinctively to watch his progress, for he still moved with difficulty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the drawing-room they halted, he leaning heavily on the back of a
+chair, she, distrait, restless, pacing the polished parquet, treading her
+roses under foot, turning from time to time to look at him--a strange,
+direct, pure-lidded gaze that seemed to freshen his very soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once he stooped and picked up one of the trodden roses bruised by her
+slim foot; once, as she passed him, pacing absently the space between the
+door and him, he spoke her name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But: "Wait!" she breathed. "You have said everything. It is for me to
+reply--if I speak at all. C-can't you wait for--me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have I angered you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She halted, head high, superb in her slim, young beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do I look it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor I. Let me find out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room had become dimmer; the light on her hair and face and hands
+glimmered dully as she passed and re-passed him in her restless progress--
+restless, dismayed, frightened progress toward a goal she already saw
+ahead--close ahead of her--every time she turned to look at him. She
+already knew the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>That</i> man! And she knew that already he must be, for her, something that
+she could never again forget--something she must reckon with forever and
+ever while life endured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She paused and inspected him almost insolently. Suddenly the rush of the
+last revolt overwhelmed her; her eyes blazed, her white hands tightened
+into two small clenched fists--and then tumult died in her ringing ears,
+the brightness of the eyes was quenched, her hands relaxed, her head sank
+low, lower, never again to look on this man undismayed, heart free,
+unafraid--never again to look into this man's eyes with the unthinking,
+unbelieving tranquillity born of the most harmless skepticism in the
+world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood there in silence, heard his step beside her, raised her head
+with an effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hands quivered, refusing surrender. He bent and lifted them, pressing
+them to his eyes, his forehead. Then lowered them to the level of his
+lips, holding them suspended, eyes looking into hers, waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly her eyes closed, a convulsive little tremor swept her, she
+pressed both clasped hands against his lips, her own moved, but no words
+came--only a long, sweet, soundless sigh, soft as the breeze that stirs
+the crimson maple buds when the snows of spring at last begin to melt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From a dark corner under the piano Clarence watched them furtively.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp177.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp178.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="xii">XII</a></h2>
+
+<h3>SYBILLA</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Showing What Comes of Disobedience, Rosium, and Flour-Paste</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About noon Bushwyck Carr bounced into the gymnasium, where the triplets
+had just finished their fencing lesson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did any of you three go into the laboratory this morning?" he demanded,
+his voice terminating in a sort of musical bellow, like the blast of a
+mellow French horn on a touring car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The triplets--Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla--all clothed precisely
+alike in knee kilts, plastrons, gauntlets and masks, came to attention,
+saluting their parent with their foils. The Boznovian fencing mistress,
+Madame Tzinglala, gracefully withdrew to the dressing room and departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Which of you three girls went into the laboratory this morning?"
+repeated their father impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The triplets continued to stand in a neat row, the buttons of their foils
+aligned and resting on the hardwood floor. In graceful unison they
+removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded
+the author of their being attentively--more attentively still when that
+round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his
+monocle into an angry left eye and glared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Didn't I warn you to keep out of that laboratory?" he asked wrathfully;
+"didn't I explain to you that it was none of your business? I believe I
+informed you that whatever is locked up in that room is no concern of
+yours. Didn't I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Pa-<i>pah</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, confound it, what did you go in for, then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An anxious silence was his answer. "You didn't all go in, did you?" he
+demanded in a melodious bellow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, Pa-<i>pah!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did two of you go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh-h, n-o, Pa-<i>pah!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, which one did?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The line of beauty wavered for a moment; then Sybilla stepped slowly to
+the front, three paces, and halted with downcast eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I told you not to, didn't I?" said her father, scowling the monocle out
+of his eye and reinserting it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes, Pa-<i>pah</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you <i>did?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That will do! Flavilla! Drusilla! You are excused," dismissing the two
+guiltless triplets with a wave of the terrible eyeglass; and when they
+had faced to the rear and retired in good order, closing the door behind
+them, he regarded his delinquent daughter in wrathy and rubicund dismay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did you see in that laboratory?" he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla began to count on her fingers. "As I walked around the room I
+noticed jars, bottles, tubes, lamps, retorts, blowpipes, batteries----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you notice a small, shiny machine that somewhat resembles the
+interior economy of a watch?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Pa-<i>pah</i>, but I haven't come to that yet----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you go near it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite near----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You didn't touch it, did you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was going to tell you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Did</i> you?" he bellowed musically. "Answer me, Sybilla!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes--I did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did you suppose it to be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought--we all thought--that you kept a wireless telephone instrument
+in there----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why? Just because I happen to be president of the Amalgamated Wireless
+Trust Company?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes. And we were dying to see a wireless telephone work.... I thought
+I'd like to call up Central--just to be sure I could make the thing go--
+<i>What</i> is the matter, Pa-<i>pah?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dropped into a wadded armchair and motioned Sybilla to a seat
+opposite. Then with another frightful facial contortion he reimbedded the
+monocle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you deliberately opened that door and went in to rummage?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said the girl; "we were--skylarking a little, on our way to the
+gymnasium; and I gave Brasilia a little shove toward the laboratory door,
+and then Flavilla pushed me--very gently--and somehow I--the door flew
+open and my mask fell off and rolled inside; and I went in after it. That
+is how it happened--partly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lifted her dark and very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then
+they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the
+polished floor with the point of her foil. "That is partly how," she
+repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is the other part?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The other part was that, having unfortunately disobeyed you, and being
+already in the room, I thought I might as well stay and take a little
+peep around----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father fairly bounced in his padded chair. The velvet-eyed descendant
+of Eve shot a fearful glance at him and continued, still casually tracing
+invisible arabesques with her foil's point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see, don't you," she said, "that being actually <i>in</i>, I thought I
+might as well do something before I came out again, which would make my
+disobedience worth the punishment. So I first picked up my mask, then I
+took a scared peep around. There were only jars and bottles and
+things.... I was dreadfully disappointed. The certainty of being punished
+and then, after all, seeing nothing but bottles, <i>did</i> seem rather
+unfair.... So I--walked around to--to see if I could find something to
+look at which would repay me for the punishment.... There is a proverb,
+isn't there Pa-<i>pah?</i>--something about being executed for a lamb----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go on!" he said sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, all I could find that looked as though I had no business to touch
+it was a little jeweled machine----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>That</i> was it! Did you touch it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, several times. Was it a wireless?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never mind! Yes, it's one kind of a wireless instrument. Go on!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla shook her head:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm sure I don't see why you are so disturbingly emphatic; because I
+haven't an idea how to send or receive a wireless message, and I hadn't
+the vaguest notion how that machine might work. I tried very hard to make
+it go; I turned several screws and pushed all the push-buttons----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr emitted a hollow, despairing sound--a sort of musical groan--and
+feebly plucked at space.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tried every lever, screw, and spring," she went on calmly, "but the
+machine must have been out of order, for I only got one miserable little
+spark----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You got a <i>spark?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--just a tiny, noiseless atom of white fire----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father bounced to his feet and waved both hands at her distractedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know what you've done?" he bellowed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you've prepared yourself to fall in love! And you've probably
+induced some indescribable pup to fall in love with you! And <i>that's</i>
+what you've done!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In--<i>love!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you have!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how can a common wireless telephone----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's another kind of a wireless. Your brother-in-law, William Destyn,
+invented it; I'm backing it and experimenting with it. I told you to keep
+out of that room. I hung up a sign on the door: <i>'Danger! Keep out!'</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-was that thing loaded?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it <i>was</i> loaded!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-what with?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Waves!" shouted her father, furiously. "Psychic waves! You little ninny,
+we've just discovered that the world and everything in it is enveloped in
+psychic waves, as well as invisible electric currents. The minute you got
+near that machine and opened the receiver, waves from your subconscious
+personality flowed into it. And the minute you touched that spring and
+got a spark, your psychic waves had signaled, by wireless, the
+subconscious personality of some young man--some insufferable pup--who'll
+come from wherever he is at present--from the world's end if need be--and
+fall in love with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr jumped ponderously up and down in pure fury; his daughter
+regarded him in calm consternation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am so very, very sorry," she said; "but I am quite certain that I am
+not going to fall in love----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can't help it," roared her father, "if that instrument worked."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is--is that what it's f-for?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's what it's invented for; that's why I'm putting a million into it.
+Anybody on earth desiring to meet the person with whom they're destined,
+some time or other, to fall in love, can come to us, in confidence, buy a
+ticket, and be hitched on to the proper psychic connection which insures
+speedy courtship and marriage--Damnation!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pa-<i>pah!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't help it! Any self-respecting, God-fearing father would swear! Do
+you think I ever expected to have my daughters mixed up with this
+machine? My daughters wooed, engaged and married by <i>machinery!</i> And
+you're only eighteen; do you hear me? I won't have it! I'll certainly not
+have it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, dear, I don't in the least intend to fall in love and marry at
+eighteen. And if--<i>he</i>--really--comes, I'll tell him very frankly that I
+could not think of falling in love. I'll quietly explain that the machine
+went off by mistake and that I am only eighteen; and that Flavilla and
+Drusilla and I are not to come out until next winter. That," she added
+innocently, "ought to hold him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," said her father, gazing fixedly at her, "is to keep
+you in your room until you're twenty!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Pa-<i>pah!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr smote his florid brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll stay in for a week, anyway!" he thundered mellifluously. "No
+motoring party for you! That's your punishment. You'll be safe for today,
+anyhow; and by evening William Destyn will be back from Boston and I'll
+consult him as to the safest way to keep you out of the path of this
+whippersnapper you have managed to wake up--evoke--stir out of space--
+wherever he may be--whoever he may be--whatever he chances to call
+himself----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"George," she murmured involuntarily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What!!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at her father, abashed, confused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How absurd of me," she said. "I don't know why I should have thought of
+that name, George; or why I should have said it out loud--that way--I
+really don't----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who do you know named George?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-nobody in particular that I can think of----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sybilla! Be honest!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Really, I don't; I am always honest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew she was truthful, always; but he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then why the devil did you look--er--so, so moonily at me and call me
+George?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't imagine--I can't understand----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, <i>I</i> can! You don't realize it, but that cub's name must be George!
+I'll look out for the Georges. I'm glad I've been warned. I'll see that
+no two-legged object named George enters this house! You'll never go
+anywhere where there's anybody named George if I can prevent it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I don't want to," she returned, almost ready to cry. "You are very
+cruel to me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish to be. I desire to be a monster!" he retorted fiercely. "You're
+an exceedingly bad, ungrateful, undutiful, disobedient and foolish child.
+Your sisters and I are going to motor to Westchester and lunch there with
+your sister and your latest brother-in-law. And if they ask why you
+didn't come I'll tell them that it's because you're undutiful, and that
+you are not to stir outdoors for a week, or see anybody who comes into
+this house!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I suppose I d-deserve it," she acquiesced tearfully. "I'm quite ready
+to be disciplined, and quite willing not to see anybody named George--
+ever! Besides, you have scared me d-dreadfully! I--I don't want to go out
+of the house."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when her father had retired with a bounce she remained alone in the
+gymnasium, eyes downcast, lips quivering. Later still, sitting in
+precisely the same position, she heard the soft whir of the touring car
+outside; then the click of the closing door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There they go," she said to herself, "and they'll have such a jolly
+time, and all those very agreeable Westchester young men will be there--
+particularly Mr. Montmorency.... I <i>did</i> like him awfully; besides, his
+name is Julian, so it is p-perfectly safe to like him--and I <i>did</i> want
+to see how Sacharissa looks after her bridal trip."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her lower lip trembled; she steadied it between her teeth, gazed
+miserably at the floor, and beat a desolate tattoo on it with the tip of
+her foil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am being well paid for my disobedience," she whimpered. "Now I can't
+go out for a week; and it's April; and when I do go out I'll be so
+anxious all the while, peeping furtively at every man who passes and
+wondering whether his name might be George.... And it is going to be
+horridly awkward, too.... Fancy their bringing up some harmless dancing
+man named George to present to me next winter, and I, terrified, picking
+up my débutante skirts and running.... I'll actually be obliged to flee
+from every man until I know his name isn't George. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
+What an awful outlook for this summer when we open the house at Oyster
+Bay! What a terrible vista for next winter!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She naïvely dabbed a tear from her long lashes with the back of her
+gauntlet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her maid came, announcing luncheon, but she would have none of it, nor
+any other offered office, including a bath and a house gown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You go away somewhere, Bowles," she said, "and please, don't come near
+me, and don't let anybody come anywhere in my distant vicinity, because I
+am v-very unhappy, Bowles, and deserve to be--and I--I desire to be alone
+with c-conscience."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Miss Sybilla----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no, no! I don't even wish to hear your voice--or anybody's. I don't
+wish to hear a single human sound of any description. I--<i>what</i> is that
+scraping noise in the library?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A man, Miss Sybilla----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A <i>man!</i> W-what's his name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know, miss. He's a workman--a paper hanger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you wish me to ask him to stop scraping, miss?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla laughed: "No, thank you." And she continued, amused at herself
+after her maid had withdrawn, strolling about the gymnasium, making
+passes with her foil at ring, bar, and punching bag. Her anxiety, too,
+was subsiding. The young have no very great capacity for continued
+anxiety. Besides, the first healthy hint of incredulity was already
+creeping in. And as she strolled about, swishing her foil, she mused
+aloud at her ease:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What an extraordinary and horrid machine!... <i>How</i> can it do such
+exceedingly common things? And what a perfectly unpleasant way to fall in
+love--by machinery!... I had rather not know who I am some day to--to
+like--very much.... It is far more interesting to meet a man by accident,
+and never suspect you may ever come to care for him, than to buy a
+ticket, walk over to a machine full of psychic waves and ring up some
+strange man somewhere on earth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a shudder of disdain she dropped on to a lounge and took her face
+between both hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was like her sisters, tall, prettily built, and articulated, with the
+same narrow feet and hands--always graceful when lounging, no matter what
+position her slim limbs fell into.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now, in her fencing skirts of black and her black stockings, she was
+exceedingly ornamental, with the severe lines of the plastron accenting
+the white throat and chin, and the scarlet heart blazing over her own
+little heart--unvexed by such details as love and lovers. Yes, unvexed;
+for she had about come to the conclusion that her father had frightened
+her more than was necessary; that the instrument had not really done its
+worst; in fact, that, although she had been very disobedient, she had had
+a rather narrow escape; and nothing more serious than paternal
+displeasure was likely to be visited upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which comforted her to an extent that brought a return of appetite; and
+she rang for luncheon, and ate it with the healthy nonchalance usually so
+characteristic of her and her sisters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," she reflected, "I'll have to wait an hour for my bath"--one of the
+inculcated principles of domestic hygiene. So, rising, she strolled
+across the gymnasium, casting about for something interesting to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked out of the back windows. In New York the view from back
+windows is not imposing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tiring of the inartistic prospect she sauntered out and downstairs to see
+what her maid might be about. Bowles was sewing; Sybilla looked on for a
+while with languid interest, then, realizing that a long day of
+punishment was before her, that she deserved it, and that she ought to
+perform some act of penance, started contritely for the library with
+resolute intentions toward Henry James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she entered she noticed that the bookshelves, reaching part way to the
+ceiling, were shrouded in sheets. Also she encountered a pair of
+sawhorses overlaid with boards, upon which were rolls of green flock
+paper, several pairs of shears, a bucket of paste, a large, flat brush, a
+knife and a T-square.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The paper hanger man," she said. "He's gone to lunch. I'll have time to
+seize on Henry James and flee."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Henry James, like some other sacred conventions, was, in that
+library, a movable feast. Sometimes he stood neatly arranged on one
+shelf, sometimes on another. There was no counting on Henry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla lifted the sheets from the face of one case and peered closer.
+Henry was not visible. She lifted the sheets from another case; no Henry;
+only G.P.R., in six dozen rakish volumes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla peeped into a third case. Then a very unedifying thing occurred.
+Surely, surely, this was Sybilla's disobedient day. She saw a forbidden
+book glimmering in old, gilded leather--she saw its classic back turned
+mockingly toward her--the whole allure of the volume was impudent,
+dog-eared, devil-may-care-who-reads-me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took it out, replaced it, looked hard, hard for Henry, found him not,
+glanced sideways at the dog-eared one, took a step sideways.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll just see where it was printed," she said to herself, drawing out
+the book and backing off hastily--so hastily that she came into collision
+with the sawhorse table, and the paste splashed out of the bucket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Sybilla paid no heed; she was examining the title page of old
+Dog-ear: a rather wonderful title page, printed in fascinating red and black
+with flourishes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll just see whether--" And the smooth, white fingers hesitated; but
+she had caught a glimpse of an ancient engraving on the next page--a very
+quaint one, that held her fascinated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned the next page. The first paragraph of the famous classic began
+deliciously. After a few moments she laughed, adding to herself: "I can't
+see what harm----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no harm. Her father had meant another book; but Sybilla did not
+know that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll just glance through it to--to--be sure that I mustn't read it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laid one hand on the paper hanger's table, vaulted up sideways, and,
+seated on the top, legs swinging, buried herself in the book, unconscious
+that the overturned paste was slowly fastening her to the spattered table
+top.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An hour later, hearing steps on the landing, she sprang--that is, she
+went through all the graceful motions of springing lightly to the floor.
+But she had not budged an inch. No Gorgon's head could have consigned her
+to immovability more hopeless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Restrained from freedom by she knew not what, she made one frantic and
+demoralized effort--and sank back in terror at the ominous tearing sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was glued irrevocably to the table.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp196.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp197.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="xiii">XIII</a></h2>
+
+<h3>THE CROWN PRINCE</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Wherein the Green Mouse Squeaks</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few minutes later the paper hanging young man entered, swinging an
+empty dinner pail and halted in polite surprise before a flushed young
+girl in full fencing costume, who sat on his operating table, feet
+crossed, convulsively hugging a book to the scarlet heart embroidered on
+her plastron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--hope you don't mind my sitting here," she managed to say. "I wanted
+to watch the work."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By all means," he said pleasantly. "Let me get you a chair----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, thank you. I had rather sit th-this way. Please begin and don't mind
+if I watch you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man appeared to be perplexed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm afraid," he ventured, "that I may require that table for cutting
+and----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please--if you don't mind--begin to paste. I am in-intensely interested
+in p-pasting--I like to w-watch p-paper p-pasted on a w-wall."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her small teeth chattered in spite of her; she strove to control her
+voice--strove to collect her wits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood irresolute, rather astonished, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm sorry," he said, "but----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Please</i> paste; won't you?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, I've got to have that table to paste on----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then d-don't think of pasting. D-do anything else; cut out some strips.
+I am so interested in watching p-paper hangers cut out things--"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I need the table for that, too----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you don't. You can't be a--a very skillful w-workman if you've got
+to use your table for everything----"
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp198.jpg"><img src="images/illp198_th.jpg" alt="'I'm afraid', he ventured 'that I may require that table for cutting.'"></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed. "You are quite right; I'm not a skillful paper hanger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then," she said, "I am surprised that you came here to paper our
+library, and I think you had better go back to your shop and send a
+competent man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed again. The paper hanger's youthful face was curiously
+attractive when he laughed--and otherwise, more or less.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: "I came to paper this library because Mr. Carr was in a hurry,
+and I was the only man in the shop. I didn't want to come. But they made
+me.... I think they're rather afraid of Mr. Carr in the shop.... And this
+work <i>must</i> be finished today."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not know what to say; anything to keep him away from the table
+until she could think clearly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-why didn't you want to come?" she asked, fighting for time. "You said
+you didn't want to come, didn't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because," he said, smiling, "I don't like to hang wall paper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But if you are a paper hanger by trade----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose you think me a real paper hanger?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was cautiously endeavoring to free one edge of her skirt; she nodded
+absently, then subsided, crimsoning, as a faint tearing of cloth sounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go on," she said hurriedly; "the story of your career is <i>so</i>
+interesting. You say you adore paper hanging----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't," he returned, chagrined. "I say I hate it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why do you do it, then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because my father thinks that every son of his who finishes college
+ought to be disciplined by learning a trade before he enters a
+profession. My oldest brother, De Courcy, learned to be a blacksmith; my
+next brother, Algernon, ran a bakery; and since I left Harvard I've been
+slapping sheets of paper on people's walls----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Harvard?" she repeated, bewildered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; I was 1907."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>You!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked down at his white overalls, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does that astonish you, Miss Carr?--you are Miss Carr, I suppose----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sybilla--yes--we're--we're triplets," she stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The beauti--the--the Carr triplets! And you are one of them?" he
+exclaimed, delighted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes." Still bewildered, she sat there, looking at him. How
+extraordinary! How strange to find a Harvard man pasting paper! Dire
+misgivings flashed up within her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who are you?" she asked tremulously. "Would you mind telling me your
+name. It--it isn't--<i>George!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked up in pleased surprise:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you know who I am?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no. But--it isn't George--is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, yes----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O-h!" she breathed. A sense of swimming faintness enveloped her: she
+swayed; but an unmistakable ripping noise brought her suddenly to
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid you are tearing your skirt somehow," he said anxiously. "Let
+me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The desperation of the negative approached violence, and he involuntarily
+stepped back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment they faced one another; the flush died out on her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If," she said, "your name actually is George, this--this is the most--
+the most terrible punishment--" She closed her eyes with her fingers as
+though to shut out some monstrous vision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What," asked the amazed young man, "has my name to do with----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hands dropped from her eyes; with horror she surveyed him, his
+paste-spattered overalls, his dingy white cap, his dinner pail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I <i>won't</i> marry you!" she stammered in white desperation. "I <i>won't!</i>
+If you're not a paper hanger you look like one! I don't care whether
+you're a Harvard man or not--whether you're playing at paper hanging or
+not--whether your name is George or not--I won't marry you--I won't! I
+<i>won't!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the feeling that his senses were rapidly evaporating the young man
+sat down dizzily, and passed a paste-spattered but well-shaped hand
+across his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla set her lips and looked at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't suppose," she said, "that you understand what I am talking
+about, but I've got to tell you at once; I can't stand this sort of
+thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-what sort of thing?" asked the young man, feebly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your being here in this house--with me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll be very glad to go----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait! <i>That</i> won't do any good! You'll come back!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no, I won't----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you will. Or I--I'll f-follow you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One or the other! We can't help it, I tell you. <i>You</i> don't understand,
+but I do. And the moment I knew your name was George----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What the deuce has that got to do with anything?" he demanded, turning
+red in spite of his amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Waves!" she said passionately, "psychic waves! I--somehow--knew that
+he'd be named George----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who'd be named George?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>He!</i> The--man... And if I ever--if you ever expect me to--to c-care for
+a man all over overalls----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't--Good Heavens!--I don't expect you to care for--for
+overalls----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then why do you wear them?" she asked in tremulous indignation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man, galvanized, sprang from his chair and began running about,
+taking little, short, distracted steps. "Either," he said, "I need mental
+treatment immediately, or I'll wake up toward morning.... I--don't know
+what you're trying to say to me. I came here to--to p-paste----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That machine sent you!" she said. "The minute I got a spark you
+started----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think I'm a motor? Spark! Do you think I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I do. You couldn't help it; I know it was my own fault, and this--
+<i>this</i> is the dreadful punishment--g-glued to a t-table top--with a man
+named George----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!!!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she said passionately, "everything disobedient I have done has
+brought lightning retribution. I was forbidden to go into the laboratory;
+I disobeyed and--you came to hang wall paper! I--I took a b-book--which I
+had no business to take, and F-fate glues me to your horrid table and
+holds me fast till a man named George comes in...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flushed, trembling, excited, she made a quick and dramatic gesture of
+despair; and a ripping sound rent the silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Are you pasted to that table?</i>" faltered the young man, aghast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I am. And it's utterly impossible for you to aid me in the
+slightest, except by pretending to ignore it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you--you can't remain there!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't help remaining here," she said hotly, "until you go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I'd better----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No! You shall <i>not</i> go! I--I won't have you go away--disappear somewhere
+in the city. Certainty is dreadful enough, but it's better than the awful
+suspense of knowing you are somewhere in the world, and are sure to come
+back sometime----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't want to come back!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Why should I
+wish to come back? Have I said--acted--done--looked--<i>Why</i> should you
+imagine that I have the slightest interest in anything or in--in--anybody
+in this house?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Haven't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No!... And I cannot ignore your--your amazing--and intensely
+f-flattering fear that I have d-designs--that I desire--in other words,
+that I--er--have dared to cherish impossible aspirations in connection
+with a futile and absurd hope that one day you might possibly be induced
+to listen to any tentative suggestion of mine concerning a matrimonial
+alliance----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He choked and turned a dull red.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She reddened, too, but said calmly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you for putting it so nicely. But it is no use. Sooner or later
+you and I will be obliged to consider a situation too hopeless to admit
+of discussion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What situation?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ours."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't see any situation--except your being glued--I <i>beg</i> your
+pardon!--but I must speak truthfully."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So must I. Our case is too desperate for anything but plain and terrible
+truths. And the truths are these: <i>I</i> touched the forbidden machine and
+got a spark; your name is George; <i>I'm</i> glued here, unable to escape;
+<i>you</i> are not rude enough to go when I ask you not to.... And now--here--
+in this room, you and I must face these facts and make up our minds....
+For I simply <i>must</i> know what I am to expect; I can't endure--I couldn't
+live with this hanging over me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What</i> hanging over you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sprang to his feet, waving his dinner pail around in frantic circles:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it, in Heaven's name, that is hanging over you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Over <i>you</i>, too!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Over me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly. Over us both. We are headed straight for m-marriage."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"T-to <i>each other?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course," she said faintly. "Do you think I'd care whom you are going
+to marry if it wasn't I? Do you think I'd discuss my own marital
+intentions with you if you did not happen to be vitally concerned?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do <i>you</i> expect to marry <i>me?</i>" he gasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I don't <i>want</i> to: but I've got to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood petrified for an instant, then with a wild look began to gather
+up his tools.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She watched him with the sickening certainty that if he got away she
+could never survive the years of suspense until his inevitable return. A
+mad longing to get the worst over seized her. She knew the worst, knew
+what Fate held for her. And she desired to get it over--have the worst
+happen--and be left to live out the shattered remains of her life in
+solitude and peace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If--if we've got to marry," she began unsteadily, "why not g-get it over
+quickly--and then I don't mind if you go away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was quite mad: that was certain. He hastily flung some brushes into
+his tool kit, then straightened up and gazed at her with deep compassion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you mind," she asked timidly, "getting somebody to come in and
+marry us, and then the worst will be over, you see, and we need never,
+never see each other again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He muttered something soothing and began tying up some rolls of wall
+paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Won't you do what I ask?" she said pitifully. "I-I am almost afraid
+that--if you go away without marrying me I could not live and endure
+the--the certainty of your return."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He raised his head and surveyed her with deepest pity. Mad--quite mad!
+And so young--so exquisite... so perfectly charming in body! And the mind
+darkened forever.... How terrible! How strange, too; for in the
+pure-lidded eyes he seemed to see the soft light of reason not entirely
+quenched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their eyes encountered, lingered; and the beauty of her gaze seemed to
+stir him to the very wellspring of compassion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would it make you any happier to believe--to know," he added hastily,
+"that you and I were married?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes, I think so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you be quite happy to believe it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--if you call that happiness."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you would not be unhappy if I never returned?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, no! I--that would make me--comparatively--happy!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be married to me, and to know you would never again see me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes. Will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he said soothingly. And yet a curious little throb of pain
+flickered in his heart for a moment, that, mad as she undoubtedly was,
+she should be so happy to be rid of him forever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came slowly across the room to the table on which she was sitting. She
+drew back instinctively, but an ominous ripping held her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you going for a license and a--a clergyman?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no," he said gently, "that is not necessary. All we have to do is to
+take each other's hands--so----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shrank back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You will have to let me take your hand," he explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated, looked at him fearfully, then, crimson, laid her slim
+fingers in his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The contact sent a quiver straight through him; he squared his shoulders
+and looked at her.... Very, very far away it seemed as though he heard
+his heart awaking heavily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What an uncanny situation! Strange--strange--his standing here to humor
+the mad whim of this stricken maid--this wonderfully sweet young
+stranger, looking out of eyes so lovely that he almost believed the dead
+intelligence behind them was quickening into life again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What must we do to be married?" she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say so; that is all," he answered gently. "Do you take me for your
+husband?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.... Do you t-take me for your--wife?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, dear----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't say <i>that</i>!... Is it--over?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All over," he said, forcing a gayety that rang hollow in the pathos of
+the mockery and farce.... But he smiled to be kind to her; and, to make
+the poor, clouded mind a little happier still, he took her hand again and
+said very gently:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will it surprise you to know that you are now a princess?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--<i>what?</i>" she asked sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A princess." He smiled benignly on her, and, still beaming, struck a not
+ungraceful attitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I," he said, "am the Crown Prince of Rumtifoo."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stared at him without a word; gradually he lost countenance; a vague
+misgiving stirred within him that he had rather overdone the thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course," he began cheerfully, "I am an exile in disguise--er--
+disinherited and all that, you know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She continued to stare at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Matters of state--er--revolution--and that sort of thing," he mumbled,
+eying her; "but I thought it might gratify you to know that I am Prince
+George of Rumtifoo----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The silence was deadly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," she said deliberately, "that I believe you think I am
+mentally unsound. <i>Do</i> you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--you--" he began to stutter fearfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Do</i> you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-well, either you or I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nonsense! I <i>thought</i> that marriage ceremony was a miserably inadequate
+affair!... And I am hurt--grieved--amazed that you should do such a--a
+cowardly----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!" he exclaimed, stung to the quick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it is cowardly to deceive a woman."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I meant it kindly--supposing----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That I am mentally unsound? Why do you suppose that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because--Good Heavens--because in this century, and in this city, people
+who never before saw one another don't begin to talk of marrying----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I explained to you"--she was half crying now, and her voice broke
+deliciously--"I told you what I'd done, didn't I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You said you had got a spark," he admitted, utterly bewildered by her
+tears. "Don't cry--please don't. Something is all wrong here--there is
+some terrible misunderstanding. If you will only explain it to me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She dried her eyes mechanically: "Come here," she said. "I don't believe
+I did explain it clearly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, very carefully, very minutely, she began to tell him about the
+psychic waves, and the instrument, and the new company formed to exploit
+it on a commercial basis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told him what had happened that morning to her; how her disobedience
+had cost her so much misery. She informed him about her father, and that
+florid and rotund gentleman's choleric character.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you are here when I tell him I'm married," she said, "he will
+probably frighten you to death; and that's one of the reasons why I wish
+to get it over and get you safely away before he returns. As for me, now
+that I know the worst, I want to get the worst over and--and live out my
+life quietly somewhere.... So now you see why I am in such a hurry, don't
+you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded as though stunned, leaning there on the table, hands folded,
+head bent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am so very sorry--for you," she said. "I know how you must feel about
+it. But if we are obliged to marry some time had we not better get it
+over and then--never--see--one another----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted his head, then stood upright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her soft lips were mute, but the question still remained in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, for a long while, they looked at each other; and the color under his
+cheekbones deepened, and the pink in her cheeks slowly became pinker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Suppose," he said, under his breath, "that I--wish--to return--to you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I</i> do not wish it----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try to--to wish for----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For my return. Try to wish that you also desire it. Will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you are going to--to talk that way--" she stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--then----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there any reason why I should not, if we are engaged?" he asked. "We
+<i>are</i>--engaged, are we not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Engaged?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes. Are we?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--yes--if you call it----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do.... And we are to be--married?" He could scarcely now speak the
+word which but a few moments since he pronounced so easily; for a totally
+new significance attached itself to every word he uttered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are we?" he repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--if I--if I find that I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't say it," she whispered. She had turned quite white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you listen----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No. It--it isn't true--it cannot be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is coming truer every moment.... It is very, very true--even now....
+It is almost true.... And now it has come true. Sybilla!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+White, dismayed, she gazed at him, her hands instinctively closing her
+ears. But she dropped them as he stepped forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I love you, Sybilla. I wish to marry you.... Will you try to care for
+me--a little----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I couldn't--I can't even try----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had her hands now; she twisted them free; he caught them again. Over
+their interlocked hands she bowed her head, breathless, cheeks aflame,
+seeking to cover her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you love me, Sybilla?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She struggled silently, desperately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Will</i> you?"
+
+"No.... Let me go----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't cry--please, dear--" His head, bowed beside hers over their
+clasped hands, was more than she could endure; but her upflung face,
+seeking escape, encountered his. There was a deep, indrawn breath, a sob,
+and she lay, crying her heart out, in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+"Darling!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is curious how quickly one recognizes unfamiliar forms of address.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You won't cry any more, will you?" he whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-n-o," sighed Sybilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because we <i>do</i> love each other, don't we?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes, George." Then, radiant, yet sweetly shamed, confident, yet
+fearful, she lifted her adorable head from his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"George," she said, "I am beginning to think that I'd like to get off
+this table."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You poor darling!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And," she continued, "if you will go home and change your overalls for
+something more conventional, you shall come and dine with us this
+evening, and I will be waiting for you in the drawing-room.... And,
+George, although some of your troubles are now over----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All of them, dearest!" he cried with enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," she said tenderly, "you are yet to meet Pa-<i>pah</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp217.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp218.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<h2><a name="xiv">XIV</a></h2>
+
+<h3>GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>A Chapter Concerning Drusilla, Pa-pah and a Minion</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Capital had now been furnished for The Green Mouse, Limited; a great
+central station of white marble was being built, facing Madison Avenue
+and occupying the entire block front between Eighty-second and
+Eighty-third streets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The building promised to be magnificent; the plans provided for a
+thousand private operating rooms, each beautifully furnished in Louis XVI
+style, a restaurant, a tea room, a marriage licence bureau, and an
+emergency chapel where first aid clergymen were to be always in
+attendance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In each of the thousand Louis XVI operating rooms a Destyn-Carr wireless
+instrument was to stand upon a rococo table. A maid to every two rooms, a
+physician to every ten, and smelling salts to each room, were provided
+for in this gigantic enterprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Millions of circulars were being prepared to send broadcast over the
+United States. They read as follows:
+</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>
+ARE YOU IN LOVE? IF NOT, WHY NOT?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wedlock by Wireless. Marriage by Machinery. A Wondrous Wooer Without
+Words! No more doubt; no more hesitation; no more uncertainty. The
+Destyn-Carr Wireless Apparatus does it all for you. Happy Marriage
+Guaranteed or money eagerly refunded!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Psychical Science says that for every man and woman on earth there is a
+predestined mate!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That mate can be discovered for you by The Green Mouse, Limited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why waste time with costly courtship? Why frivol? Why fuss?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is only ONE mate created for YOU. You pay us; We find that ONE,
+thereby preventing mistakes, lawsuits, elopements, regrets, grouches,
+alimony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Divorce Absolutely Eliminated
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By Our Infallible Wireless Method
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Success Certain
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is now known the world over that Professor William Augustus Destyn has
+discovered that the earth we live on is enveloped in Psychical Currents.
+By the Destyn-Carr instrument these currents may be tapped, controlled
+and used to communicate between two people of opposite sex whose
+subconscious and psychic personalities are predestined to affinity and
+amorous accord. In other words, when psychic waves from any individual
+are collected or telegraphed along these wireless psychical currents,
+only that one affinity attuned to receive them can properly respond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>We catch your psychic waves for you. We send them out into the world.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WATCH THAT SPARK!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When you see a tiny bluish-white spark tip the tentacle of the
+Destyn-Carr transmitter,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+THE WORLD IS YOURS!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+for $25.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our method is quick, painless, merciful and certain. Fee, twenty-five
+dollars in advance. Certified checks accepted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+THE GREEN MOUSE, Limited.
+</p>
+
+<pre>
+President              PROF. WM. AUGUSTUS DESTYN.
+Vice-Presidents        THE HON. KILLIAN VAN K. VANDERDYNK.
+                       THE HON. GEORGE GRAY, 3D.
+Treasurer              THE HON. BUSHWYCK CARR.
+</pre>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>
+These circulars were composed, illuminated and printed upon vellum by
+what was known as an "Art" community in West Borealis, N.J. Several tons
+were expected for delivery early in June.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, the Carr family and its affiliations had invested every cent
+they possessed in Green Mouse, Limited; and those who controlled the
+stock were Bushwyck Carr; William Augustus Destyn and Mrs. Destyn, née
+Ethelinda Carr; Mr. Killian Van K. Vanderdynk and Mrs. Vanderdynk, née
+Sacharissa Carr; George Gray and Mrs. Gray, very lately Sybilla Carr; and
+the unmarried triplets, Flavilla and Drusilla Carr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Remembering with a shudder how Bell Telephone and Standard Oil might once
+have been bought for a song, Bushwyck Carr determined that in this case
+his pudgy fingers should not miss the forelock of Time and the divided
+skirts of Chance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Squinting at the viewless ether through his monocle he beheld millions in
+it; so did William Augustus Destyn and the other sons-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only the unmarried triplets, Flavilla and Drusilla, remained amiably
+indifferent in the midst of all these family financial scurryings and
+preparations to secure world patents in a monopoly which promised the
+social regeneration of the globe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The considerable independent fortunes that their mother had left them
+they invested in Green Mouse, at their father's suggestion; but further
+than that they took no part in the affair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a while the hurry and bustle and secret family conferences mildly
+interested them. Very soon, however, the talk of psychic waves and
+millions bored them; and as soon as the villa at Oyster Bay was opened
+they were glad enough to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, at Oyster Bay, there was some chance of escaping their money-mad
+and wave-intoxicated family; they could entertain and be entertained by
+both of the younger sets in that dignified summer resort; they could
+wander about their own vast estate alone; they could play tennis, sail,
+swim, ride, and drive their tandem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But best of all--for they were rather seriously inclined at the age of
+eighteen, or, rather, on the verge of nineteen--they adored sketching, in
+water colors, out of doors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scrubby forelands set with cedars, shadow-flecked paths under the scrub
+oak, meadows where water glimmered, white sails off Center Island and
+Cooper's Bluff--Cooper's Bluff from the north, northeast, east,
+southeast, south--this they painted with never-tiring, Pecksniffian
+patience, boxing the compass around it as enthusiastically as that
+immortal architect circumnavigated Salisbury Cathedral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And one delicious morning in early June, when the dew sparkled on the
+poison ivy and the air was vibrant with the soft monotone of mosquitoes
+and the public road exhaled a delicate aroma of crude oil, Drusilla and
+Flavilla, laden with sketching-blocks, color-boxes, camp-stools, white
+umbrellas and bonbons, descended to the great hall, on sketching bent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr also stood there, just outside on the porch, red, explosive,
+determined legs planted wide apart, defying several courtly reporters,
+who for a month had patiently and politely appeared every hour to learn
+whether Mr. Carr had anything to say about the new invention, rumors of
+which were flying thick about Park Row.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I haven't!" he shouted in his mellow and sonorously musical bellow.
+"I have told you one hundred times that when I have anything to say I'll
+send for you. Now, permit me to inform you, for the hundred and first
+consecutive time, that I have nothing to say--which won't prevent you
+from coming back in an hour and standing in exactly the same ridiculous
+position you now occupy, and asking me exactly the same unmannerly
+questions, and taking the same impertinent snapshots at my house and my
+person!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He executed a ferocious facial contortion, clapped the monocle into his
+left eye, and squinted fiercely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm getting tired of this!" he continued. "When I wake in the morning
+and look out of my window there are always anywhere from one to twenty
+reporters decorating my lawn! That young man over there is the worst and
+most persistent offender!"--scowling at a good-looking youth in white
+flannels, who immediately blushed distressingly. "Yes, you are, young
+man! I'm amazed that you have the decency to blush! Your insolent sheet,
+the Evening Star, refers to my Trust Company as a Green Mouse Trap and a
+<i>Mouse</i>leum. It also publishes preposterous pictures of myself and
+family. Dammit, sir, they even produce a photograph of Orlando, the
+family cat! You did it, I am told. Did you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am trying to do what I can for my paper, Mr. Carr," said the young
+man. "The public is interested."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr regarded him with peculiar hatred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come here," he said; "I <i>have</i> got something to say to <i>you</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man cautiously left the ranks of his fellows and came up on the
+porch. Behind Mr. Carr, in the doorway, stood Drusilla and Flavilla. The
+young man tried not to see them; he pretended not to. But he flushed
+deeply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want to know," demanded Mr. Carr, "why the devil you are always around
+here blushing. You've been around here blushing for a month, and I want
+to know why you do it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The youth stood speechless, features afire to the tips of his glowing
+ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At first," continued Mr. Carr, mercilessly, "I had a vague hope that you
+might perhaps be blushing for shame at your profession; I heard that you
+were young at it, and I was inclined to be sorry for you. But I'm not
+sorry any more!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man remained crimson and dumb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Confound it," resumed Mr. Carr, "I want to know why the deuce you come
+and blush all over my lawn. I won't stand it! I'll not allow anybody to
+come blushing around me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indignation choked him; he turned on his heel to enter the house and
+beheld Flavilla and Drusilla regarding him, wide-eyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went in, waving them away before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've taught that young pup a lesson," he said with savage satisfaction.
+"I'll teach him to blush at me! I'll----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But why," asked Drusilla, "are you so cruel to Mr. Yates? We like him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr.--Mr. <i>Yates!</i>" repeated her father, astonished. "Is that his name?
+And who told <i>you?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He did," said Drusilla, innocently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He--that infernal newspaper bantam----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pa-<i>pah!</i> Please don't say that about Mr. Yates. He is really
+exceedingly kind and civil to us. Every time you go to town on business
+he comes and sketches with us at----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh," said Mr. Carr, with the calm of deadly fury, "so he goes to
+Cooper's Bluff with you when I'm away, does he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flavilla said: "He doesn't exactly go with us; but he usually comes there
+to sketch. He makes sketches for his newspaper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does he?" asked her father, grinding his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Drusilla; "and he sketches so beautifully. He made such
+perfectly charming drawings of Flavilla and of me, and he drew pictures
+of the house and gardens, and of all the servants, and"--she laughed--"I
+once caught a glimpse in his sketch-book of the funniest caricature of
+you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The expression on her father's face was so misleading in its terrible
+calm that she laughed again, innocently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was not at all an offensive caricature, you know--really it was not a
+caricature at all--it was <i>you</i>--just the way you stand and look at
+people when you are--slightly--annoyed----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, he is so clever," chimed in Flavilla, "and is so perfectly well-bred
+and so delightful to us--to Drusilla particularly. He wrote the prettiest
+set of verses--To Drusilla in June--just dashed them off while he was
+watching her sketch Cooper's Bluff from the southwest----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is really quite wonderful," added Drusilla, sincerely, "and so
+generous and helpful when my drawing becomes weak and wobbly----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Yates shows Drusilla how to hold her pencil," said Flavilla,
+becoming warmly earnest in her appreciation of this self-sacrificing
+young man. "He often lays aside his own sketching and guides Drusilla's
+hand while she holds the pencil----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And when I'm tired," said Drusilla, "and the water colors get into a
+dreadful mess, Mr. Yates will drop his own work and come and talk to me
+about art--and other things----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is <i>so</i> kind!" cried Flavilla in generous enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And <i>so</i> vitally interesting," said Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And so talented!" echoed Flavilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And so--" Drusilla glanced up, beheld something in the fixed stare of
+her parent that frightened her, and rose in confusion. "Have I said--
+done--anything?" she faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With an awful spasm Mr. Carr jerked his congested features into the
+ghastly semblance of a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not at all," he managed to say. "This is very interesting--what you tell
+me about this p-pu--this talented young man. Does he--does he seem--
+attracted toward you--unusually attracted?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Drusilla, smiling reminiscently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because he once said so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"S-said--w-what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, he said quite frankly that he thought me the most delightful girl
+he had ever met."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What--else?" Mr. Carr's voice was scarcely audible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing," said Drusilla; "except that he said he cared for me very much
+and wished to know whether I ever could care very much for him.... I told
+him I thought I could. Flavilla told him so, too.... And we all felt
+rather happy, I think; at least I did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her parent emitted a low, melodious sort of sound, a kind of mellifluous
+howl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pa-pah!" they exclaimed in gentle consternation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He beat at the empty air for a moment like a rotund fowl about to seek
+its roost. Suddenly he ran distractedly at an armchair and kicked it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They watched him in sorrowful amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If we are going to sketch Cooper's Bluff this morning," observed
+Drusilla to Flavilla, "I think we had better go--quietly--by way of the
+kitchen garden. Evidently Pa-pah does not care for Mr. Yates."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Orlando, the family cat, strolled in, conciliatory tail hoisted. Mr. Carr
+hurled a cushion at Orlando, then beat madly upon his own head with both
+hands. Servants respectfully gave him room; some furniture was
+overturned--a chair or two--as he bounced upward and locked and bolted
+himself in his room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What transports of fury he lived through there nobody else can know; what
+terrible visions of vengeance lit up his outraged intellect, what cold
+intervals of quivering hate, what stealthy schemes of reprisal, what
+awful retribution for young Mr. Yates were hatched in those dreadful
+moments, he alone could tell. And as he never did tell, how can I know?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, in about half an hour his expression of stony malignity changed
+to a smile so cunningly devilish that, as he caught sight of himself in
+the mirror, his corrugated countenance really startled him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must smooth out--smooth out!" he muttered. "Smoothness does it!" And
+he rang for a servant and bade him seek out a certain Mr. Yates among the
+throng of young men who had been taking snapshots.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp231.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp232.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="xv">XV</a></h2>
+
+<h3>DRUSILLA</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>During Which Chapter Mr. Carr Sings and One of His Daughters Takes her
+Postgraduate</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Yates came presently, ushered by Ferdinand, and looking extremely
+worried. Mr. Carr received him in his private office with ominous
+urbanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Yates," he said, forcing a distorted smile, "I have rather abruptly
+decided to show you exactly how one of the Destyn-Carr instruments is
+supposed to work. Would you kindly stand here--close by this table?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Yates, astounded, obeyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," said Mr. Carr, with a deeply creased smile, "here is the famous
+Destyn-Carr apparatus. That's quite right--take a snapshot at it without
+my permission----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I thought----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite right, my boy; I intend you shall know all about it. You see it
+resembles the works of a watch.... Now, when I touch this spring the
+receiver opens and gathers in certain psychic waves which emanate from
+the subconscious personality of--well, let us say you, for example!...
+And now I touch this button. You see that slender hairspring of Rosium
+uncurl and rise, trembling and waving about like a tentacle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Yates, notebook in hand, recovered himself sufficiently to nod. Mr.
+Carr leered at him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That tentacle," he explained, "is now seeking some invisible, wireless,
+psychic current along which it is to transmit the accumulated psychic
+waves. As soon as the wireless current finds the subconscious personality
+of the woman you are destined to love and marry some day----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I?" exclaimed young Yates, horrified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you. Why not? Do you mind my trying it on you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I am already in love," protested the young man, turning, as usual, a
+ready red. "I don't care to have you try it on me. Suppose that machine
+should connect me with--some other--girl----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It has!" cried Carr with a hideous laugh as a point of bluish-white fire
+tipped the tentacle for an instant. "You're tied fast to something
+feminine! Probably a flossy typewriter--or a burlesque actress--somebody
+you're fitted for, anyway!" He clapped on his monocle, and glared
+gleefully at the stupefied young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That will teach you to enter my premises and hold my daughter's hand
+when she is drawing innocent pictures of Cooper's Bluff!" he shouted.
+"That will teach you to write poems to my eighteen-year-old daughter,
+Drusilla; that will teach you to tell her you are in love with her--you
+young pup!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am in love with her!" said Yates, undaunted; but he was very white
+when he said it. "I do love her; and if you had behaved halfway decently
+I'd have told you so two weeks ago!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr turned a delicate purple, then, recovering, laughed horribly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whether or not you were once in love with my daughter is of no
+consequence now. That machine has nullified your nonsense! That
+instrument has found you your proper affinity--doubtless below stairs----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>am</i> still in love with Drusilla," repeated Yates, firmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tell you, you're not!" retorted Carr. "Didn't I turn that machine on
+you? It has never missed yet! The Green Mouse has got <i>you</i> in the
+Mouseleum!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are mistaken," insisted Yates, still more firmly. "I was in love
+with your daughter Drusilla before you started the machine; and I love
+her yet! Now! At the present time! This very instant I am loving her!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can't!" shouted Carr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I can. And I do!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you don't! I tell you it's a scientific and psychical impossibility
+for you to continue to love her! Your subconscious personality is now in
+eternal and irrevocable accord and communication with the subconscious
+personality of some chit of a girl who is destined to love and marry you!
+And she's probably a ballet-girl, at that!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall marry Drusilla!" retorted the young man, very pale; "because I
+am quite confident that she loves me, though very probably she doesn't
+know it yet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You talk foolishness!" hissed Carr. "This machine has settled the whole
+matter! Didn't you see that spark?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I saw a spark--yes!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And do you mean to tell me you are not beginning to feel queer?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not in the slightest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look me squarely in the eye, young man, and tell me whether you do not
+have a sensation as though your heart were cutting capers?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not in the least," said Yates, calmly. "If that machine worked at all it
+wouldn't surprise me if you yourself had become entangled in it--caught
+in your own machine!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-what!" exclaimed Carr, faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It wouldn't astonish me in the slightest," repeated Yates, delighted to
+discover the dawning alarm in the older man's features. "<i>You</i> opened the
+receiver; <i>you</i> have psychic waves as well as I. <i>I</i> was in love at the
+time; <i>you</i> were not. What was there to prevent your waves from being
+hitched to a wireless current and, finally, signaling the subconscious
+personality of--of some pretty actress, for example?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr sank nervously onto a chair; his eyes, already wild, became
+wilder as he began to realize the risk he had unthinkingly taken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps <i>you</i> feel a little--queer. You look it," suggested the young
+man, in a voice made anxious by an ever-ready sympathy. "Can I do
+anything? I am really very sorry to have spoken so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A damp chill gathered on the brow of Bushwyck Carr. He <i>did</i> feel a
+trifle queer. A curious lightness--a perfectly inexplicable buoyancy
+seemed to possess him. He was beginning to feel strangely youthful; the
+sound of his own heart suddenly became apparent. To his alarm it was
+beating playfully, skittishly. No--it was not even beating; it was
+skipping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-Yates," he stammered, "you don't think that I could p-possibly have
+become inadvertently mixed up with that horrible machine--do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Yates was a generous youth; resentment at the treatment meted out to
+him by this florid, bad-tempered and pompous gentleman changed to
+instinctive sympathy when he suddenly realized the plight his future
+father-in-law might now be in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yates," repeated Mr. Carr in an agitated voice, "tell me honestly: <i>do</i>
+you think there is anything unusual the matter with me? I--I seem to
+f-feel unusually--young. Do I look it? Have I changed? W-watch me while
+I walk across the room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr arose with a frightened glance at Yates, put on his hat, and
+fairly pranced across the room. "Great Heavens!" he faltered; "my hat's
+on one side and my walk is distinctly jaunty! Do you notice it, Yates?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm afraid I do, Mr. Carr."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This--this is infamous!" gasped Mr. Carr. "This is--is outrageous! I'm
+forty-five! I'm a widower! I detest a jaunty widower! I don't want to be
+one; I don't want to----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yates gazed at him with deep concern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can't you help lifting your legs that way when you walk--as though a
+band were playing? Wait, I'll straighten your hat. Now try it again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr pranced back across the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>know</i> I'm doing it again," he groaned, "but I can't help it! I--I
+feel so gay--dammit!--so frivolous--it's--it's that infernal machine.
+W-what am I to do, Yates," he added piteously, "when the world looks
+so good to me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Think of your family!" urged Yates. "Think of--of Drusilla."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," observed Carr, twirling his eyeglass and twisting his
+mustache, "that I'm beginning not to care what my family think!... Isn't
+it amazing, Yates? I--I seem to be somebody else, several years younger.
+Somewhere," he added, with a flourish of his monocle--"somewhere on earth
+there is a little birdie waiting for me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't talk that way!" exclaimed Yates, horrified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I will, young man. I repeat, with optimism and emphasis, that
+<i>somewhere</i> there is a birdie----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Carr!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, merry old Top!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I use your telephone?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't care what you do!" said Carr, gayly. "Use my telephone if you
+like; pull it out by the roots and throw it over Cooper's Bluff, for all
+I care! But"--and a sudden glimmer of reason seemed to come over him--"if
+you have one grain of human decency left in you, you won't drag me and my
+terrible plight into that scurrilous New York paper of yours."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Yates, "I won't. And that ends my career on Park Row. I'm
+going to telephone my resignation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr gazed calmly around and twisted his mustache with a satisfied
+and retrospective smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's very decent of you, Yates; you must pardon me; I was naturally
+half scared to death at first; but I realize you are acting very
+handsomely in this horrible dilemma----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Naturally," interrupted Yates. "I must stand by the family into which I
+am, as you know, destined to marry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be sure," nodded Carr, absently; "it really looks that way, doesn't
+it! And, Yates, you have no idea how I hated you an hour ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I have," said Yates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you really have not, if you will permit me to contradict you, merry
+old Top. I--but never mind now. You have behaved in an unusually
+considerate manner. Who the devil are you, anyway?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yates informed him modestly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, why didn't you say so, instead of letting me bully you! I've known
+your father for twenty years. Why didn't you tell me you wanted to marry
+Drusilla, instead of coming and blushing all over the premises? I'd have
+told you she was too young; and she is! I'd have told you to wait; and
+you'd have waited. You'd have been civil enough to wait when I explained
+to you that I've already lost, by marriage, two daughters through that
+accursed machine. You wouldn't entirely denude me of daughters, would
+you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I only want one," said John Yates, simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, all right; I'm a decent father-in-law when I've got to be. I'm
+really a good sport. You may ask all my sons-in-law; they'll admit it."
+He scrutinized the young man and found him decidedly agreeable to look
+at, and at the same time a vague realization of his own predicament
+returned for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yates," he said unsteadily, "all I ask of you is to keep this terrible
+n-news from my innocent d-daughters until I can f-find out what sort of a
+person is f-fated to lead me to the altar!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yates took the offered hand with genuine emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Surely," he said, "your unknown intended must be some charming leader in
+the social activities of the great metropolis."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who knows! She may be m-my own l-laundress for all I know. She may be
+anything, Yates! She--she might even be b-black!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Black!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr nodded, shuddered, dashed the unmanly moisture from his
+eyeglass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think I'd better go to town and tell my son-in-law, William Destyn,
+exactly what has happened to me," he said. "And I think I'll go through
+the kitchen garden and take my power boat so that those devilish
+reporters can't follow me. Ferdinand!" to the man at the door, "ring up
+the garage and order the blue motor, and tell those newspaper men I'm
+going to town. That, I think, will glue them to the lawn for a while."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"About--Drusilla, sir?" ventured Yates; but Mr. Carr was already gone,
+speeding noiselessly out the back way, through the kitchen garden, and
+across the great tree-shaded lawn which led down to the boat landing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Across the distant hedge, from the beautiful grounds of his next-door
+neighbor, floated sounds of mirth and music. Gay flags fluttered among
+the trees. The Magnelius Grandcourts were evidently preparing for the
+brilliant charity bazaar to be held there that afternoon and evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To think," muttered Carr, "that only an hour ago I was agreeably and
+comfortably prepared to pass the entire afternoon there with my
+daughters, amid innocent revelry. And now I'm in flight--pursued by
+furies of my own invoking--threatened with love in its most hideous form--
+matrimony! Any woman I now look upon may be my intended bride for all I
+know," he continued, turning into the semiprivate driveway, bordered
+heavily by lilacs; "and the curious thing about it is that I really don't
+care; in fact, the excitement is mildly pleasing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He halted; in the driveway, blocking it, stood a red motor car--a little
+runabout affair; and at the steering-wheel sat a woman--a lady's maid by
+her cap and narrow apron, and an exceedingly pretty one, at that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she saw Mr. Carr she looked up, showing an edge of white teeth in
+the most unembarrassed of smiles. She certainly was an unusually
+agreeable-looking girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Has something gone wrong with your motor?" inquired Mr. Carr,
+pleasantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid so." She didn't say "sir"; probably because she was too
+pretty to bother about such incidentals. And she looked at Carr and
+smiled, as though he were particularly ornamental.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me see," began Mr. Carr, laying his hand on the steering-wheel;
+"perhaps I can make it go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It won't go," she said, a trifle despondently and shaking her charming
+head. "I've been here nearly half an hour waiting for it to do something;
+but it won't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr peered wisely into the acetylenes, looked carefully under the
+hood, examined the upholstery. He didn't know anything about motors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm afraid," he said sadly, "that there's something wrong with the
+magne-e-to!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think it is as bad as that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I fear so," he said gravely. "If I were you I'd get out--and keep well
+away from that machine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?" she asked nervously, stepping to the grass beside him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It <i>might</i> blow up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They backed away rather hastily, side by side. After a while they backed
+farther away, hand in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I hate to leave it there all alone," said the maid, when they had
+backed completely out of sight of the car. "If there was only some safe
+place where I could watch and see if it is going to explode."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They ventured back a little way and peeped at the motor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You could take a rowboat and watch it from the water," said Mr. Carr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't know how to row."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr looked at her. Certainly she was the most prepossessing specimen
+of wholesome, rose-cheeked and ivory-skinned womanhood that he had ever
+beheld; a trifle nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, he thought, but so
+sweet and fresh and with such charming eyes and manners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have," said Mr. Carr, "several hours at my disposal before I go to
+town on important business. If you like I will row you out in one of my
+boats, and then, from a safe distance, we can sit and watch your motor
+blow up. Shall we?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is most kind of you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not at all. It would be most kind of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked sideways at the motor, sideways at the water, sideways at Mr.
+Carr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a very lovely morning in early June.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Mr. Carr handed her into the rowboat with ceremony she swept him a
+courtesy. Her apron and manners were charmingly incongruous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she was gracefully seated in the stern Mr. Carr turned for a moment,
+stared all Oyster Bay calmly in the face through his monocle, then,
+untying the painter, fairly skipped into the boat with a step distinctly
+frolicsome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's curious how I feel about this," he observed, digging both oars into
+the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>How</i> do you feel, Mr. Carr?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Like a bird," he said softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the boat moved off gently through the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gently
+caressing the classic contours of Cooper's Bluff, and upon that
+monumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla and
+Drusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates,
+in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod and
+looked at Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, brooded
+over Cooper's Bluff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's no use," said Drusilla at last; "one can draw a landscape from
+every point of view except looking <i>down</i> hill. Mr. Yates, how on earth
+am I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps," he said, "I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think that would help?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think it helps--somehow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed over
+it. She looked at the pad on her knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a while she said: "I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don't
+you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers,
+and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is very pleasant to have you here," she said dreamily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is very heavenly to be here," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How generous you are to give us so much of your time!" murmured
+Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think so, too," said Flavilla, washing a badger brush. "And I am
+becoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't you like him as well as I do?" asked Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not quite as well," she said frankly. "You know, Drusilla, you are very
+nearly in love with him." And she resumed her sketching.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarrassed. "Am I?" she said
+absently.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp248.jpg"><img src="images/illp248_th.jpg" alt="'Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil again'"></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you?" he repeated, close to her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it--to love? Is it"--she looked at him undisturbed--"is it to be
+quite happy and lazy with a man like you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought," she continued, "that there would be some hesitation, some
+shyness about it--some embarrassment. But there, has been none between
+you and me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went on absently:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You said, the other day, very simply, that you cared a great deal for
+me; and I was not very much surprised. And I said that I cared very much
+for you.... And, by the way, I meant to ask you yesterday; are we
+engaged?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are we?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--if you wish.... Is <i>that</i> all there is to an engagement?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's a ring," observed Flavilla, dabbing on too much ultramarine and
+using a sponge. "You've got to get her one, Mr. Yates."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drusilla looked at the man beside her and smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How simple it is, after all!" she said. "I have read in the books Pa-pah
+permits us to read such odd things about love and lovers.... Are we
+lovers, Mr. Yates? But, of course, we must be, I fancy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Some time or other, when it is convenient," observed Flavilla, "you
+ought to kiss each other occasionally."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That doesn't come until I'm a bride, does it?" asked Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe it's a matter of taste," said Flavilla, rising and naively
+stretching her long, pretty limbs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood a moment on the edge of the bluff, looking down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How curious!" she said after a moment. "There is Pa-pah on the water
+rowing somebody's maid about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!" exclaimed Yates, springing to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How extraordinary," said Drusilla, following him to the edge of the
+bluff; "and they're singing, too, as they row!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From far below, wafted across the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Mr.
+Carr's rich and mellifluous voice was wafted shoreward:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I der-reamt that I dwelt in ma-arble h-a-l-ls.</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sunlight fell on the maid's coquettish cap and apron, and sparkled
+upon the buckle of one dainty shoe. It also glittered across the monocle
+of Mr. Carr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pa-<i>pah!</i>" cried Flavilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Far away her parent waved a careless greeting to his offspring, then
+resumed his oars and his song.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How extraordinary!" said Flavilla. "Why do you suppose that Pa-<i>pah</i> is
+rowing somebody's maid around the bay, and singing that way to her?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps it's one of our maids," said Drusilla; "but that would be rather
+odd, too, wouldn't it, Mr. Yates?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--little," he admitted. And his heart sank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm going to see whose maid it is," she called back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried grass and watched her sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yates stood beside her in bitter dejection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So <i>this</i> was the result! His unfortunate future father-in-law was done
+for. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answer
+had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by
+mistake, summoned his own affinity! And <i>what</i> an affinity! A saucy
+soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the <i>coulisse</i> of a
+Parisian theater!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yates looked at Drusilla. What an awful blow was impending! She never
+could have suspected it, but there, in that boat, sat her future
+stepmother in cap and apron!--his own future stepmother-in-law!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in the misery of that moment's realization John Chillingham Yates
+showed the material of which he was constructed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear," he said gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mean me?" asked Drusilla, looking up in frank surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at the same time she saw on his face a look which she had never
+before encountered there. It was the shadow of trouble; and it drew her
+to her feet instinctively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it, Jack?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had never before called him anything but Mr. Yates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it?" she repeated, turning away beside him along the leafy path;
+and with every word another year seemed, somehow, to be added to her
+youth. "Has anything happened, Jack? Are you unhappy--or ill?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not speak; she walked beside him, regarding him with wistful eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So there was more of love than happiness, after all; she began to half
+understand it in a vague way as she watched his somber face. There
+certainly was more of love than a mere lazy happiness; there was
+solicitude and warm concern, and desire to comfort, to protect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jack," she said tremulously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned and took her unresisting hands. A quick thrill shot through
+her. Yes, there <i>was</i> more to love than she had expected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you unhappy?" she asked. "Tell me. I can't bear to see you this way.
+I--I never did--before."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you love me; Drusilla?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--yes, I will, Jack."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dearly?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do--dearly." The first blush that ever tinted her cheek spread and
+deepened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you marry me, Drusilla?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.... You frighten me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She trembled, suddenly, in his arms. Surely there were more things to
+love than she had dreamed of in her philosophy. She looked up as he bent
+nearer, understanding that she was to be kissed, awaiting the event which
+suddenly loomed up freighted with terrific significance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a silence, a sob.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jack--darling--I--I love you so!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flavilla was sketching on her camp-stool when they returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm horridly hungry," she said. "It's luncheon time, isn't it? And, by
+the way, it's all right about that maid. She was on her way to serve in
+the tea pavilion at Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's bazaar, and her runabout
+broke down and nearly blew up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What on earth are you talking about?" exclaimed Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm talking about Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's younger sister from
+Philadelphia, who looks perfectly sweet as a lady's maid. Tea," she
+added, "is to be a dollar a cup, and three if you take sugar. And," she
+continued, "if you and I are to sell flowers there this afternoon we'd
+better go home and dress.... <i>What</i> are you smiling at, Mr. Yates?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drusilla naturally supposed she could answer that question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dearest little sister," she said shyly and tenderly, "we have something
+very wonderful to tell you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it?" asked Flavilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We--we are--engaged," whispered Drusilla, radiant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, I knew that already!" said Flavilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you?" sighed her sister, turning to look at her tall, young lover.
+"I didn't.... Being in love is a much more complicated matter than you
+and I imagined, Flavilla. Is it not, Jack?"
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp255.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp256.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="xvi">XVI</a></h2>
+
+<h3>FLAVILLA</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Containing a Parable Told with Such Metaphorical Skill that the Author
+Is Totally Unable to Understand It</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Green Mouse now dominated the country; the entire United States was
+occupied in getting married. In the great main office on Madison Avenue,
+and in a thousand branch offices all over the Union, Destyn-Carr machines
+were working furiously; a love-mad nation was illuminated by their
+sparks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marriage-license bureaus had been almost put out of business by the
+sudden matrimonial rush; clergymen became exhausted, wedding bells in the
+churches were worn thin, California and Florida reported no orange crops,
+as all the blossoms had been required for brides; there was a shortage of
+solitaires, traveling clocks, asparagus tongs; and the corner in rice
+perpetrated by some conscienceless captain of industry produced a panic
+equaled only by a more terrible <i>coup</i> in slightly worn shoes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All America was rushing to get married; from Seattle to Key West the
+railroads were blocked with bridal parties; a vast hum of merrymaking
+resounded from the Golden Gate to Governor's Island, from Niagara to the
+Gulf of Mexico. In New York City the din was persistent; all day long
+church bells pealed, all day long the rattle of smart carriages and hired
+hacks echoed over the asphalt. A reporter of the <i>Tribune</i> stood on top
+of the New York Life tower for an entire week, devouring cold-slaw
+sandwiches and Marie Corelli, and during that period, as his affidavit
+runs, "never for one consecutive second were his ample ears free from the
+near or distant strains of the Wedding March."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And over all, in approving benediction, brooded the wide smile of the
+greatest of statesmen and the great smile of the widest of statesmen--
+these two, metaphorically, hand in hand, floated high above their people,
+scattering encouraging blessings on every bride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tremendous rise in values set in; the newly married required homes;
+architects were rushed to death; builders, real-estate operators,
+brokers, could not handle the business hurled at them by impatient
+bridegrooms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, seizing time by the fetlock, some indescribable monster secured the
+next ten years' output of go-carts. The sins of Standard Oil were
+forgotten in the menace of such a national catastrophe; mothers' meetings
+were held; the excitement became stupendous; a hundred thousand brides
+invaded the Attorney-General's office, but all he could think of to say
+was: "Thirty centuries look down upon you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These vague sentiments perplexed the country. People understood that the
+Government meant well, but they also realized that the time was not far
+off when millions of go-carts would be required in the United States. And
+they no longer hesitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All over the Union fairs and bazaars were held to collect funds for a
+great national factory to turn out carts. Alarmed, the Trust tried to
+unload; militant womanhood, thoroughly aroused, scorned compromise. In
+every city, town, and hamlet of the nation entertainments were given,
+money collected for the great popular go-cart factory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The affair planned for Oyster Bay was to be particularly brilliant--a
+water carnival at Center Island with tableaux, fireworks, and
+illuminations of all sorts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reassured by the magnificent attitude of America's womanhood, business
+discounted the collapse of the go-cart trust and began to recover from
+the check very quickly. Stocks advanced, fluctuated, and suddenly whizzed
+upward like skyrockets; and the long-expected wave of prosperity
+inundated the country. On the crest of it rode Cupid, bow and arrows
+discarded, holding aloft in his right hand a Destyn-Carr machine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the old order of things had passed away; the old-fashioned doubts and
+fears of courtship were now practically superfluous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anybody on earth could now buy a ticket and be perfectly certain that
+whoever he or she might chance to marry would be the right one--the one
+intended by destiny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, strange as it may appear, there still remained, here and there, a
+few young people in the United States who had no desire to be safely
+provided for by a Destyn-Carr machine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether there was in them some sporting instinct, making hazard
+attractive, or, perhaps, a conviction that Fate is kind, need not be
+discussed. The fact remains that there were a very few youthful and
+marriageable folk who had no desire to know beforehand what their fate
+might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of these unregenerate reactionists was Flavilla. To see her entire
+family married by machinery was enough for her; to witness such
+consummate and collective happiness became slightly cloying. Perfection
+can be overdone; a rift in a lute relieves melodious monotony, and when
+discords cease to amuse, one can always have the instrument mended or buy
+a banjo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What I desire," she said, ignoring the remonstrances of the family, "is
+a chance to make mistakes. Three or four nice men have thought they were
+in love with me, and I wouldn't take anything for the--experience. Or,"
+she added innocently, "for the chances that some day three or four more
+agreeable young men may think they are in love with me. One learns by
+making mistakes--very pleasantly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her family sat in an affectionately earnest row and adjured her--four
+married sisters, four blissful brothers-in-law, her attractive
+stepmother, her father. She shook her pretty head and continued sewing on
+the costume she was to wear at the Oyster Bay Venetian Fête and Go-cart
+Fair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," she said, threading her needle and deftly sewing a shining, silvery
+scale onto the mermaid's dress lying across her knees, "I'll take my
+chances with men. It's better fun to love a man not intended for me, and
+make him love me, and live happily and defiantly ever after, than to have
+a horrid old machine settle you for life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you are wasting time, dear," explained her stepmother gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, I'm not. I've been engaged three times and I've enjoyed it
+immensely. That isn't wasting time, is it? And it's <i>such</i> fun!
+He thinks he's in love and you think you're in love, and you have such an
+agreeable time together until you find out that you're spoons on somebody
+else. And then you find out you're mistaken and you say you always want
+him for a friend, and you presently begin all over again with a perfectly
+new man----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Flavilla!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Pa-<i>pah</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you utterly demoralized!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Demoralized? Why? Everybody behaved as I do before you and William
+invented your horrid machine. Everybody in the world married at hazard,
+after being engaged to various interesting young men. And I'm not
+demoralized; I'm only old-fashioned enough to take chances. Please let
+me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The family regarded her sadly. In their amalgamated happiness they
+deplored her reluctance to enter where perfect bliss was guaranteed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her choice of rôle and costume for the Seawanhaka Club water tableaux
+they also disapproved of; for she had chosen to represent a character now
+superfluous and out of date--the Lorelei who lured Teutonic yachtsmen to
+destruction with her singing some centuries ago. And that, in these
+times, was ridiculous, because, fortified by a visit to the nearest
+Destyn-Carr machine, no weak-minded young sailorman would care what a
+Lorelei might do; and she could sing her pretty head off and comb herself
+bald before any Destyn-Carr inoculated mariner would be lured overboard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Flavilla obstinately insisted on her scaled and fish-tailed costume.
+When her turn came, a spot-light on the clubhouse was to illuminate the
+float and reveal her, combing her golden hair with a golden comb and
+singing away like the Musical Arts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And," she thought secretly, "if there remains upon this machine-made
+earth one young man worth my kind consideration, it wouldn't surprise me
+very much if he took a header off the Yacht Club wharf and requested me
+to be his. And I'd be very likely to listen to his suggestion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So in secret hopes of this pleasing episode--but not giving any such
+reason to her protesting family--she vigorously resisted all attempts to
+deprive her of her fish scales, golden comb, and rôle in the coming water
+fête. And now the programmes were printed and it was too late for them to
+intervene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose, holding out the glittering, finny garment, which flashed like a
+collapsed fish in the sunshine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's finished," she said. "Now I'm going off somewhere by myself to
+rehearse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the water?" asked her father uneasily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Flavilla was a superb swimmer nobody could object. Later, a maid went
+down to the landing, stowed away luncheon, water-bottles and costume in
+the canoe. Later, Flavilla herself came down to the water's edge,
+hatless, sleeves rolled up, balancing a paddle across her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the paddle flashed and the canoe danced away over the sparkling waters
+of Oyster Bay, Flavilla hummed the threadbare German song which she was
+to sing in her rôle of Lorelei, and headed toward Northport.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," she thought to herself, "is to find some nice, little,
+wooded inlet where I can safely change my costume and rehearse. I must
+know whether I can swim in this thing--and whether I can sing while
+swimming about. It would be more effective, I think, than merely sitting
+on the float, and singing and combing my hair through all those verses."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The canoe danced across the water, the paddle glittered, dipped, swept
+astern, and flashed again. Flavilla was very, very happy for no
+particular reason, which is the best sort of happiness on earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is a sandy neck of land which obstructs direct navigation between
+the sacred waters of Oyster Bay and the profane floods which wash the
+gravelly shores of Northport.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll make a carry," thought Flavilla, beaching her canoe. Then, looking
+around her at the lonely stretch of sand flanked by woods, she realized
+at once that she need seek no farther for seclusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First of all, she dragged the canoe into the woods, then rapidly
+undressed and drew on the mermaid's scaly suit, which fitted her to the
+throat as beautifully as her own skin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was rather difficult for her to navigate on land, as her legs were
+incased in a fish's tail, but, seizing her comb and mirror, she managed
+to wriggle down to the water's edge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few sun-warmed rocks jutted up some little distance from shore; with a
+final and vigorous wriggle Flavilla launched herself and struck out for
+the rocks, holding comb and mirror in either hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fishtail and accessories impeded her, but she was the sort of swimmer who
+took no account of such trifles; and after a while she drew herself up
+from the sea, and, breathless, glittering, iridescent, flopped down upon
+a flat rock in the sunshine. From which she took a careful survey of the
+surroundings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly nobody could see her here. Nobody would interrupt her either,
+because the route of navigation lay far outside, to the north. All around
+were woods; the place was almost landlocked, save where, far away through
+the estuary, a blue and hazy horizon glimmered in the general direction
+of New England.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, when she had recovered sufficient breath she let down the flashing,
+golden-brown hair, sat up on the rock, lifted her pretty nose skyward,
+and poured forth melody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she sang the tiresome old Teutonic ballad she combed away vigorously,
+and every now and then surveyed her features in the mirror.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ind">
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Dass ich so traurig bin----</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+she sang happily, studying her gestures with care and cheerfully flopping
+her tail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had a very lovely voice which had been expensively cultivated. One or
+two small birds listened attentively for a while, then started in to help
+her out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the veranda of his bungalow, not very far from Northport, stood a
+young man of pleasing aspect, knickerbockers, and unusually symmetrical
+legs. His hands reposed in his pockets, his eyes behind their eyeglasses
+were fixed dreamily upon the skies. Somebody over beyond that screen of
+woods was singing very beautifully, and he liked it--at first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, when the unseen singer had been singing the Lorelei for an hour,
+steadily, without intermission, an expression of surprise gradually
+developed into uneasy astonishment upon his clean-cut and unusually
+attractive features.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That girl, whoever she is, can sing, all right," he reflected, "but why
+on earth does she dope out the same old thing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the strip of woods, but could see nothing of the singer. He
+listened; she continued to sing the Lorelei.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It can't be a phonograph," he reasoned. "No sane person could endure an
+hour of that fool song. No sane person would sing it for an hour,
+either."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Disturbed, he picked up the marine glasses, slung them over his shoulder,
+walked up on the hill back of the bungalow, selected a promising tree,
+and climbed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Astride a lofty limb the lord of Northport gazed earnestly across the
+fringe of woods. Something sparkled out there, something moved,
+glittering on a half-submerged rock. He adjusted the marine glasses and
+squinted through them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Great James!" he faltered, dropping them; and almost followed the
+glasses to destruction on the ground below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How he managed to get safely to earth he never knew. "Either I'm crazy,"
+he shouted aloud, "or there's a--a mermaid out there, and I'm going to
+find out before they chase me to the funny house!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a fat tub of a boat at his landing; he reached the shore in a
+series of long, distracted leaps, sprang aboard, cast off, thrust both
+oars deep into the water, and fairly hurled the boat forward, so that it
+alternately skipped, wallowed, scuttered, and scrambled, like a hen
+overboard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is terrible," he groaned. "If I <i>didn't</i> see what I think I saw,
+I'll eat my hat; if I did see what I'm sure I saw, I'm madder than the
+hatter who made it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nearer and nearer, heard by him distinctly above the frantic splashing of
+his oars, her Lorelei song sounded perilously sweet and clear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, bunch!" he moaned; "it's horribly like the real thing; and here I
+come headlong, as they do in the story books----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He caught a crab that landed him in a graceful parabola in the bow, where
+he lay biting at the air to recover his breath. Then his boat's nose
+plowed into the sandy neck of land; he clambered to his feet, jumped out,
+and ran headlong into the belt of trees which screened the singer. Speed
+and gait recalled the effortless grace of the kangaroo; when he
+encountered logs and gullies he rose grandly, sailing into space, landing
+with a series of soft bounces, which presently brought him to the other
+side of the woods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there, what he beheld, what he heard, almost paralyzed him. Weak-
+kneed, he passed a trembling hand over his incredulous eyes; with the
+courage of despair, he feebly pinched himself. Then for sixty sickening
+seconds he closed his eyes and pressed both hands over his ears. But when
+he took his hands away and opened his terrified eyes, the exquisitely
+seductive melody, wind blown from the water, thrilled him in every fiber;
+his wild gaze fell upon a distant, glittering shape--white-armed, golden-
+haired, fish-tailed, slender body glittering with silvery scales.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The low rippling wash of the tide across the pebbly shore was in his
+ears; the salt wind was in his throat. He saw the sun flash on golden
+comb and mirror, as her snowy fingers caressed the splendid masses of her
+hair; her song stole sweetly seaward as the wind veered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A terrible calm descended upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is interesting," he said aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sickening wave of terror swept him, but he straightened up, squaring
+his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I may as well face the fact," he said, "that I, Henry Kingsbury, of
+Pebble Point, Northport, L.I., and recently in my right mind, am now,
+this very moment, looking at a--a mermaid in Long Island Sound!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shuddered; but he was sheer pluck all through. Teeth might chatter,
+knees smite together, marrow turn cold; nothing on earth or Long Island
+could entirely stampede Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His clutch on his self-control in any real crisis never slipped; his
+mental steering-gear never gave way. Again his pallid lips moved in
+speech:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The--thing--to--do," he said very slowly and deliberately, "is to swim
+out and--and touch it. If it dissolves into nothing I'll probably feel
+better----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to remove coat, collar, and shoes, forcing himself to talk
+calmly all the while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," he went on dully, "is to swim over there and get a
+look at it. Of course, it isn't really there. As for drowning--it really
+doesn't matter.... In the midst of life we are in Long Island.... And, if
+it <i>is</i> there--I c-c-can c-capture it for the B-B-Bronx----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reason tottered; it revived, however, as he plunged into the s. w.[<a href="#*">*</a>] of
+Oyster Bay and struck out, silent as a sea otter for the shimmering shape
+on the ruddy rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<a name="*">* Sparkling Waters or Sacred Waters.</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flavilla was rehearsing with all her might; her white throat swelled with
+the music she poured forth to the sky and sea; her pretty fingers played
+with the folds of burnished hair; her gilded hand-mirror flashed, she
+gently beat time with her tail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So thoroughly, so earnestly, did she enter into the spirit of the siren
+she was representing that, at moments, she almost wished some fisherman
+might come into view--just to see whether he'd really go overboard after
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, audacious as her vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely
+unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the
+floating weeds almost at her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Goodness," she said faintly, and attempted to rise. But her fish tail
+fettered her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you real!" gasped Kingsbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes.... Are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Great James!" he half shouted, half sobbed, "are you <i>human?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"V-very. Are <i>you?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He clutched at the weedy rock and dragged himself up. For a moment he lay
+breathing fast, water dripping from his soaked clothing. Once he feebly
+touched the glittering fish tail that lay on the rock beside him. It
+quivered, but needle and thread had been at work there; he drew a deep
+breath and closed his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he opened them again she was looking about for a likely place to
+launch herself into the bay; in fact, she had already started to glide
+toward the water; the scraping of the scales aroused him, and he sat up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I heard singing," he said dreamily, "and I climbed a tree and saw--you!
+Do you blame me for trying to corroborate a thing like <i>you?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You thought I was a <i>real</i> one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought that I thought I saw a real one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him hopefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell me, <i>did</i> my singing compel you to swim out here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know what compelled me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But--you <i>were</i> compelled?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--it seems so----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O-h!" Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin
+and gazed at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To think," she said softly, "that you believed me to be a real siren,
+and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock! Isn't
+it exciting?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her, then turned red:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it is," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she
+surveyed him with intense interest. He was at a disadvantage; the sleek,
+half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not
+exhibit him at his best.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had
+actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human
+being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please fix your hair," she said, handing him her comb and mirror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My hair?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly. I want to look at you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought her request rather extraordinary, but he sat up and with the
+aid of the mirror, scraped away at his wet hair, parting it in the middle
+and combing it deftly into two gay little Mercury wings. Then, fishing in
+the soaked pockets of his knickerbockers, he produced a pair of smart
+pince-nez, which he put on, and then gazed up at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!" she said, with a quick, indrawn breath, "you <i>are</i> attractive!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that he turned becomingly scarlet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaning on one lovely, bare arm, burnished hair clustering against her
+cheeks, she continued to survey him in delighted approval which sometimes
+made him squirm inwardly, sometimes almost intoxicated him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To think," she murmured, "that <i>I</i> lured <i>you</i> out here!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>am</i> thinking about it," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laid her head on one side, inspecting him with frankest approval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder," she said, "what your name is. I am Flavilla Carr."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not one of the Carr triplets!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--but," she added quickly, "I'm not married. Are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, no, no!" he said hastily. "I'm Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point,
+Northport----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Master and owner of the beautiful but uncertain <i>Sappho?</i> Oh, tell me,
+<i>are</i> you the man who has tipped over so many times in Long Island Sound?
+Because I--I adore a man who has the pluck to continue to capsize every
+day or two."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then," he said, "you can safely adore me, for I am that yachtsman who
+has fallen off the <i>Sappho</i> more times than the White Knight fell off his
+horse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I <i>do</i> adore you!" she exclaimed impulsively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, you d-d-don't mean that," he stammered, striving to smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--almost. Tell me, you--I know you are not like other men! <i>You</i>
+never have had anything to do with a Destyn-Carr machine, have you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither have I.... And so you are not in love--are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither am I. Oh, I am so glad that you and I have waited, and not
+become engaged to somebody by machinery.... I wonder whom you are
+destined for."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nobody--by machinery."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She clapped her hands. "Neither am I. It is too stupid, isn't it? I
+<i>don't</i> want to marry the man I ought to marry. I'd rather take chances
+with a man who attracts me and who is attracted by me.... There was, in
+the old days--before everybody married by machinery--something not
+altogether unworthy in being a siren, wasn't there?... It's perfectly
+delightful to think of your seeing me out here on the rocks, and then
+instantly plunging into the waves and tearing a foaming right of way to
+what might have been destruction!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her flushed, excited face between its clustering curls looked straight
+into his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It <i>was</i> destruction," he said. His own voice sounded odd to him. "Utter
+destruction to my peace of mind," he said again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You--don't think that you love me, do you?" she asked. "That would be
+too--too perfect a climax.... <i>Do</i> you?" she asked curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--think so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do--do you <i>know</i> it?" He gazed bravely at her: "Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She flung up both arms joyously, then laughed aloud:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, the wonder of it! It is too perfect, too beautiful! You really love
+me? Do you? Are you <i>sure</i>?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.... Will you try to love me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you know that sirens don't care for people.... I've already been
+engaged two or three times.... I don't mind being engaged to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Couldn't you care for me, Flavilla?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, yes. I do.... Please don't touch me; I'd rather not. Of course, you
+know, I couldn't really love you so quickly unless I'd been subjected to
+one of those Destyn-Carr machines. You know that, don't you? But," she
+added frankly, "I wouldn't like to have you get away from me. I--I feel
+like a tender-hearted person in the street who is followed by a lost
+cat----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I <i>didn't</i> mean anything unpleasant--truly I didn't. You know how
+tenderly one feels when a poor stray cat comes trotting after one----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got up, mad all through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Are</i> you offended?" she asked sorrowfully. "When I didn't mean anything
+except that my heart--which is rather impressionable--feels very warmly
+and tenderly toward the man who swam after me.... Won't you understand,
+please? Listen, we have been engaged only a minute, and here already is
+our first quarrel. You can see for yourself what would happen if we ever
+married."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It wouldn't be machine-made bliss, anyway," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That seemed to interest her; she inspected him earnestly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Also," he added, "I thought you desired to take a sportsman's chances?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I thought you didn't want to marry the man you ought to marry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is--true."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then you certainly ought not to marry me--but, will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can I when I don't--love you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't love me because you ought not to on such brief
+acquaintance.... But <i>will</i> you love me, Flavilla?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him in silence, sitting very still, the bright hair veiling
+her cheeks, the fish's tail curled up against her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Will</i> you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know," she said faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall I help you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Evidently she had gazed at him long enough; her eyes fell; her white
+fingers picked at the seaweed pods. His arm closed around her; nothing
+stirred but her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall I help you to love me?" he breathed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No--I am--past help." She raised her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is all so--so wrong," she faltered, "that I think it must be
+right.... Do you truly love me?... Don't kiss me if you do.... Now I
+believe you.... Lift me; I can't walk in this fish's tail.... Now set me
+afloat, please."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted her, walked to the water's edge, bent and placed her in the
+sea. In an instant she had darted from his arms out into the waves,
+flashing, turning like a silvery salmon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you coming?" she called back to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not stir. She swam in a circle and came up beside the rock. After
+a long, long silence, she lifted up both arms; he bent over. Then, very
+slowly, she drew him down into the water.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+"I am quite sure," she said, as they sat together at luncheon on the
+sandspit which divides Northport Bay from the s.w. of Oyster Bay, "that
+you and I are destined for much trouble when we marry; but I love you so
+dearly that I don't care."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither do I," he said; "will you have another sandwich?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, being young and healthy, she took it, and biting into it, smiled
+adorably at her lover.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp281.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h2>OTHER BOOKS BY</h2>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<b>ROBERT W. CHAMBERS</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Mr. Chambers himself who wrote of the caprices of the Mystic
+Three--Fate, Chance, and Destiny--and how it frequently happened that a
+young man "tripped over the maliciously extended foot of Fate and fell
+plump into the open arms of Destiny." Perhaps it was due to one of the
+pranks of the mystic sisters that Mr. Chambers himself should lay down
+his brush and palette and take up the pen. Mr. Chambers studied art in
+Paris for seven years. At twenty-four his paintings were accepted at the
+Salon; at twenty-eight he had returned to New York and was busy as an
+illustrator for <i>Life, Truth</i>, and other periodicals. But already the
+desire to write was coursing through him. The Latin Quarter of Paris,
+where he had studied so long, seemed to haunt him; he wanted to tell its
+story. So he did write the story and, in 1893, published it under the
+title of "In the Quarter." The same year he published another book, "The
+King in Yellow," a grewsome tale, but remarkably successful. The easel
+was pushed aside; the painter had become writer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Writing of Mr. Chambers's novel of last fall
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>THE DANGER MARK</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+in <i>The Bookman</i>, Dr. Frederic Taber Cooper said, "In this last field
+(the society novel) it would seem as though Mr. Chambers had, at length,
+found himself; and the fact that the last of the four books is the best
+and most sustained and most honest piece of work he has yet done affords
+solid ground for the belief that he has still better and maturer volumes
+yet to come. There is no valid reason why Mr. Chambers should not
+ultimately be remembered as the novelist who left behind him a
+comprehensive human comedy of New York."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is another novel of society life like "The Fighting Chance" and "The
+Firing Line." The chief characters in the story are a boy and a girl,
+inheritors of a vast fortune, whose parents are dead, and who have been
+left in the guardianship of a large Trust Company. They are brought up
+with no companions of their own age and are a unique pair when turned
+out, on coming of age, into New York society--two children educated by a
+great machine, possessors of fabulous wealth, with every inherited
+instinct for good and evil set free for the first time. The fact that the
+girl has acquired the habit of dropping a little cologne on a lump of
+sugar and nibbling it when tired or depressed gives an indication of the
+struggle that the children have before them, a struggle of their own, in
+the midst of their luxurious surroundings, more vital, more real,
+perhaps, than any that Mr. Chambers has yet depicted. It is a tense,
+powerful, highly dramatic story, handling a delicate subject without
+offense to the taste or the judgment of the most critical reader.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Chambers's third novel of society life is
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>THE FIRING LINE</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Its scenes are laid principally at Palm Beach, and no more distinct yet
+delicately tinted picture of an American fashionable resort, in the full
+blossom of its brief, recurrent glory, has ever been drawn. In this book,
+Mr. Chambers's purpose is to show that the salvation of society lies in
+the constant injection of new blood into its veins. His heroine, the
+captivating Shiela Cardross, of unknown parentage, yet reared in luxury,
+suddenly finds herself on life's firing line, battling with one of the
+most portentous problems a young girl ever had to face. Only a master
+writer could handle her story; Mr. Chambers does it most successfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>THE YOUNGER SET</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+is the second of Mr. Chambers's society novels. It takes the reader into
+the swirling society life of fashionable New York, there to wrestle with
+that ever-increasing evil, the divorce question. As a student of life,
+Mr. Chambers is thorough; he knows society; his pictures are so accurate
+that he enables the reader to imbibe the same atmosphere as if he had
+been born and brought up in it. Moreover, no matter how intricate the
+plot may be or how great the lesson to be taught, the romance in the
+story is always foremost. For "The Younger Set," Mr. Chambers has
+provided a hero with a rigid code of honor and the grit to stick to it,
+even though it be unfashionable and out of date. He is a man whom
+everyone would seek to emulate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The earliest of Mr. Chambers's society novels is
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>THE FIGHTING CHANCE</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is the story of a young man who has inherited with his wealth a
+craving for liquor, and a girl who has inherited a certain rebelliousness
+and a tendency toward dangerous caprice. The two, meeting on the brink of
+ruin, fight out their battles--two weaknesses joined with love to make a
+strength.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is sufficient to say of this novel that more than five million people
+have read it. It has taken a permanent place among the best fiction of
+the period.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>SPECIAL MESSENGER</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+is the title of Mr. Chambers's novel just preceding "The Danger Mark." It
+is the romance of a young woman spy and scout in the Civil War. As a
+special messenger in the Union service, she is led into a maze of
+critical situations, but her coolness and bravery and winsome personality
+always carry her on to victory. The story is crowded with dramatic
+incident, the roar of battle, the grim realities of war; and, at times,
+in sharp contrast, comes the tenderest of romance. It is written with an
+understanding and sympathy for the viewpoint of the partisans on both
+sides of the conflict.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>THE RECKONING</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+is a novel of the Revolutionary War. It is the fourth, chronologically,
+of a series of which "Cardigan" and "The Maid-at-Arms" were the first
+two. The third has not yet been written. These novels of New York in the
+Revolutionary days are another striking example of the enthusiasm which
+Mr. Chambers puts into his work. To write an accurate and successful
+historical novel, one must be a historian as well as a romancer. Mr.
+Chambers is an authority on New York State history during the Colonial
+period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up
+old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The
+facts are not obtrusive, but they are there, interwoven in the gauzy woof
+of the artist's imagination. That is why these romances carry conviction
+always, why we breathe the very air of the period as we read them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>IOLE</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another splendid example of the author's versatility is this farcical,
+humorous satire on the <i>art nouveau</i> of to-day, Mr. Chambers, with all
+his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a
+pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the
+Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and eat nuts and fruit, and
+listen to him while he lectures them and everybody else on art. It is
+easy to imagine what happens when several rich and practical young New
+Yorkers stumble upon this group. Everybody is happy in the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One might run on for twenty books more, but there is not space enough
+more than to mention "The Tracer of Lost Persons," "The Tree of Heaven,"
+"Some Ladies in Haste," and Mr. Chambers's delightful nature books for
+children, telling how <i>Geraldine</i> and <i>Peter</i> go wandering through
+"Outdoor-Land," "Mountain-Land," "Orchard-Land," "River-Land," "Forest-
+Land," and "Garden-Land." They, in turn, are as different from his novels
+in fancy and conception as each of his novels from the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Chambers is a born optimist. The labor of writing is a natural
+enjoyment to him. In reading anything he has written, one is at once
+impressed with the ease with which it moves along. There is no straining
+after effects, no affectations, no hysteria; but always there is a
+personality, an individuality that appeals to the best side of the
+reader's nature and somehow builds up a personal relation between him and
+the author. Perhaps it is this consummate skill, this remarkable ability
+to win the reader that has enabled Mr. Chambers to increase his audience
+year after year, until it now numbers millions; and it is only just that
+critics should, as they frequently do, proclaim him "the most popular
+writer in the country."
+</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10441 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10441 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10441)
diff --git a/old/10441-8.txt b/old/10441-8.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Green Mouse, by Robert W. Chambers,
+Illustrated by Edmund Frederick
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Green Mouse
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Release Date: December 12, 2003  [eBook #10441]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN MOUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Richard Prairie, Tonya Allen, and
+Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: "She almost wished some fisherman might come into view."]
+
+
+
+                              THE GREEN MOUSE
+
+                                    By
+
+                            ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+                          ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY
+
+                             EDMUND FREDERICK
+
+                                   1910
+
+                                    TO
+
+                                 MY FRIEND
+
+                                JOHN CORBIN
+
+Folly and Wisdom, Heavenly twins,
+  Sons of the god Imagination,
+Heirs of the Virtues--which were Sins
+  Till Transcendental Contemplation
+Transmogrified their outer skins--
+  Friend, do you follow me? For I
+  Have lost myself, I don't know why.
+
+Resuming, then, this erudite
+  And decorative Dedication,--
+Accept it, John, with all your might
+  In Cinquecentic resignation.
+You may not understand it, quite,
+  But if you've followed me all through,
+  You've done far more than I could do.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+To the literary, literal, and scientific mind purposeless fiction is
+abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined;
+the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to
+believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works
+suitable for man, woman, child, and suffragette, are to adorn the
+lingerie-laden counters in our great department shops.
+
+It is, then, with animation and confidence that the author politely
+offers to a regenerated nation this modern, moral, literary, and highly
+scientific work, thinly but ineffectually disguised as fiction, in
+deference to the prejudices of a few old-fashioned story-readers who
+still survive among us.
+
+R. W. C.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I.    An Idyl of the Idle
+II.   The Idler
+III.  The Green Mouse
+IV.   An Ideal Idol
+V.    Sacharissa
+VI.   In Wrong
+VII.  The Invisible Wire
+VIII. "In Heaven and Earth"
+IX.   A Cross-town Car
+X.    The Lid Off
+XI.   Betty
+XII.  Sybilla
+XIII. The Crown Prince
+XIV.  Gentlemen of the Press
+XV.   Drusilla
+XVI.  Flavilla
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"She almost wished some fisherman might come into view"
+
+"'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly"
+
+"'Are you not terribly impatient?' she inquired"
+
+"The lid of the basket tilted a little.... Then a plaintive voice said
+'Meow-w!'"
+
+"'I'm afraid,' he ventured, 'that I may require that table for cutting'"
+
+"'Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil again'"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+AN IDYL OF THE IDYL
+
+
+_In Which a Young Man Arrives at His Last Ditch and a Young Girl Jumps
+Over It_
+
+Utterly unequipped for anything except to ornament his environment, the
+crash in Steel stunned him. Dazed but polite, he remained a passive
+observer of the sale which followed and which apparently realized
+sufficient to satisfy every creditor, but not enough for an income to
+continue a harmlessly idle career which he had supposed was to continue
+indefinitely.
+
+He had never earned a penny; he had not the vaguest idea of how people
+made money. To do something, however, was absolutely necessary.
+
+He wasted some time in finding out just how much aid he might expect from
+his late father's friends, but when he understood the attitude of society
+toward a knocked-out gentleman he wisely ceased to annoy society, and
+turned to the business world.
+
+Here he wasted some more time. Perhaps the time was not absolutely
+wasted, for during that period he learned that he could use nobody who
+could not use him; and as he appeared to be perfectly useless, except for
+ornament, and as a business house is not a kindergarten, and furthermore,
+as he had neither time nor money to attend any school where anybody could
+teach him anything, it occurred to him to take a day off for minute and
+thorough self-examination concerning his qualifications and even his
+right to occupy a few feet of space upon the earth's surface.
+
+Four years at Harvard, two more in postgraduate courses, two more in
+Europe to perfect himself in electrical engineering, and a year at home
+attempting to invent a wireless apparatus for intercepting and
+transmitting psychical waves had left him pitifully unfit for wage
+earning.
+
+There remained his accomplishments; but the market was overstocked with
+assorted time-killers.
+
+His last asset was a trivial though unusual talent--a natural manual
+dexterity cultivated since childhood to amuse himself--something he never
+took seriously. This, and a curious control over animals, had, as the
+pleasant years flowed by, become an astonishing skill which was much more
+than sleight of hand; and he, always as good-humored as well-bred, had
+never refused to amuse the frivolous, of which he was also one, by
+picking silver dollars out of space and causing the proper card to fall
+fluttering from the ceiling.
+
+Day by day, as the little money left him melted away, he continued his
+vigorous mental examination, until the alarming shrinkage in his funds
+left him staring fixedly at his last asset. Could he use it? Was it an
+asset, after all? How clever was he? Could he face an audience and
+perform the usual magician tricks without bungling? A slip by a careless,
+laughing, fashionable young amateur amusing his social equals at a house
+party is excusable; a bungle by a hired professional meant an end to hope
+in that direction.
+
+So he rented a suite of two rooms on Central Park West, furnished them
+with what remained from better days, bought the necessary paraphernalia
+of his profession, and immured himself for practice before entering upon
+his contemplated invasion of Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbor. And one very
+lovely afternoon in May, when the Park from his windows looked like a
+green forest, and puff on puff of perfumed air fluttered the curtains at
+his opened windows, he picked up his gloves and stick, put on his hat,
+and went out to walk in the Park; and when he had walked sufficiently he
+sat down on a bench in a flowery, bushy nook on the edge of a bridle
+path.
+
+Few people disturbed the leafy privacy; a policeman sauntering southward
+noted him, perhaps for future identification. The spectacle of a well-
+built, well-groomed, and fashionable young man sitting moodily upon a
+park bench was certainly to be noted. It is not the fashion for
+fashionable people to sit on park benches unless they contemplate self,
+as well as social, destruction.
+
+So the policeman lingered for a while in the vicinity, but not hearing
+any revolver shot, presently sauntered on, buck-skinned fist clasped
+behind his broad back, squinting at a distant social gathering composed
+entirely of the most exclusive nursemaids.
+
+The young man looked up into the pleasant blue above, then his
+preoccupied gaze wandered from woodland to thicket, where the scarlet
+glow of Japanese quince mocked the colors of the fluttering scarlet
+tanagers; where orange-tinted orioles flashed amid tangles of golden
+Forsythia; and past the shrubbery to an azure corner of water, shimmering
+under the wooded slope below.
+
+That sense of languor and unrest, of despondency threaded by hope which
+fair skies and sunshine and new leaves bring with the young year to the
+young, he felt. Yet there was no bitterness in his brooding, for he was a
+singularly generous young man, and there was no vindictiveness mixed with
+the memories of his failures among those whose cordial respect for his
+father had been balanced between that blameless gentleman's wealth and
+position.
+
+A gray squirrel came crawling and nosing through the fresh grass; he
+caught its eyes, and, though the little animal was plainly bound
+elsewhere on important business, the young man soon had it curled up on
+his knee, asleep.
+
+For a while he amused himself by using his curious power, alternately
+waking the squirrel and allowing it to bound off, tail twitching, and
+then calling it back, slowly but inexorably to climb his trousers and
+curl up on his knee and sleep an uncanny and deep sleep which might end
+only at the young man's pleasure.
+
+He, too, began to feel the subtle stillness of the drowsing woodland;
+musing there, caressing his short, crisp mustache, he watched the purple
+grackle walking about in iridescent solitude, the sun spots waning and
+glowing on the grass; he heard the soft, garrulous whimper of waterfowl
+along the water's edge, the stir of leaves above.
+
+He thought of various personal matters: his poverty, the low ebb of his
+balance at the bank, his present profession, his approaching début as an
+entertainer, the chances of his failure. He thought, too, of the
+astounding change in his life, the future, vacant of promise, devoid of
+meaning, a future so utterly new and blank that he could find in it
+nothing to speculate upon. He thought also, and perfectly impersonally,
+of a girl whom he had met now and then upon the stairs of the apartment
+house which he now inhabited.
+
+Evidently there had been an ebb in her prosperity; the tumble of a New
+Yorker's fortune leads from the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence
+through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she painted
+pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt sienna; and
+her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.
+
+He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful
+beauty he had known--might still know if he chose; for a man who can pay
+for his evening clothes need never deny himself the society he was bred
+to.
+
+She certainly did resemble that girl--she had the same bluish violet
+eyes, the same white and deeply fringed lids, the same free grace of
+carriage, a trifle too boyish at times--the same firmly rounded, yet
+slender, figure.
+
+"Now, as a matter of fact," he mused aloud, stroking the sleeping
+squirrel on his knee, "I could have fallen in love with either of those
+girls--before Copper blew up."
+
+Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like
+the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints
+portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I
+have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes
+of that waking Aphrodite in the Luxembourg. If she would only just look
+at me once instead of looking through me when we pass one another in the
+hall----"
+
+The deadened gallop of a horse on the bridle path caught his ear. The
+horse was coming fast--almost too fast. He laid the sleeping squirrel on
+the bench, listened, then instinctively stood up and walked to the
+thicket's edge.
+
+What happened was too quick for him to comprehend; he had a vision of a
+big black horse, mane and tail in the wind, tearing madly, straight at
+him--a glimpse of a white face, desperate and set, a flutter of loosened
+hair; then a storm of wind and sand roared in his ears; he was hurled,
+jerked, and flung forward, dragged, shaken, and left half senseless,
+hanging to nose and bit of a horse whose rider was picking herself out of
+a bush covered with white flowers.
+
+Half senseless still, he tightened his grip on the bit, released the
+grasp on the creature's nose, and, laying his hand full on the forelock,
+brought it down twice and twice across the eyes, talking to the horse in
+halting, broken whispers.
+
+When he had the trembling animal under control he looked around; the girl
+stood on the grass, dusty, dirty, disheveled, bleeding from a cut on the
+cheek bone; the most bewildered and astonished creature he had ever
+looked upon.
+
+"It will be all right in a few minutes," he said, motioning her to the
+bench on the asphalt walk. She nodded, turned, picked up his hat, and,
+seating herself, began to smooth the furred nap with her sleeve, watching
+him intently all the while. That he already had the confidence of a horse
+that he had never before seen was perfectly apparent. Little by little
+the sweating, quivering limbs were stilled, the tense muscles in the neck
+relaxed, the head sank, dusty velvet lips nibbled at his hand, his
+shoulder; the heaving, sunken flanks filled and grew quiet.
+
+Bareheaded, his attire in disorder and covered with slaver and sand, the
+young man laid the bridle on the horse's neck, held out his hand, and,
+saying "Come," turned his back and walked down the bridle path. The horse
+stretched a sweating neck, sniffed, pricked forward both small ears, and
+slowly followed, turning as the man turned, up and down, crowding at heel
+like a trained dog, finally stopping on the edge of the walk.
+
+The young man looped the bridle over a low maple limb, and leaving the
+horse standing sauntered over to the bench.
+
+"That horse," he said pleasantly, "is all right now; but the question is,
+are you all right?"
+
+She rose, handing him his hat, and began to twist up her bright hair. For
+a few moments' silence they were frankly occupied in restoring order to
+raiment, dusting off gravel and examining rents.
+
+"I'm tremendously grateful," she said abruptly.
+
+"I am, too," he said in that attractive manner which sets people of
+similar caste at ease with one another.
+
+"Thank you; it's a generous compliment, considering your hat and
+clothing."
+
+He looked up; she stood twisting her hair and doing her best with the few
+remaining hair pegs.
+
+"I'm a sight for little fishes," she said, coloring. "Did that wretched
+beast bruise you?"
+
+"Oh, no----"
+
+"You limped!"
+
+"Did I?" he said vaguely. "How do you feel?"
+
+"There is," she said, "a curious, breathless flutter all over me; if that
+is fright, I suppose I'm frightened, but I don't mind mounting at once--
+if you would put me up----"
+
+"Better wait a bit," he said; "it would not do to have that horse feel a
+fluttering pulse, telegraphing along the snaffle. Tell me, are you
+spurred?"
+
+She lifted the hem of her habit; two small spurs glittered on her
+polished boot heels.
+
+"That's it, you see," he observed; "you probably have not ridden cross
+saddle very long. When your mount swerved you spurred, and he bolted, bit
+in teeth."
+
+"That's exactly it," she admitted, looking ruefully at her spurs. Then
+she dropped her skirt, glanced interrogatively at him, and, obeying his
+grave gesture, seated herself again upon the bench.
+
+"Don't stand," she said civilly. He took the other end of the seat,
+lifting the still slumbering squirrel to his knee.
+
+"I--I haven't said very much," she began; "I'm impulsive enough to be
+overgrateful and say too much. I hope you understand me; do you?"
+
+"Of course; you're very good. It was nothing; you could have stopped your
+horse yourself. People do that sort of thing for one another as a matter
+of course."
+
+"But not at the risk you took----"
+
+"No risk at all," he said hastily.
+
+She thought otherwise, and thought it so fervently that, afraid of
+emotion, she turned her cold, white profile to him and studied her horse,
+haughty lids adroop. The same insolent sweetness was in her eyes when
+they again reverted to him. He knew the look; he had encountered it often
+enough in the hallway and on the stairs. He knew, too, that she must
+recognize him; yet, under the circumstances, it was for her to speak
+first; and she did not, for she was at that age when horror of overdoing
+anything chokes back the scarcely extinguished childish instinct to say
+too much. In other words, she was eighteen and had had her first season
+the winter past--the winter when he had not been visible among the
+gatherings of his own kind.
+
+[Illustration: "'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly."]
+
+"Those squirrels are very tame," she observed calmly.
+
+"Not always," he said. "Try to hold this one, for example."
+
+She raised her pretty eyebrows, then accepted the lump of fluffy fur from
+his hands. Instantly an electric shock seemed to set the squirrel
+frantic, there was a struggle, a streak of gray and white, and the
+squirrel leaped from her lap and fairly flew down the asphalt path.
+
+"Gracious!" she exclaimed faintly; "what was the matter?"
+
+"Some squirrels are very wild," he said innocently.
+
+"I know--but you held him--he was asleep on your knee. Why didn't he stay
+with me?"
+
+"Oh, perhaps because I have a way with animals."
+
+"With horses, too," she added gayly. And the smile breaking from her
+violet eyes silenced him in the magic of a beauty he had never dreamed
+of. At first she mistook his silence for modesty; then--because even as
+young a maid as she is quick to divine and fine of instinct--she too fell
+silent and serious, the while the shuttles of her reason flew like
+lightning, weaving the picture of him she had conceived--a gentleman, a
+man of her own sort, rather splendid and wise and bewildering. The
+portrait completed, there was no room for the hint of presumption she had
+half sensed in the brown eyes' glance that had set her alert; and she
+looked up at him again, frankly, a trifle curiously.
+
+"I am going to thank you once more," she said, "and ask you to put me up.
+There is not a flutter of fear in my pulse now."
+
+"Are you quite sure?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+They arose; he untied the horse and beckoned it to the walk's edge.
+
+"I forgot," she said, laughing, "that I am riding cross saddle. I can
+mount without troubling you--" She set her toe to the stirrup which he
+held, and swung herself up into the saddle with a breezy "Thanks,
+awfully," and sat there gathering her bridle.
+
+Had she said enough? How coldly her own thanks rang in her ears--for
+perhaps he had saved her neck--and perhaps not. Busy with curb and
+snaffle reins, head bent, into her oval face a tint of color crept. Did
+he think she treated lightly, flippantly, the courage which became him
+so? Or was he already bored by her acknowledgment of it? Sensitive,
+dreading to expose youth and inexperience to the amused smile of this
+attractive young man of the world, she sat fumbling with her bridle,
+conscious that he stood beside her, hat in hand, looking up at her. She
+could delay no longer; the bridle had been shifted and reshifted to the
+last second of procrastination. She must say something or go.
+
+Meeting his eyes, she smiled and leaned a little forward in her saddle as
+though to speak, but his brown eyes troubled her, and all she could say
+was "Thank you--good-by," and galloped off down the vista through dim,
+leafy depths heavy with the incense of lilac and syringa.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+THE IDLER
+
+
+_Concerning the Young Man in the Ditch and His Attempts to Get Out of It_
+
+Although he was not vindictive, he did not care to owe anything to
+anybody who might be inclined to give him a hearing on account of former
+obligations or his social position. Everybody knew he had gone to smash;
+everybody, he very soon discovered, was naturally afraid of being
+bothered by him. The dread of the overfed that an underfed member of the
+community may request a seat at the table he now understood perfectly. He
+was learning.
+
+So he solicited aid from nobody whom he had known in former days; neither
+from those who had aided him when he needed no aid, nor those who owed
+their comfortable position to the generosity of his father--a gentleman
+notorious for making fortunes for his friends.
+
+Therefore he wrote to strangers on a purely business basis--to amazing
+types lately emerged from the submerged, bulging with coal money, steel
+money, copper money, wheat money, stockyard money--types that galloped
+for Fifth Avenue to build town houses; that shook their long cars and
+frisked into the country and built "cottages." And this was how he put
+it:
+
+"_Madam:_ In case you desire to entertain guests with the professional
+services of a magician it would give me pleasure to place my very unusual
+accomplishments at your disposal."
+
+And signed his name.
+
+It was a dreadful drain on his bank account to send several thousand
+engraved cards about town and fashionable resorts. No replies came. Day
+after day, exhausted with the practice drill of his profession, he walked
+to the Park and took his seat on the bench by the bridle path. Sometimes
+he saw her cantering past; she always acknowledged his salute, but never
+drew bridle. At times, too, he passed her in the hall; her colorless
+"Good morning" never varied except when she said "Good evening." And all
+this time he never inquired her name from the hall servant; he was that
+sort of man--decent through instinct; for even breeding sometimes permits
+sentiment to snoop.
+
+For a week he had been airily dispensing with more than one meal a day;
+to keep clothing and boots immaculate required a sacrifice of breakfast
+and luncheon--besides, he had various small pensioners to feed, white
+rabbits with foolish pink eyes, canary birds, cats, albino mice,
+goldfish, and other collaborateurs in his profession. He was obliged to
+bribe the janitor, too, because the laws of the house permitted neither
+animals nor babies within its precincts. This extra honorarium deprived
+him of tobacco, and he became a pessimist.
+
+Besides, doubts as to his own ability arose within him; it was all very
+well to practice his magic there alone, but he had not yet tried it on
+anybody except the janitor; and when he had begun by discovering several
+red-eyed rabbits in the janitor's pockets that intemperate functionary
+fled with a despondent yell that brought a policeman to the area gate
+with a threat to pull the place.
+
+At length, however, a letter came engaging him for one evening. He was
+quite incredulous at first, then modestly scared, perplexed, exultant and
+depressed by turns. Here was an opening--the first. And because it was
+the first its success or failure meant future engagements or consignments
+to the street, perhaps as a white-wing. There must be no faltering now,
+no bungling, no mistakes, no amateurish hesitation. It is the empty-
+headed who most strenuously demand intelligence in others. One yawn from
+such an audience meant his professional damnation--he knew that; every
+second must break like froth in a wine glass; an instant's perplexity, a
+slackening of the tension, and those flaccid intellects would relax into
+native inertia. Incapable of self-amusement, depending utterly upon
+superior minds for a respite from ennui, their caprice controlled his
+fate; and he knew it.
+
+Sitting there by the sunny window with a pair of magnificent white
+Persian cats purring on either knee, he read and reread the letter
+summoning him on the morrow to Seabright. He knew who his hostess was--a
+large lady lately emerged from a corner in lard, dragging with her some
+assorted relatives of atrophied intellects and a husband whose only
+mental pleasure depended upon the speed attained by his racing car--the
+most exacting audience he could dare to confront.
+
+Like the White Knight he had had plenty of practice, but he feared that
+warrior's fate; and as he sat there he picked up a bunch of silver hoops,
+tossed them up separately so that they descended linked in a glittering
+chain, looped them and unlooped them, and, tiring, thoughtfully tossed
+them toward the ceiling again, where they vanished one by one in mid-air.
+
+The cats purred; he picked up one, molded her carefully in his handsome
+hands; and presently, under the agreeable massage, her purring increased
+while she dwindled and dwindled to the size of a small, fluffy kitten,
+then vanished entirely, leaving in his hand a tiny white mouse. This
+mouse he tossed into the air, where it became no mouse at all but a white
+butterfly that fluttered 'round and 'round, alighting at last on the
+window curtain and hung there, opening and closing its snowy wings.
+
+"That's all very well," he reflected, gloomily, as, at a pass of his
+hand, the air was filled with canary birds; "that's all very well, but
+suppose I should slip up? What I need is to rehearse to somebody before I
+face two or three hundred people."
+
+He thought he heard a knocking on his door, and listened a moment. But as
+there was an electric bell there he concluded he had been mistaken; and
+picking up the other white cat, he began a gentle massage that stimulated
+her purring, apparently at the expense of her color and size, for in a
+few moments she also dwindled until she became a very small, coal-black
+kitten, changing in a twinkling to a blackbird, when he cast her
+carelessly toward the ceiling. It was well done; in all India no magician
+could have done it more cleverly, more casually.
+
+Leaning forward in his chair he reproduced the two white cats from behind
+him, put the kittens back in their box, caught the blackbird and caged
+it, and was carefully winding up the hairspring in the white butterfly,
+when again he fancied that somebody was knocking.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+THE GREEN MOUSE
+
+
+_Showing the Value of a Helping Hand When It Is White and Slender_
+
+This time he went leisurely to the door and opened it; a girl stood
+there, saying, "I beg your pardon for disturbing you--" It was high time
+she admitted it, for her eyes had been disturbing him day and night since
+the first time he passed her in the hall.
+
+She appeared to be a trifle frightened, too, and, scarcely waiting for
+his invitation, she stepped inside with a hurried glance behind her, and
+walked to the center of the room holding her skirts carefully as though
+stepping through wet grass.
+
+"I--I am annoyed," she said in a voice not perfectly under command. "If
+you please, would you tell me whether there is such a thing as a pea-
+green mouse?"
+
+Then he did a mean thing; he could have cleared up that matter with a
+word, a smile, and--he didn't.
+
+"A green mouse?" he repeated gently, almost pitifully.
+
+She nodded, then paled; he drew a big chair toward her, for her knees
+trembled a little; and she sat down with an appealing glance that ought
+to have made him ashamed of himself.
+
+"What has frightened you?" inquired that meanest of men.
+
+"I was in my studio--and I must first explain to you that for weeks and
+weeks I--I have imagined I heard sounds--" She looked carefully around
+her; nothing animate was visible. "Sounds," she repeated, swallowing a
+little lump in her white throat, "like the faint squealing and squeaking
+and sniffing and scratching of--of live things. I asked the janitor, and
+he said the house was not very well built and that the beams and
+wainscoting were shrinking."
+
+"Did he say that?" inquired the young man, thinking of the bribes.
+
+"Yes, and I tried to believe him. And one day I thought I heard about one
+hundred canaries singing, and I know I did, but that idiot janitor said
+they were the sparrows under the eaves. Then one day when your door was
+open, and I was coming up the stairway, and it was dark in the entry,
+something big and soft flopped across the carpet, and--it being
+exceedingly common to scream--I didn't, but managed to get past it, and"--
+her violet eyes widened with horror--"do you know what that soft, floppy
+thing was? It was an owl!"
+
+He was aware of it; he had managed to secure the escaped bird before her
+electric summons could arouse the janitor.
+
+"I called the janitor," she said, "and he came and we searched the entry;
+but there was no owl."
+
+He appeared to be greatly impressed; she recognized the sympathy in his
+brown eyes.
+
+"That wretched janitor declared I had seen a cat," she resumed; "and I
+could not persuade him otherwise. For a week I scarcely dared set foot on
+the stairs, but I had to--you see, I live at home and only come to my
+studio to paint."
+
+"I thought you lived here," he said, surprised.
+
+"Oh, no. I have my studio--" she hesitated, then smiled. "Everybody makes
+fun of me, and I suppose they'll laugh me out of it, but I detest
+conventions, and I did hope I had talent for something besides
+frivolity."
+
+Her gaze wandered around his room; then suddenly the possible
+significance of her unconventional situation brought her to her feet,
+serious but self-possessed.
+
+"I beg your pardon again," she said, "but I was really driven out of my
+studio--quite frightened, I confess."
+
+"What drove you out?" he asked guiltily.
+
+"Something--you can scarcely credit it--and I dare not tell the janitor
+for fear he will think me--queer." She raised her distressed and lovely
+eyes again: "Oh, please believe that I _did_ see a bright green mouse!"
+
+"I do believe it," he said, wincing.
+
+"Thank you. I--I know perfectly well how it sounds--and I know that
+horrid people see things like that, but"--she spoke piteously--"I had
+only one glass of claret at luncheon, and I am perfectly healthy in body
+and mind. How could I see such a thing if it was not there?"
+
+"It was there," he declared.
+
+"Do you really think so? A green--bright green mouse?"
+
+"Haven't a doubt of it," he assured her; "saw one myself the other day."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"On the floor--" he made a vague gesture. "There's probably a crack
+between your studio and my wall, and the little rascal crept into your
+place."
+
+She stood looking at him uncertainly: "Are there really such things as
+green mice?"
+
+"Well," he explained, "I fancy this one was originally white. Somebody
+probably dyed it green."
+
+"But who on earth would be silly enough to do such a thing?"
+
+His ears grew red--he felt them doing it.
+
+After a moment she said: "I am glad you told me that you, too, saw this
+unspeakable mouse. I have decided to write to the owners of the house and
+request an immediate investigation. Would--would it be too much to ask
+you to write also?"
+
+"Are you--you going to write?" he asked, appalled.
+
+"Certainly. Either some dreadful creature here keeps a bird store and
+brings home things that escape, or the house is infested. I don't care
+what the janitor says; I did hear squeals and whines and whimpers!"
+
+"Suppose--suppose we wait," he began lamely; but at that moment her blue
+eyes widened; she caught him convulsively by the arm, pointing, one snowy
+finger outstretched.
+
+"Oh-h!" she said hysterically, and the next instant was standing upon a
+chair, pale as a ghost. It was a wonder she had not mounted the dresser,
+too, for there, issuing in creepy single file from the wainscoting, came
+mice--mice of various tints. A red one led the grewsome rank, a black and
+white one came next, then in decorous procession followed the guilty
+green one, a yellow one, a blue one, and finally--horror of horrors!--a
+red-white-and-blue mouse, carrying a tiny American flag.
+
+He turned a miserable face toward her; she, eyes dilated, frozen to a
+statue, saw him advance, hold out a white wand--saw the uncanny
+procession of mice mount the stick and form into a row, tails hanging
+down--saw him carry the creatures to a box and dump them in.
+
+He was trying to speak now. She heard him stammer something about the
+escape of the mice; she heard him asking her pardon. Dazed, she laid her
+hand in his as he aided her to descend to the floor; nerveless,
+speechless, she sank into the big chair, horror still dilating her eyes.
+
+"It's all up with me," he said slowly, "if you write to the owners. I've
+bribed the janitor to say nothing. I'm dreadfully mortified that these
+things have happened to annoy you."
+
+The color came back into her face; amazement dominated her anger. "But
+why--why do you keep such creatures?"
+
+"Why shouldn't I?" he asked. "It is my profession."
+
+"Your--what?"
+
+"My profession," he repeated doggedly.
+
+"Oh," she said, revolted, "that is not true! You are a gentleman--I know
+who you are perfectly well!"
+
+"Who am I?"
+
+She called him by name, almost angrily.
+
+"Well," he said sullenly, "what of it? If you have investigated my record
+you must know I am as poor as these miserable mice."
+
+"I--I know it. But you are a gentleman----"
+
+"I am a mountebank," he said; "I mean a mountebank in its original
+interpretation. There's neither sense nor necessity for me to deny it."
+
+"I--I don't understand you," she whispered, shocked.
+
+"Why, I do monkey tricks to entertain people," he replied, forcing a
+laugh, "or rather, I hope to do a few--and be paid for them. I fancy
+every man finds his own level; I've found mine, apparently."
+
+Her face was inscrutable; she lay back in the great chair, watching him.
+
+"I have a little money left," he said; "enough to last a day or two. Then
+I am to be paid for entertaining some people at Seabright; and," he added
+with that very attractive smile of his from which all bitterness had
+departed, "and that will be the first money I ever earned in all my
+life."
+
+She was young enough to be fascinated, child enough to feel the little
+lump in her throat rising. She knew he was poor; her sisters had told her
+that; but she had supposed it to be only comparative poverty--just as her
+cousins, for instance, had scarcely enough to keep more than two horses
+in town and only one motor. But want--actual need--she had never dreamed
+of in his case--she could scarcely understand it even now--he was so well
+groomed, so attractive, fairly radiating good breeding and the easy
+financial atmosphere she was accustomed to.
+
+"So you see," he continued gayly, "if you complain to the owners about
+green mice, why, I shall have to leave, and, as a matter of fact, I
+haven't enough money to go anywhere except--" he laughed.
+
+"Where?" she managed to say.
+
+"The Park. I was joking, of course," he hastened to add, for she had
+turned rather white.
+
+"No," she said, "you were not joking." And as he made no reply: "Of
+course, I shall not write--now. I had rather my studio were overrun with
+multicolored mice--" She stopped with something almost like a sob. He
+smiled, thinking she was laughing.
+
+But oh, the blow for her! In her youthful enthusiasm she had always, from
+the first time they had encountered one another, been sensitively aware
+of this tall, clean-cut, attractive young fellow. And by and by she
+learned his name and asked her sisters about him, and when she heard of
+his recent ruin and withdrawal from the gatherings of his kind her youth
+flushed to its romantic roots, warming all within her toward this
+splendid and radiant young man who lived so nobly, so proudly aloof. And
+then--miracle of Manhattan!--he had proved his courage before her dazed
+eyes--rising suddenly out of the very earth to save her from a fate which
+her eager desire painted blacker every time she embellished the incident.
+And she decorated the memory of it every day.
+
+And now! Here, beside her, was this prince among men, her champion,
+beaten to his ornamental knees by Fate, and contemplating a miserable,
+uncertain career to keep his godlike body from actual starvation. And
+she--she with more money than even she knew what to do with, powerless to
+aid him, prevented from flinging open her check book and bidding him to
+write and write till he could write no more.
+
+A memory--a thought crept in. Where had she heard his name connected with
+her father's name? In Ophir Steel? Certainly; and was it not this young
+man's father who had laid the foundation for her father's fortune? She
+had heard some such thing, somewhere.
+
+He said: "I had no idea of boring anybody--you least of all--with my
+woes. Indeed, I haven't any sorrows now, because to-day I received my
+first encouragement; and no doubt I'll be a huge success. Only--I thought
+it best to make it clear why it would do me considerable damage just now
+if you should write."
+
+"Tell me," she said tremulously, "is there anything--anything I can do
+to--to balance the deep debt of gratitude I owe you----"
+
+"What debt?" he asked, astonished. "Oh! that? Why, that is no debt--
+except that I was happy--perfectly and serenely happy to have had that
+chance to--to hear your voice----"
+
+"You were brave," she said hastily. "You may make as light of it as you
+please, but I know."
+
+"So do I," he laughed, enchanted with the rising color in her cheeks.
+
+"No, you don't; you don't know how I felt--how afraid I was to show how
+deeply--deeply I felt. I felt it so deeply that I did not even tell my
+sisters," she added naively.
+
+"Your sisters?"
+
+"Yes; you know them." And as he remained silent she said: "Do you not
+know who I am? Do you not even know my name?"
+
+He shook his head, laughing.
+
+"I'd have given all I had to know; but, of course, I could not ask the
+servants!"
+
+Surprise, disappointment, hurt pride that he had had no desire to know
+gave quick place to a comprehension that set a little thrill tingling her
+from head to foot. His restraint was the nicest homage ever rendered her;
+she saw that instantly; and the straight look she gave him out of her
+clear eyes took his breath away for a second.
+
+"Do you remember Sacharissa?" she asked.
+
+"I do--certainly! I always thought----"
+
+"What?" she said, smiling.
+
+He muttered something about eyes and white skin and a trick of the heavy
+lids.
+
+She was perfectly at ease now; she leaned back in her chair, studying him
+calmly.
+
+"Suppose," she said, "people could see me here now."
+
+"It would end your artistic career," he replied, laughing; "and fancy! I
+took you for the sort that painted for a bare existence!"
+
+"And I--I took you for----"
+
+"Something very different than what I am."
+
+"In one way--not in others."
+
+"Oh! I look the mountebank?"
+
+"I shall not explain what I mean," she said with heightened color, and
+rose from her chair. "As there are no more green mice to peep out at me
+from behind my easel," she added, "I can have no excuse from abandoning
+art any longer. Can I?"
+
+The trailing sweetness of the inquiry was scarcely a challenge, yet he
+dared take it up.
+
+"You asked me," he said, "whether you could do anything for me."
+
+"Can I?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I will--I am glad--tell me what to do?"
+
+"Why, it's only this. I've got to go before an audience of two hundred
+people and do things. I've had practice here by myself, but--but if you
+don't mind I should like to try it before somebody--you. Do you mind?"
+
+She stood there, slim, blue-eyed, reflecting; then innocently: "If I've
+compromised myself the damage was done long ago, wasn't it? They're going
+to take away my studio anyhow, so I might as well have as much pleasure
+as I can."
+
+And she sat down, gracefully, linking her white fingers over her knees.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+AN IDEAL IDOL
+
+
+_A Chapter Devoted to the Proposition that All Mankind Are Born of Woman_
+
+He began by suddenly filling the air with canary birds; they flew and
+chirped and fluttered about her head, until, bewildered, she shrank back,
+almost frightened at the golden hurricane.
+
+To reassure her he began doing incredible things with the big silver
+hoops, forming chains and linked figures under her amazed eyes, although
+each hoop seemed solid and without a break in its polished circumference.
+Then, one by one, he tossed the rings up and they vanished in mid-air
+before her very eyes.
+
+"How did you do that?" she cried, enchanted.
+
+He laughed and produced the big, white Persian cats, changed them into
+kittens, then into birds and butterflies, and finally into a bowl full of
+big, staring goldfish. Then he picked up a ladle, dipped out the fish,
+carefully fried them over an electric lamp, dumped them from the smoking
+frying pan back into the water, where they quietly swam off again,
+goggling their eyes in astonishment.
+
+"That," said the girl, excitedly, "is miraculous!"
+
+"Isn't it?" he said, delighted as a boy at her praise. "What card will
+you choose?"
+
+And he handed her a pack.
+
+"The ace of hearts, if you please."
+
+"Draw it from the pack."
+
+"Any card?" she inquired. "Oh! how on earth did you make me draw the ace
+of hearts?"
+
+"Hold it tightly," he warned her.
+
+She clutched it in her pretty fingers.
+
+"Are you sure you hold it?" he asked.
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Look!"
+
+She looked and found that it was the queen of diamonds she held so
+tightly; but, looking again to reassure herself, she was astonished to
+find that the card was the jack of clubs. "Tear it up," he said. She tore
+it into small pieces.
+
+"Throw them into the air!"
+
+She obeyed, and almost cried out to see them take fire in mid-air and
+float away in ashy flakes.
+
+Face flushed, eyes brilliant, she turned to him, hanging on his every
+movement, every expression.
+
+Before her rapt eyes the multicolored mice danced jigs on slack wires,
+then were carefully rolled up into little balls of paper which
+immediately began to swell until each was as big as a football. These
+burst open, and out of each football of white paper came kittens,
+turtles, snakes, chickens, ducks, and finally two white rabbits with
+silly pink eyes that began gravely waltzing round and round the room.
+
+"Please stand up and shake your skirts," he said.
+
+She rose hastily and obeyed; a rain of silver coins fell, then gold, then
+banknotes, littering the floor. Then precious stones began to drop about
+her; she shook them from her hair, her collar, her neck; she clenched her
+hands in nervous amazement, but inside each tight little fist she felt
+something, and opening her fingers she fairly showered the floor with
+diamonds.
+
+"Can't you save one for me?" he asked. "I really need it." But when again
+she looked for the glittering heap at her feet, it was gone; and, search
+as she might, not one coin, not one gem remained.
+
+Glancing up in dismay she found herself in a perfect storm of white
+butterflies--no, they were red--no, green!
+
+"Is there anything in this world you desire?" he asked her.
+
+"A--a glass of water----"
+
+She was already holding it in her hands, and she cried out in amazement,
+spilling the brimming glass; but no water fell, only a rain of little
+crimson flames.
+
+"I can't--can't drink this--can I?" she faltered.
+
+"With perfect safety," he smiled, and she tasted it.
+
+"Taste it again," he said.
+
+She tried it; it was lemonade.
+
+"Again."
+
+It was ginger ale.
+
+"Once more."
+
+She stared at the glass, frothing with ice-cream soda; there was a long
+silver spoon in it, too.
+
+Enchanted, she lay back, savoring her ice, shyly watching him.
+
+He went on gayly doing uncanny or charming things; her eyes were tired,
+dazzled, but not too weary to watch him, though she scarcely followed the
+marvelous objects that appeared and vanished and glittered and flamed
+under his ceaselessly busy hands.
+
+She did notice with a shudder the appearance of an owl that sat for a
+while on his shoulder and then turned into a big fur muff which was all
+right as long as he held it, but walked away on four legs when he tossed
+it to the floor.
+
+A shower of brilliant things followed like shooting stars; two or three
+rose trees grew, budded, and bloomed before her eyes; and he laid the
+fresh, sweet blossoms in her hands. They turned to violets later, but
+that did not matter; nothing mattered any longer as long as she could lie
+there and gaze at him--the most splendid man her maiden eyes had ever
+unclosed upon.
+
+About two thousand yards of brilliant ribbons suddenly fell from the
+ceiling; she looked at him with something perilously close to a sigh. Out
+of an old hat he produced a cage full of parrots; every parrot repeated
+her first name decorously, monotonously, until packed back into the hat
+and stuffed into a box which was then set on fire.
+
+Her heart was pretty full now; for she was only eighteen and she had been
+considering his poverty. So when in due time the box burned out and from
+the black and charred _débris_ the parrots stepped triumphantly forth,
+gravely repeating her name in unison; and when she saw that the
+entertainment was at an end, she rose, setting her ice-cream soda upon a
+table, and, although the glass instantly changed into a teapot, she
+walked straight up to him and held out her hand.
+
+"I've had a perfectly lovely time," she said. "And I want to say to you
+that I have been thinking of several things, and one is that it is
+perfectly ridiculous for you to be poor."
+
+"It is rather ridiculous," he admitted, surprised. "Isn't it! And no need
+of it at all. Your father made a fortune for my father. All you have to
+do is to let my father make a fortune for you."
+
+"Is that all?" he asked, laughing.
+
+"Of course. Why did you not tell him so? Have you seen him?"
+
+"No," he said gravely.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I saw others--I did not care to try--any more--friends."
+
+"Will you--now?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Then I will."
+
+"Please don't," he said quietly. Her hand still lay in his; she looked up
+at him; her eyes were starry bright and a little moist.
+
+"I simply can't stand this," she said, steadying her voice.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Your--your distress--" She choked; her sensitive mouth trembled.
+
+"Good Heavens!" he breathed; "do you care!"
+
+"Care--care," she stammered. "You saved my life with a laugh! You face
+st-starvation with a laugh! Your father made mine! Care? Yes, I care!"
+
+But she had bent her head; a bright tear fell, spangling his polished
+shoes; the pulsating seconds passed; he laid his other hand above both of
+hers which he held, and stood silent, stunned, scarcely daring to
+understand.
+
+Nor was it here he could understand or even hope--his instinct held him
+stupid and silent. Presently he released her hands.
+
+She said "Good-by" calmly enough; he followed her to the door and opened
+it, watching her pass through the hall to her own door. And there she
+paused and looked back; and he found himself beside her again.
+
+"Only," she began, "only don't do all those beautiful magic things for
+any--anybody else--will you? I wish to have--have them all for myself--to
+share them with no one----"
+
+He held her hands imprisoned again. "I will never do one of those things
+for anybody but you," he said unsteadily.
+
+"Truly?" Her face caught fire.
+
+"Yes, truly."
+
+"But how--how, then, can you--can----"
+
+"I don't care what happens to me!" he said. To look at him nobody would
+have thought him young enough to say that sort of thing.
+
+"I care," she said, releasing her hands and stepping back into her
+studio.
+
+For a moment her lovely, daring face swam before his eyes; then, in the
+next moment, she was in his arms, crying her eyes out against his
+shoulder, his lips pressed to her bright hair.
+
+And that was all right in its way, too; madder things have happened in
+our times; but nothing madder ever happened than a large, bald gentleman
+who came up the stairs in a series of bounces and planted his legs apart
+and tightened his pudgy grip upon his malacca walking stick, and
+confronted them with distended eyes and waistband.
+
+In vigorous but incoherent English he begged to know whether this scene
+was part of an education in art.
+
+"Papah," she said calmly, "you are just in time. Go into the studio and
+I'll come in one moment."
+
+Then giving her lover both hands and looking at him with all her soul in
+her young eyes: "I love you; I'll marry you. And if there's trouble"--she
+smiled upon her frantic father--"if there is trouble I will follow you
+about the country exhibiting green mice----"
+
+"What!" thundered her father.
+
+"Green mice," she repeated with an adorable smile at her lover--"unless
+my father finds a necessity for you in his business--with a view to
+partnership. And I'm going to let you arrange that together. Good-by."
+
+And she entered her studio, closing the door behind her, leaving the two
+men confronting one another in the entry.
+
+For one so young she had much wisdom and excellent taste; and listening,
+she heard her father explode in one lusty Saxon word. He always said it
+when beaten; it was the beginning of the end, and the end of the sweetest
+beginning that ever dawned on earth for a maid since the first sunbeam
+stole into Eden.
+
+So she sat down on her little camp stool before her easel and picked up a
+hand glass; and, sitting there, carefully removed all traces of tears
+from her wet and lovely eyes with the cambric hem of her painting apron.
+
+"Damnation!" repeated Mr. Carr, "am I to understand that the only thing
+you can do for a living is to go about with a troupe of trained mice?"
+
+"I've invented a machine," observed the young man, modestly. "It ought to
+be worth millions--if you'd care to finance it."
+
+"The idea is utterly repugnant to me!" shouted her father.
+
+The young man reddened. "If you wouldn't mind examining it--" He drew
+from his pocket a small, delicately contrived bit of clockwork. "This is
+the machine----"
+
+"I don't want to see it!"
+
+"You _have_ seen it. Do you mind sitting down a moment? Be careful of
+that kitten! Kindly take this chair. Thank you. Now, if you would be good
+enough to listen for ten minutes----"
+
+"I don't want to be good enough! Do you hear!"
+
+"Yes, I hear," said young Destyn, patiently. "And as I was going to
+explain, the earth is circumscribed by wireless currents of
+electricity----"
+
+"I--dammit, sir----"
+
+"But those are not the only invisible currents that are ceaselessly
+flowing around our globe!" pursued the young man, calmly. "Do you see
+this machine?"
+
+"No, I don't!" snarled the other.
+
+"Then--" And, leaning closer, William Augustus Destyn whispered into
+Bushwyck Carr's fat, red ear.
+
+"What!!!"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You can't _prove_ it!"
+
+"Watch me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ethelinda had dried her eyes. Every few minutes she glanced anxiously at
+the little French clock over her easel.
+
+"What on earth can they be doing?" she murmured. And when the long hour
+struck she arose with resolution and knocked at the door.
+
+"Come in," said her father, irritably, "but don't interrupt. William and
+I are engaged in a very important business transaction."
+
+[Illustration: ]
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+SACHARISSA
+
+
+_Treating of Certain Scientific Events Succeeding the Wedding Journey of
+William and Ethelinda_
+
+Sacharissa took the chair. She knew nothing about parliamentary
+procedure; neither did her younger, married sister, Ethelinda, nor the
+recently acquired family brother-in-law, William Augustus Destyn.
+
+"The meeting will come to order," said Sacharissa, and her brother-in-law
+reluctantly relinquished his new wife's hand--all but one finger.
+
+"Miss Chairman," he began, rising to his feet.
+
+The chair recognized him and bit into a chocolate.
+
+"I move that our society be known as The Green Mouse, Limited."
+
+"Why limited?" asked Sacharissa.
+
+"Why not?" replied her sister, warmly.
+
+"Well, what does your young man mean by limited?"
+
+"I suppose," said Linda, "that he means it is to be the limit. Don't you,
+William?"
+
+"Certainly," said Destyn, gravely; and the motion was put and carried.
+
+"Rissa, dear!"
+
+The chair casually recognized her younger sister.
+
+"I propose that the object of this society be to make its members very,
+very wealthy."
+
+The motion was carried; Linda picked up a scrap of paper and began to
+figure up the possibility of a new touring car.
+
+Then Destyn arose; the chair nodded to him and leaned back, playing a
+tattoo with her pencil tip against her snowy teeth.
+
+He began in his easy, agreeable voice, looking across at his pretty wife:
+
+"You know, dearest--and Sacharissa, over there, is also aware--that, in
+the course of my economical experiments in connection with your father's
+Wireless Trust, I have accidentally discovered how to utilize certain
+brand-new currents of an extraordinary character."
+
+Sacharissa's expression became skeptical; Linda watched her husband in
+unfeigned admiration.
+
+"These new and hitherto unsuspected currents," continued Destyn modestly,
+"are not electrical but psychical. Yet, like wireless currents, their
+flow eternally encircles the earth. These currents, I believe, have their
+origin in that great unknown force which, for lack of a better name, we
+call fate, or predestination. And I am convinced that by intercepting one
+of these currents it is possible to connect the subconscious
+personalities of two people of opposite sex who, although ultimately
+destined for one another since the beginning of things, have, through
+successive incarnations, hitherto missed the final consummation--
+marriage!--which was the purpose of their creation."
+
+"Bill, dear," sighed Linda, "how exquisitely you explain the infinite."
+
+"Fudge!" said Sacharissa; "go on, William."
+
+"That's all," said Destyn. "We agreed to put in a thousand dollars apiece
+for me to experiment with. I've perfected the instrument--here it is."
+
+He drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, flat jeweler's case and took
+out a delicate machine resembling the complicated interior of a watch.
+
+"Now," he said, "with this tiny machine concealed in my waistcoat pocket,
+I walk up to any man and, by turning a screw like the stem of a watch,
+open the microscopical receiver. Into the receiver flow all psychical
+emanations from that unsuspicious citizen. The machine is charged,
+positively. Then I saunter up to some man, place the instrument on a
+table--like that--touch a lever. Do you see that hair wire of Rosium
+uncoil like a tentacle? It is searching, groping for the invisible,
+negative, psychical current which will carry its message."
+
+"To whom?" asked Sacharissa.
+
+"To the subconscious personality of the only woman for whom he was
+created, the only woman on earth whose psychic personality is properly
+attuned to intercept that wireless greeting and respond to it."
+
+"How can you tell whether she responds?" asked Sacharissa, incredulously.
+He pointed to the hair wire of Rosium:
+
+"I watch that. The instant that the psychical current reaches and awakens
+her, crack!--a minute point of blue incandescence tips the tentacle. It's
+done; psychical communication is established. And that man and that
+woman, wherever they may be on earth, surely, inexorably, will be drawn
+together, even from the uttermost corners of the world, to fulfill that
+for which they were destined since time began."
+
+There was a semirespectful silence; Linda looked at the little jewel-like
+machine with a slight shudder; Sacharissa shrugged her young shoulders.
+
+"How much of this," said she, "is theory and how much is fact?--for,
+William, you always were something of a poet."
+
+"I don't know. A month ago I tried it on your father's footman, and in a
+week he'd married a perfectly strange parlor maid."
+
+"Oh, they do such things, anyway," observed Sacharissa, and added,
+unconvinced: "Did that tentacle burn blue?"
+
+"It certainly did," said Destyn.
+
+Linda murmured: "I believe in it. Let's issue stock."
+
+"To issue stock is one thing," said Destyn, "to get people to buy it is
+another. You and I may believe in Green Mouse, Limited, but the rest of
+the world is always from beyond the Mississippi."
+
+"The thing to do," said Linda, "is to prove your theory by practicing on
+people. They may not like the idea, but they'll be so grateful, when
+happily and unexpectedly married, that they'll buy stock."
+
+"Or give us testimonials," added Sacharissa, "that their bliss was
+entirely due to a single dose of Green Mouse, Limited."
+
+"Don't be flippant," said Linda. "Think what William's invention means to
+the world! Think of the time it will save young men barking up wrong
+trees! Think of the trouble saved--no more doubt, no timidity, no
+hesitation, no speculation, no opposition from parents."
+
+"Any of our clients," added Destyn, "can be instantly switched on to a
+private psychical current which will clinch the only girl in the world.
+Engagements will be superfluous; those two simply can't get away from
+each other."
+
+"If that were true," observed Sacharissa, "it would be most unpleasant.
+There would be no fun in it. However," she added, smiling, "I don't
+believe in your theory or your machine, William. It would take more than
+that combination to make me marry anybody."
+
+"Then we're not going to issue stock?" asked Linda. "I do need so many
+new and expensive things."
+
+"We've got to experiment a little further, first," said Destyn.
+
+Sacharissa laughed: "You blindfold me, give me a pencil and lay the
+Social Register before me. Whatever name I mark you are to experiment
+with."
+
+"Don't mark any of our friends," began Linda.
+
+"How can I tell whom I may choose. It's fair for everybody. Come; do you
+promise to abide by it--you two?"
+
+They promised doubtfully.
+
+"So do I, then," said Sacharissa. "Hurry up and blindfold me, somebody.
+The bus will be here in half an hour, and you know how father acts when
+kept waiting."
+
+Linda tied her eyes with a handkerchief, gave her a pencil and seated
+herself on an arm of the chair watching the pencil hovering over the
+pages of the Social Register which her sister was turning at hazard.
+
+"_This_ page," announced Sacharissa, "and _this_ name!" marking it with a
+quick stroke.
+
+Linda gave a stifled cry and attempted to arrest the pencil; but the
+moving finger had written.
+
+"Whom have I selected?" inquired the girl, whisking the handkerchief from
+her eyes. "What are you having a fit about, Linda?"
+
+And, looking at the page, she saw that she had marked her own name.
+
+"We must try it again," said Destyn, hastily. "That doesn't count. Tie
+her up, Linda."
+
+"But--that wouldn't be fair," said Sacharissa, hesitating whether to take
+it seriously or laugh. "We all promised, you know. I ought to abide by
+what I've done."
+
+"Don't be silly," said Linda, preparing the handkerchief and laying it
+across her sister's forehead.
+
+Sacharissa pushed it away. "I can't break my word, even to myself," she
+said, laughing. "I'm not afraid of that machine."
+
+"Do you mean to say you are willing to take silly chances?" asked Linda,
+uneasily. "I believe in William's machine whether you do or not. And I
+don't care to have any of the family experimented with."
+
+"If I were willing to try it on others it would be cowardly for me to
+back out now," said Sacharissa, forcing a smile; for Destyn's and Linda's
+seriousness was beginning to make her a trifle uncomfortable.
+
+"Unless you want to marry somebody pretty soon you'd better not risk it,"
+said Destyn, gravely.
+
+"You--you don't particularly care to marry anybody, just now, do you,
+dear?" asked Linda. "No," replied her sister, scornfully.
+
+There was a silence; Sacharissa, uneasy, bit her underlip and sat looking
+at the uncanny machine.
+
+She was a tall girl, prettily formed, one of those girls with long limbs,
+narrow, delicate feet and ankles.
+
+That sort of girl, when she also possesses a mass of chestnut hair, a
+sweet mouth and gray eyes, is calculated to cause trouble.
+
+And there she sat, one knee crossed over the other, slim foot swinging,
+perplexed brows bent slightly inward.
+
+"I can't see any honorable way out of it," she said resolutely. "I said
+I'd abide by the blindfolded test."
+
+"When we promised we weren't thinking of ourselves," insisted Ethelinda.
+
+"That doesn't release us," retorted her Puritan sister.
+
+"Why?" demanded Linda. "Suppose, for example, your pencil had marked
+William's name! That would have been im--immoral!"
+
+"_Would_ it?" asked Sacharissa, turning her honest, gray eyes on her
+brother-in-law.
+
+"I don't believe it would," he said; "I'd only be switched on to Linda's
+current again." And he smiled at his wife.
+
+Sacharissa sat thoughtful and serious, swinging her foot.
+
+"Well," she said, at length, "I might as well face it at once. If there's
+anything in this instrument we'll all know it pretty soon. Turn on your
+receiver, Billy."
+
+"Oh," cried Linda, tearfully, "don't you do it, William!"
+
+"Turn it on," repeated Sacharissa. "I'm not going to be a coward and
+break faith with myself, and you both know it! If I've got to go through
+the silliness of love and marriage I might as well know who the bandarlog
+is to be.... Anyway, I don't really believe in this thing.... I can't
+believe in it.... Besides, I've a mind and a will of my own, and I fancy
+it will require more than amateur psychical experiments to change either.
+Go on, Billy."
+
+"You mean it?" he asked, secretly gratified.
+
+"Certainly," with superb affectation of indifference. And she rose and
+faced the instrument.
+
+Destyn looked at his wife. He was dying to try it.
+
+"Will!" she exclaimed, "suppose we are not going to like Rissa's possible
+f--fiance! Suppose father doesn't like him!"
+
+"You'll all probably like him as well as I shall," said her sister
+defiantly. "Willy, stop making frightened eyes at your wife and start
+your infernal machine!"
+
+There was a vicious click, a glitter of shifting clockwork, a snap, and
+it was done.
+
+"Have you now, _theoretically_, got my psychical current bottled up?" she
+asked disdainfully. But her lip trembled a little.
+
+He nodded, looking very seriously at her.
+
+"And now you are going to switch me on to this unknown gentleman's
+psychical current?"
+
+"Don't let him!" begged Linda. "Billy, dear, how _can_ you when nobody
+has the faintest idea who the creature may turn out to be!"
+
+"Go ahead!" interrupted her sister, masking misgiving under a careless
+smile.
+
+Click! Up shot the glittering, quivering tentacle of Rosium, vibrating
+for a few moments like a thread of silver. Suddenly it was tipped with a
+blue flash of incandescence.
+
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! There he is!" cried Linda, excitedly. "Rissy! Rissy,
+little sister, _what_ have you done?"
+
+"Nothing," she said, catching her breath. "I don't believe that flash
+means anything. I don't feel a bit different--not the least bit. I feel
+perfectly well and perfectly calm. I don't love anybody and I'm not going
+to love anybody--until I want to, and that will probably never happen."
+
+However, she permitted her sister to take her in her arms and pet her. It
+was rather curious how exceedingly young and inexperienced she felt. She
+found it agreeable to be fussed over and comforted and cradled, and for a
+few moments she suffered Linda's solicitude and misgivings in silence.
+After a while, however, she became ashamed.
+
+"Nothing is going to happen, Linda," she said, looking dreamily up at the
+ceiling; "don't worry, dear; I shall escape the bandarlog."
+
+"If something doesn't happen," observed Destyn, pocketing his instrument,
+"the Green Mouse, Limited, will go into liquidation with no liabilities
+and no assets, and there'll be no billions for you or for me or for
+anybody."
+
+"William," said his wife, "do you place a low desire for money before
+your own sister-in-law's spiritual happiness?"
+
+"No, darling, of course not."
+
+"Then you and I had better pray for the immediate bankruptcy of the Green
+Mouse."
+
+Her husband said, "By all means," without enthusiasm, and looked out of
+the window. "Still," he added, "I made a happy marriage. I'm for wedding
+bells every time. Sacharissa will like it, too. I don't know why you and
+I shouldn't be enthusiastic optimists concerning wedded life; I can't see
+why we shouldn't pray for Sacharissa's early marriage."
+
+"William!"
+
+"Yes, darling."
+
+"You _are_ considering money before my sister's happiness!"
+
+"But in her case I don't see why we can't conscientiously consider both."
+
+Linda cast one tragic glance at her material husband, pushed her sister
+aside, arose and fled. After her sped the contrite Destyn; a distant door
+shut noisily; all the elements had gathered for the happy, first quarrel
+of the newly wedded.
+
+"Fudge," said Sacharissa, walking to the window, slim hands clasped
+loosely behind her back.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+IN WRONG
+
+
+_Wherein Sacharissa Remains In and a Young Man Can't Get Out_
+
+The snowstorm had ceased; across Fifth Avenue the Park resembled the
+mica-incrusted view on an expensive Christmas card. Every limb, branch,
+and twig was outlined in clinging snow; crystals of it glittered under
+the morning sun; brilliantly dressed children, with sleds, romped and
+played over the dazzling expanse. Overhead the characteristic deep blue
+arch of a New York sky spread untroubled by a cloud. Her family--that is,
+her father, brother-in-law, married sister, three unmarried sisters and
+herself--were expecting to leave for Tuxedo about noon. Why? Nobody knows
+why the wealthy are always going somewhere. However, they do, fortunately
+for story writers.
+
+"It's quite as beautiful here," thought Sacharissa to herself, "as it is
+in the country. I'm sorry I'm going."
+
+Idling there by the sunny window and gazing out into the white expanse,
+she had already dismissed all uneasiness in her mind concerning the
+psychical experiment upon herself. That is to say, she had not exactly
+dismissed it, she used no conscious effort, it had gone of itself--or,
+rather, it had been crowded out, dominated by a sudden and strong
+disinclination to go to Tuxedo.
+
+As she stood there the feeling grew and persisted, and, presently, she
+found herself repeating aloud: "I don't want to go, I _don't_ want to go.
+It's stupid to go. Why should I go when it's stupid to go and I'd rather
+stay here?"
+
+Meanwhile, Ethelinda and Destyn were having a classical reconciliation in
+a distant section of the house, and the young wife had got as far as:
+
+"Darling, I am _so_ worried about Rissa. I _do_ wish she were not going
+to Tuxedo. There are so many attractive men expected at the Courlands'."
+
+"She can't escape men anywhere, can she?"
+
+"N-no; but there will be a concentration of particularly good-looking and
+undesirable ones at Tuxedo this week. That idle, horrid, cynical crowd is
+coming from Long Island, and I _don't_ want her to marry any of them."
+
+"Well, then, make her stay at home."
+
+"She wants to go."
+
+"What's the good of an older sister if you can't make her mind you?" he
+asked.
+
+"She won't. She's set her heart on going. All those boisterous winter
+sports appeal to her. Besides, how can one member of the family be absent
+on New Year's Day?"
+
+Arm in arm they strolled out into the great living room, where a large,
+pompous, vividly colored gentleman was laying down the law to the
+triplets--three very attractive young girls, dressed precisely alike, who
+said, "Yes, pa-_pah!_" and "No pa-_pah!_" in a grave and silvery-voiced
+chorus whenever filial obligation required it.
+
+"And another thing," continued the pudgy and vivid old gentleman, whose
+voice usually ended in a softly mellifluous shout when speaking
+emphatically: "that worthless Westbury--Cedarhurst--Jericho--
+Meadowbrook set are going to be in evidence at this housewarming, and I
+caution you now against paying anything but the slightest, most
+superficial and most frivolous attention to anything that any of those
+young whip-snapping, fox-hunting cubs may say to you. Do you hear?" with
+a mellow shout like a French horn on a touring car.
+
+"Yes, pa-_pah!_"
+
+The old gentleman waved his single eyeglass in token of dismissal, and
+looked at his watch.
+
+"The bus is here," he said fussily. "Come on, Will; come, Linda, and you,
+Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla, get your furs on. Don't take the
+elevator. Go down by the stairs, and hurry! If there's one thing in this
+world I won't do it is to wait for anybody on earth!"
+
+Flunkies and maids flew distractedly about with fur coats, muffs, and
+stoles. In solemn assemblage the family expedition filed past the
+elevator, descended the stairs to the lower hall, and there drew up for
+final inspection.
+
+A mink-infested footman waited outside; valets, butlers, second-men and
+maids came to attention.
+
+"Where's Sacharissa?" demanded Mr. Carr, sonorously.
+
+"Here, dad," said his oldest daughter, strolling calmly into the hall,
+hands still linked loosely behind her.
+
+"Why haven't you got your hat and furs on?" demanded her father.
+
+"Because I'm not going, dad," she said sweetly.
+
+The family eyed her in amazement.
+
+"Not going?" shouted her father, in a mellow bellow. "Yes, you are! Not
+_going!_ And why the dickens not?"
+
+"I really don't know, dad," she said listlessly. "I don't want to go."
+
+Her father waved both pudgy arms furiously. "Don't you feel well? You
+look well. You _are_ well. Don't you _feel_ well?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"No, you don't! You're pale! You're pallid! You're peaked! Take a tonic
+and lie down. Send your maid for some doctors--all kinds of doctors--and
+have them fix you up. Then come to Tuxedo with your maid to-morrow
+morning. Do you hear?"
+
+"Very well, dad."
+
+"And keep out of that elevator until it's fixed. It's likely to do
+anything. Ferdinand," to the man at the door, "have it fixed at once.
+Sacharissa, send that maid of yours for a doctor!"
+
+"Very well, dad!"
+
+She presented her cheek to her emphatic parent; he saluted it
+explosively, wheeled, marshaled the family at a glance, started them
+forward, and closed the rear with his own impressive person. The iron
+gates clanged, the door of the opera bus snapped, and Sacharissa strolled
+back into the rococo reception room not quite certain why she had not
+gone, not quite convinced that she was feeling perfectly well.
+
+For the first few minutes her face had been going hot and cold,
+alternately flushed and pallid. Her heart, too, was acting in an unusual
+manner--making sufficient stir for her to become uneasily aware of it.
+
+"Probably," she thought to herself, "I've eaten too many chocolates." She
+looked into the large gilded box, took another and ate it reflectively.
+
+A curious languor possessed her. To combat it she rang for her maid,
+intending to go for a brisk walk, but the weight of the furs seemed to
+distress her. It was absurd. She threw them off and sat down in the
+library.
+
+A little while later her maid found her lying there, feet crossed, arms
+stretched backward to form a cradle for her head.
+
+"Are you ill, Miss Carr?"
+
+"No," said Sacharissa.
+
+The maid cast an alarmed glance at her mistress' pallid face.
+
+"Would you see Dr. Blimmer, miss?"
+
+"No."
+
+The maid hesitated:
+
+"Beg pardon, but Mr. Carr said you was to see some doctors."
+
+"Very well," she said indifferently. "And please hand me those
+chocolates. I don't care for any luncheon."
+
+"No luncheon, miss?" in consternation.
+
+Sacharissa had never been known to shun sustenance.
+
+The symptom thoroughly frightened her maid, and in a few minutes she had
+Dr. Blimmer's office on the telephone; but that eminent practitioner was
+out. Then she found in succession the offices of Doctors White, Black,
+and Gray. Two had gone away over New Year's, the other was out.
+
+The maid, who was clever and resourceful, went out to hunt up a doctor.
+There are, in the cross streets, plenty of doctors between the Seventies
+and Eighties. She found one without difficulty--that is, she found the
+sign in the window, but the doctor was out on his visits.
+
+She made two more attempts with similar results, then, discovering a
+doctor's sign in a window across the street, started for it regardless of
+snowdrifts, and at the same moment the doctor's front door opened and a
+young man, with a black leather case in his hand, hastily descended the
+icy steps and hurried away up the street.
+
+The maid ran after him and arrived at his side breathless, excited:
+
+"Oh, _could_ you come--just for a moment, if you please, sir! Miss Carr
+won't eat her luncheon!"
+
+"What!" said the young man, surprised.
+
+"Miss Carr wishes to see you--just for a----"
+
+"Miss Carr?"
+
+"Miss Sacharissa!"
+
+"Sacharissa?"
+
+"Y-yes, sir--she----"
+
+"But I don't know any Miss Sacharissa!"
+
+"I understand that, sir."
+
+"Look here, young woman, do you know my name?"
+
+"No, sir, but that doesn't make any difference to Miss Carr."
+
+"She wishes to see _me!_"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"I--I'm in a hurry to catch a train." He looked hard at the maid, at his
+watch, at the maid again.
+
+"Are you perfectly sure you're not mistaken?" he demanded.
+
+"No, sir, I----"
+
+"A certain Miss Sacharissa Carr desires to see _me?_ Are you certain of
+that?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir--she----"
+
+"Where does she live?"
+
+"One thousand eight and a half Fifth Avenue, sir."
+
+"I've got just three minutes. Can you run?"
+
+"I--yes!"
+
+"Come on, then!"
+
+And away they galloped, his overcoat streaming out behind, the maid's
+skirts flapping and her narrow apron flickering in the wind. Wayfarers
+stopped to watch their pace--a pace which brought them to the house in
+something under a minute. Ferdinand, the second man, let them in.
+
+"Now, then," panted the young man, "which way? I'm in a hurry, remember!"
+And he started on a run for the stairs.
+
+"Please follow me, sir; the elevator is quicker!" gasped the maid,
+opening the barred doors.
+
+The young man sprang into the lighted car, the maid turned to fling off
+hat and jacket before entering; something went fizz-bang! snap! clink!
+and the lights in the car were extinguished.
+
+"Oh!" shrieked the maid, "it's running away again! Jump, sir!"
+
+The ornate, rococo elevator, as a matter of fact, was running away,
+upward, slowly at first. Its astonished occupant turned to jump out--too
+late.
+
+"P-push the third button, sir! Quick!" cried the maid, wringing her
+hands.
+
+"W-where is it!" stammered the young man, groping nervously in the dark
+car. "I can't see any."
+
+"Cr-rack!" went something.
+
+"It's stopped! It's going to fall!" screamed the maid. "Run, Ferdinand!"
+
+The man at the door ran upstairs for a few steps, then distractedly slid
+to the bottom, shouting:
+
+"Are you hurt, sir?"
+
+"No," came a disgusted voice from somewhere up the shaft.
+
+Every landing was now noisy with servants, maids sped upstairs, flunkeys
+sped down, a butler waddled in a circle.
+
+"Is anybody going to get me out of this?" demanded the voice in the
+shaft. "I've a train to catch."
+
+The perspiring butler poked his head into the shaft from below:
+
+"'Ow far hup, sir, might you be?"
+
+"How the devil do I know?"
+
+"Can't you see nothink, sir?"
+
+"Yes, I can see a landing and a red room."
+
+"'E's stuck hunder the library!" exclaimed the butler, and there was a
+rush for the upper floors.
+
+The rush was met and checked by a tall, young girl who came leisurely
+along the landing, nibbling a chocolate.
+
+"What is all this noise about?" she asked. "Has the elevator gone wrong
+again?"
+
+Glancing across the landing at the grille which screened the shaft she
+saw the gilded car--part of it--and half of a perfectly strange young man
+looking earnestly out.
+
+"It's the doctor!" wailed her maid.
+
+"That isn't Dr. Blimmer!" said her mistress.
+
+"No, miss, it's a perfectly strange doctor."
+
+"I am _not_ a doctor," observed the young man, coldly.
+
+Sacharissa drew nearer.
+
+"If that maid of yours had asked me," he went on, "I'd have told her. She
+saw me coming down the steps of a physician's house--I suppose she
+mistook my camera case for a case of medicines."
+
+"I did--oh, I did!" moaned the maid, and covered her head with her apron.
+
+"The thing to do," said Sacharissa, calmly, "is to send for the nearest
+plumber. Ferdinand, go immediately!"
+
+"Meanwhile," said the imprisoned young man, "I shall miss my train. Can't
+somebody break that grille? I could climb out that way."
+
+"Sparks," said Miss Carr, "can you break that grille?"
+
+Sparks tried. A kitchen maid brought a small tackhammer--the only "'ammer
+in the 'ouse," according to Sparks, who pounded at the foliated steel
+grille and broke the hammer off short.
+
+"Did it 'it you in the 'ead, sir?" he asked, panting.
+
+"Exactly," replied the young man, grinding his teeth.
+
+Sparks 'oped as 'ow it didn't 'urt the gentleman. The gentleman stanched
+his wound in terrible silence.
+
+Presently Ferdinand came back to report upon the availability of the
+family plumber. It appeared that all plumbers, locksmiths, and similar
+indispensable and free-born artisans had closed shop at noon and would
+not reopen until after New Year's, subject to the Constitution of the
+United States.
+
+"But this gentleman cannot remain here until after New Year's," said
+Sacharissa. "He says he is in a hurry. Do you hear, Sparks?"
+
+The servants stood in a helpless row.
+
+"Ferdinand," she said, "Mr. Carr told you to have that elevator fixed
+before it was used again!"
+
+Ferdinand stared wildly at the grille and ran his thumb over the bars.
+
+"And Clark"--to her maid--"I am astonished that you permitted this
+gentleman to risk the elevator."
+
+"He was in a hurry--I thought he was a doctor." The maid dissolved into
+tears.
+
+"It is now," broke in the voice from the shaft, "an utter impossibility
+for me to catch any train in the United States."
+
+"I am dreadfully sorry," said Sacharissa.
+
+"Isn't there an ax in the house?"
+
+The butler mournfully denied it.
+
+"Then get the furnace bar."
+
+It was fetched; nerve-racking blows rained on the grille; puffing
+servants applied it as a lever, as a battering-ram, as a club. The house
+rang like a boiler factory.
+
+"I can't stand any more of that!" shouted the young man. "Stop it!"
+
+Sacharissa looked about her, hands closing both ears.
+
+"Send them away," said the young man, wearily. "If I've got to stay here
+I want a chance to think."
+
+After she had dismissed the servants Sacharissa drew up a chair and
+seated herself a few feet from the grille. She could see half the car and
+half the man--plainer, now that she had come nearer.
+
+He was a young and rather attractive looking fellow, cheek tied up in his
+handkerchief, where the head of the hammer had knocked off the skin.
+
+"Let me get some witch-hazel," said Sacharissa, rising.
+
+"I want to write a telegram first," he said.
+
+So she brought some blanks, passed them and a pencil down to him through
+the grille, and reseated herself.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+THE INVISIBLE WIRE
+
+
+_In Which the Telephone Continues Ringing_
+
+When he had finished writing he sorted out some silver, and handed it and
+the yellow paper to Sacharissa.
+
+"It's dark in here. Would you mind reading it aloud to me to see if I've
+made it plain?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly," said Sacharissa; and she read:
+
+MRS. DELANCY COURLAND,
+
+Tuxedo.
+
+I'm stuck in an idiotic elevator at 1008-1/2 Fifth Avenue. If I don't
+appear by New Year's you'll know why. Be careful that no reporters get
+hold of this.
+
+KILLIAN VAN K. VANDERDYNK.
+
+Sacharissa flushed deeply. "I can't send this," she said.
+
+"Why not?" demanded the young man, irritably.
+
+"Because, Mr. Vanderdynk, my father, brother-in-law, married sister, and
+three younger sisters are expected at the Courlands'. Imagine what effect
+such a telegram would have on them!"
+
+"Then cross out the street and number," he said; "just say I'm stuck in a
+strange elevator."
+
+She did so, rang, and a servant took away the telegram.
+
+"Now," said the heir apparent to the Prince Regency of Manhattan, "there
+are two things still" possible. First, you might ring up police
+headquarters and ask for aid; next, request assistance from fire
+headquarters."
+
+"If I do," she said, "wouldn't the newspapers get hold of it?"
+
+"You are perfectly right," he said.
+
+She had now drawn her chair so close to the gilded grille that, hands
+resting upon it, she could look down into the car where sat the scion of
+the Vanderdynks on a flimsy Louis XV chair.
+
+"I can't express to you how sorry I am," she said. "Is there anything I
+can do to--to ameliorate your imprisonment?"
+
+He looked at her in a bewildered way.
+
+"You don't expect me to remain here until after New Year's, do you?" he
+inquired.
+
+"I don't see how you can avoid it. Nobody seems to want to work until
+after New Year's."
+
+"Stay in a cage--two days and a night!"
+
+"Perhaps I had better call up the police."
+
+"No, no! Wait. I'll tell you what to do. Start that man, Ferdinand, on a
+tour of the city. If he hunts hard enough and long enough he'll find some
+plumber or locksmith or somebody who'll come."
+
+She rang for Ferdinand; together they instructed him, and he went away,
+promising to bring salvation in some shape.
+
+Which promise made the young man more cheerful and smoothed out the
+worried pucker between Sacharissa's straight brows.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "that you will never forgive my maid for this--or
+me either."
+
+He laughed. "After all," he admitted, "it's rather funny."
+
+"I don't believe you think it's funny."
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Didn't you want to go to Tuxedo?"
+
+"I!" He looked up at the pretty countenance of Sacharissa. "I _did_ want
+to--a few minutes ago."
+
+"And now that you can't your philosophy teaches you that you _don't_ want
+to?"
+
+They laughed at each other in friendly fashion.
+
+"Perhaps it's my philosophy," he said, "but" I really don't care very
+much.... I'm not sure that I care at all.... In fact, now that I think of
+it, why should I have wished to go to Tuxedo? It's stupid to want to go
+to Tuxedo when New York is so attractive."
+
+"Do you know," she said reflectively, "that I came to the same
+conclusion?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Be-before you--I----"
+
+"Oh, yes," she said rather hastily, "before you came----"
+
+She broke off, pink with consternation. What a ridiculous thing to say!
+What on earth was twisting her tongue to hint at such an absurdity?
+
+She said, gravely, with heightened color: "I was standing by the window
+this morning, thinking, and it occurred to me that I didn't care to go to
+Tuxedo.... When did you change _your_ mind?"
+
+"A few minutes a--that is--well, I never _really_ wanted to go. It's
+jollier in town. Don't you think so? Blue sky, snow--er--and all that?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "it is perfectly delightful in town to-day."
+
+He assented, then looked discouraged.
+
+"Perhaps you would like to go out?" he said.
+
+"I? Oh, no.... The sun on the snow is bad for one's eyes; don't you think
+so?"
+
+"Very.... I'm terribly sorry that I'm giving you so much trouble."
+
+"I don't mind--really. If only I could do something for you."
+
+"You are."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes; you are being exceedingly nice to me. I am afraid you feel under
+obligations to remain indoors and----"
+
+"Truly, I don't. I was not going out."
+
+She leaned nearer and looked through the bars: "Are you quite sure you
+feel comfortable?"
+
+"I feel like something in a zoo!"
+
+She laughed. "That reminds me," she said, "have you had any luncheon?"
+
+He had not, it appeared, after a little polite protestation, so she rang
+for Sparks.
+
+Her own appetite, too, had returned when the tray was brought; napkin and
+plate were passed through the grille to him, and, as they lunched, he in
+his cage, she close to the bars, they fell into conversation, exchanging
+information concerning mutual acquaintances whom they had expected to
+meet at the Delancy Courlands'.
+
+"So you see," she said, "that if I had not changed my mind about going to
+Tuxedo this morning you would not be here now. Nor I.... And we would
+never have--lunched together."
+
+"That didn't alter things," he said, smiling. "If you hadn't been ill you
+would have gone to Tuxedo, and I should have seen you there."
+
+"Then, whatever I did made no difference," she assented, thoughtfully,
+"for we were bound to meet, anyway."
+
+He remained standing close to the grille, which, as she was seated,
+brought his head on a level with hers.
+
+"It would seem," he said laughingly, "as though we were doomed to meet
+each other, anyway. It looks like a case of Destiny to me."
+
+She started slightly: "What did you say?"
+
+"I said that it looks as though Fate intended us to meet, anyhow. Don't
+you think so?"
+
+She remained silent.
+
+He added cheerfully: "I never was afraid of Fate."
+
+"Would you care for a--a book--or anything?" she asked, aware of a new
+constraint in her voice.
+
+"I don't believe I could see to read in here.... Are you--going?"
+
+"I--ought to." Vexed at the feeble senselessness of her reply she found
+herself walking down the landing, toward nowhere in particular. She
+turned abruptly and came back.
+
+"Do you want a book?" she repeated.
+
+"Oh, I forgot that you can't see to read. But perhaps you might care to
+smoke."
+
+"Are you going away?"
+
+"I--don't mind your smoking."
+
+He lighted a cigarette; she looked at him irresolutely.
+
+"You mustn't think of remaining," he said. Whereupon she seated herself.
+
+"I suppose I ought to try to amuse you--till Ferdinand returns with a
+plumber," she said.
+
+He protested: "I couldn't think of asking so much from you."
+
+"Anyway, it's my duty," she insisted. "I ought."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you are under my roof--a guest."
+
+"Please don't think----"
+
+"But I really don't mind! If there is anything I can do to make your
+imprisonment easier----"
+
+"It is easy. I rather like being here."
+
+"It is very amiable of you to say so."
+
+"I really mean it."
+
+"How can you _really_ mean it?"
+
+"I don't know, but I do." In their earnestness they had come close to the
+bars; she stood with both hands resting on the grille, looking in; he in
+a similar position, looking out.
+
+He said: "I feel like an occupant of the Bronx, and it rather astonishes
+me that you haven't thrown me in a few peanuts."
+
+She laughed, fetched her box of chocolates, then began seriously: "If
+Ferdinand doesn't find anybody I'm afraid you might be obliged to remain
+to dinner."
+
+"That prospect," he said, "is not unpleasant. You know when one becomes
+accustomed to one's cage it's rather a bore to be let out."
+
+They sampled the chocolates, she sitting close to the cage, and as the
+box would not go through the bars she was obliged to hand them to him,
+one by one.
+
+"I wonder," she mused, "how soon Ferdinand will find a plumber?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+She bent her adorable head, chose a chocolate and offered it to him.
+
+[Illustration: "Are you not terribly impatient?" she inquired]
+
+"Are you not terribly impatient?" she inquired.
+
+"Not--terribly."
+
+Their glances encountered and she said hurriedly:
+
+"I am sure you must be perfectly furious with everybody in this house.
+I--I think it is most amiable of you to behave so cheerfully about it."
+
+"As a matter of fact," he said, "I'm feeling about as cheerful as I ever
+felt in my life."
+
+"Cooped up in a cage?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"Which may fall at any--" The idea was a new one to them both. She leaned
+forward in sudden consternation. "I never thought of that!" she
+exclaimed. "You don't think there's any chance of its falling, do you?"
+
+He looked at the startled, gray eyes so earnestly fixed on his. The sweet
+mouth quivered a little--just a little--or he thought it did.
+
+"No," he replied, with a slight catch in his voice, "I don't believe it's
+going to fall."
+
+"Perhaps you had better not move around very much in it. Be careful, I
+beg of you. You will, won't you, Mr. Vanderdynk?"
+
+"Please don't let it bother you," he said, stepping toward her
+impulsively.
+
+"Oh, don't, don't move!" she exclaimed. "You really must keep perfectly
+still. Won't you promise me you will keep perfectly still?"
+
+"I'll promise you anything," he said a little wildly.
+
+Neither seemed to notice that he had overdone it.
+
+She drew her chair as close as it would go to the grille and leaned
+against it.
+
+"You _will_ keep up your courage, won't you?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"Certainly. By the way, how far is it to the b-basement?"
+
+She turned quite white for an instant, then:
+
+"I think I'd better go and ring up the police."
+
+"No! A thousand times no! I couldn't stand that."
+
+"But the car might--drop before----"
+
+"Better decently dead than publicly paragraphed.... I haven't the least
+idea that this thing is going to drop.... Anyway, it's worth it," he
+added, rather vaguely.
+
+"Worth--what?" she asked, looking into his rather winning, brown eyes.
+
+"Being here," he said, looking into her engaging gray ones.
+
+After a startling silence she said calmly: "Will you promise me not to
+move or shake the car till I return?"
+
+"You won't be very long, will you?"
+
+"Not--very," she replied faintly.
+
+She walked into the library, halted in the center of the room, hands
+clasped behind her. Her heart was beating like a trip hammer.
+
+"I might as well face it," she said to herself; "he is--by far--the most
+thoroughly attractive man I have ever seen.... I--I _don't_ know what's
+the matter," she added piteously.... "if it's that machine William made I
+can't help it; I don't care any longer; I wish----"
+
+A sharp crack from the landing sent her out there in a hurry, pale and
+frightened.
+
+"Something snapped somewhere," explained the young man with forced
+carelessness, "some unimportant splinter gave way and the thing slid down
+an inch or two."
+
+"D-do you think----"
+
+"No, I don't. But it's perfectly fine of you to care."
+
+"C-care? I'm a little frightened, of course.... Anybody would be.... Oh,
+I wish you were out and p-perfectly safe." "If I thought you could ever
+really care what became of a man like me----"
+
+Killian Van K. Vanderdynk's aristocratic senses began gyrating; he
+grasped the bars, the back of his hand brushed against hers, and the
+momentary contact sent a shock straight through the scion of that
+celebrated race.
+
+She seated herself abruptly; a delicate color grew, staining her face.
+
+Neither spoke. A long, luminous sunbeam fell across the landing, touching
+the edge of her hair till it glimmered like bronze afire. The sensitive
+mouth was quiet, the eyes, very serious, were lifted from time to time,
+then lowered, thoughtfully, to the clasped fingers on her knee.
+
+Could it be possible? How could it be possible?--with a man she had never
+before chanced to meet--with a man she had seen for the first time in her
+life only an hour or so ago! Such things didn't happen outside of short
+stories. There was neither logic nor common decency in it. Had she or had
+she not any ordinary sense remaining?
+
+She raised her eyes and looked at the heir of the Vanderdynks.
+
+Of course anybody could see he was unusually attractive--that he had that
+indefinable something about him which is seldom, if ever, seen outside of
+fiction or of Mr. Gibson's drawings--perhaps it is entirely confined to
+them--except in this one very rare case.
+
+Sacharissa's eyes fell.
+
+Another unusual circumstance was engaging her attention, namely, that his
+rather remarkable physical perfection appeared to be matched by a
+breeding quite as faultless, and a sublimity of courage in the face of
+destruction itself, which----
+
+Sacharissa lifted her gray eyes.
+
+There he stood, suspended over an abyss, smoking a cigarette, bravely
+forcing himself to an attitude of serene insouciance, while the basement
+yawned for him! Machine or no machine, how could any girl look upon such
+miraculous self-control unmoved? _She_ could not. It was natural that a
+woman should be deeply thrilled by such a spectacle--and William Destyn's
+machine had nothing to do with it--not a thing! Neither had psychology,
+nor demonology, nor anything, with wires or wireless. She liked him,
+frankly. Who wouldn't? She feared for him, desperately. Who wouldn't?
+She----
+
+"C-r-rack!"
+
+"Oh--_what_ is it!" she cried, springing to the grille.
+
+"I don't know," he said, somewhat pale. "The old thing seems--to be
+sliding."
+
+"Giving way!"
+
+"A--little--I think----"
+
+"Mr. Vanderdynk! I _must_ call the police----"
+
+"Cr-rackle--crack-k-k!" went the car, dropping an inch or two.
+
+With a stifled cry she caught his hands through the bars, as though to
+hold him by main strength.
+
+"Are you crazy?" he said fiercely, thrusting them away. "Be careful! If
+the thing drops you'll break your arms!"
+
+"I--I don't care!" she said breathlessly. "I can't let----"
+
+"Crack!" But the car stuck again.
+
+"I _will_ call the police!" she cried.
+
+"The papers may make fun of _you_."
+
+"Was it for _me_ you were afraid? Oh, Mr. Vanderdynk! What do I care for
+ridicule compared to--to----"
+
+The car had sunk so far in the shaft now that she had to kneel and put
+her head close to the floor to see him.
+
+"I will only be a minute at the telephone," she said. "Keep up courage; I
+am thinking of you every moment."
+
+"W-will you let me say one word?" he stammered.
+
+"Oh, what? Be quick, I beg you."
+
+"It's only goodbye--in case the thing drops. May I say it?"
+
+"Y-yes--yes! But say it quickly."
+
+"And if it doesn't drop after all, you won't be angry at what I'm going
+to say?"
+
+"N-no. Oh, for Heaven's sake, hurry!"
+
+"Then--you are the sweetest woman in the world!... Goodbye--Sacharissa--
+dear."
+
+She sprang up, dazed, and at the same moment a terrific crackling and
+splintering resounded from the shaft, and the car sank out of sight.
+
+Faint, she swayed for a second against the balustrade, then turned and
+ran downstairs, ears strained for the sickening crash from below.
+
+There was no crash, no thud. As she reached the drawing-room landing, to
+her amazement a normally-lighted elevator slid slowly down, came to a
+stop, and the automatic grilles opened quietly.
+
+As Killian Van K. Vanderdynk crept forth from the elevator, Sacharissa's
+nerves gave way; his, also, seemed to disintegrate; and they stood for
+some moments mutually supporting each other, during which interval
+unaccustomed tears fell from the gray eyes, and unaccustomed words,
+breathed brokenly, reassured her; and, altogether unaccustomed to such
+things, they presently found themselves seated in a distant corner of the
+drawing-room, still endeavoring to reassure each other with interclasped
+hands.
+
+They said nothing so persistently that the wordless minutes throbbed into
+hours; through the windows the red west sent a glowing tentacle into the
+room, searching the gloom for them.
+
+It fell, warm, across her upturned throat, in the half light.
+
+For her head lay back on his shoulder; his head was bent down, lips
+pressed to the white hands crushed fragrantly between his own.
+
+A star came out and looked at them with astonishment; in a little while
+the sky was thronged with little stars, all looking through the window at
+them.
+
+Her maid knocked, backed out hastily and fled, distracted. Then Ferdinand
+arrived with a plumber.
+
+Later the butler came. They did not notice him until he ventured to cough
+and announce dinner.
+
+The interruptions were very annoying, particularly when she was summoned
+to the telephone to speak to her father.
+
+"What is it, dad?" she asked impatiently.
+
+"Are you all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes," she answered, carelessly; "we are all right, dad. Goodbye."
+
+"We? Who the devil is 'We'?"
+
+"Mr. Vanderdynk and I. We're taking my maid and coming down to Tuxedo
+this evening together. I'm in a hurry now."
+
+"What!!!"
+
+"Oh, it's all right, dad. Here, Killian, please explain things to my
+father."
+
+Vanderdynk released her hand and picked up the receiver as though it had
+been a live wire.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Carr?" he began--stopped short, and stood listening,
+rigid, bewildered, turning redder and redder as her father's fluency
+increased. Then, without a word, he hooked up the receiver.
+
+"Is it all right?" she asked calmly. "Was dad--vivacious?"
+
+The young man said: "I'd rather go back into that elevator than go to
+Tuxedo.... But--I'm going."
+
+"So am I," said Bushwyck Carr's daughter, dropping both hands on her
+lover's shoulders.... "Was he really very--vivid?"
+
+"Very."
+
+The telephone again rang furiously.
+
+He bent his head; she lifted her face and he kissed her.
+
+After a while the racket of the telephone annoyed them, and they slowly
+moved away out of hearing.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+"IN HEAVEN AND EARTH"
+
+
+_The Green Mouse Stirs_
+
+"I've been waiting half an hour for you," observed Smith, dryly, as
+Beekman Brown appeared at the subway station, suitcase in hand.
+
+"It was a most extraordinary thing that detained me," said Brown,
+laughing, and edging his way into the ticket line behind his friend where
+he could talk to him across his shoulder; "I was just leaving the office,
+Smithy, when Snuyder came in with a card."
+
+"Oh, all right--of course, if----"
+
+"No, it was not a client; I must be honest with you."
+
+"Then you had a terrible cheek to keep me here waiting."
+
+"It was a girl," said Beekman Brown.
+
+Smith cast a cold glance back at him over his left shoulder.
+
+"What kind of a girl?"
+
+"A most extraordinary girl. She came on--on a matter----"
+
+"Was it business or a touch?"
+
+"Not exactly business."
+
+"Ornamental girl?" demanded Smith.
+
+"Yes--exceedingly; but it wasn't that----
+
+"Oh, it was not that which kept you talking to her half an hour while
+I've sat suffocating in this accursed subway!"
+
+"No, Smith; her undeniably attractive features and her--ah--winning
+personality had nothing whatever to do with it. Buy the tickets and I'll
+tell you all about it."
+
+Smith bought two tickets. A north bound train roared into the station.
+The young men stepped aboard, seated themselves, depositing their
+suitcases at their feet.
+
+"Now what about that winning-looker who really didn't interest you?"
+suggested Smith in tones made slightly acid by memory of his half hour
+waiting.
+
+"Smith, it was a most unusual episode. I was just leaving the office to
+keep my appointment with you when Snuyder came in with a card----"
+
+"You've said that already."
+
+"But I didn't tell you what was on that card, did I?"
+
+"I can guess."
+
+"No, you can't. Her name was not on the card. She was not an agent; she
+had nothing to sell; she didn't want a position; she didn't ask for a
+subscription to anything. And what do you suppose was on that card?"
+
+"Well, what was on the card, for the love of Mike?" snapped Smith. "I'll
+tell you. The card seemed to be an ordinary visiting card; but down in
+one corner was a tiny and beautifully drawn picture of a green mouse."
+
+"A--what?"
+
+"A mouse."
+
+"G-green?"
+
+"Pea green.... Come, now, Smith, if you were just leaving your office and
+your clerk should come in, looking rather puzzled and silly, and should
+hand you a card with nothing on it but a little green mouse, wouldn't it
+give you pause?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+Brown removed his straw hat, touched his handsome head with his
+handkerchief, and continued:
+
+"I said to Snuyder: 'What the mischief is this?' He said: 'It's for you.
+And there's an exceedingly pretty girl outside who expects you to receive
+her for a few moments.' I said: 'But what has this card with a green
+mouse on it got to do with that girl or with me?' Snuyder said he didn't
+know and that I'd better ask her. So I looked at my watch and I thought
+of you----"
+
+"Yes, you did."
+
+"I tell you I did. Then I looked at the card with the green mouse on
+it.... And I want to ask you frankly, Smith, what would _you_ have done?"
+
+"Oh, what you did, I suppose," replied Smith, wearily. "Go on."
+
+"I'm going. She entered----"
+
+"She was tall and squeenly; you probably forgot that," observed Smith in
+his most objectionable manner.
+
+"Probably not; she was of medium height, as a detail of external
+interest. But, although rather unusually attractive in a merely
+superficial and physical sense, it was instantly evident from her speech
+and bearing, that, in her, intellect dominated; her mind, Smithy, reigned
+serene, unsullied, triumphant over matter."
+
+Smith looked up in amazement, but Brown, a reminiscent smile lighting his
+face, went on:
+
+"She had a very winsome manner--a way of speaking--so prettily in
+earnest, so grave. And she looked squarely at me all the time----"
+
+"So you contributed to the Home for Unemployed Patagonians."
+
+"Would you mind shutting up?" asked Brown.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then try to listen respectfully. She began by explaining the
+significance of that pea-green mouse on the card. It seems, Smith, that
+there is a scientific society called The Green Mouse, composed of a few
+people who have determined to apply, practically, certain theories which
+they believe have commercial value."
+
+"Was she," inquired Smith with misleading politeness, "what is known as
+an 'astrologist'?"
+
+"She was not. She is the president, I believe, of The Green Mouse
+Society. She explained to me that it has been indisputably proven that
+the earth is not only enveloped by those invisible electric currents
+which are now used instead of wires to carry telegraphic messages, but
+that this world of ours is also belted by countless psychic currents
+which go whirling round the earth----"
+
+"_What_ kind of currents?"
+
+"Psychic."
+
+"Which circle the earth?"
+
+"Exactly. If you want to send a wireless message you hitch on to a
+current, don't you?--or you tap it--or something. Now, they have
+discovered that each one of these numberless millions of psychic currents
+passes through two, living, human entities of opposite sex; that, for
+example, all you have got to do to communicate with the person who is on
+the same psychical current that you are, is to attune your subconscious
+self to a given intensity and pitch, and it will be like communication by
+telephone, no matter how far apart you are."
+
+"Brown!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Did she go to your office to tell you that sort of--of--information?"
+
+"Partly. She was perfectly charming about it. She explained to me that
+all nature is divided into predestined pairs, and that somewhere, at some
+time, either here on earth or in some of the various future existences,
+this predestined pair is certain to meet and complete the universal
+scheme as it has been planned. Do you understand, Smithy?"
+
+Smith sat silent and reflective for a while, then:
+
+"You say that her theory is that everybody owns one of those psychic
+currents?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am on a private psychic current whirling around this globe?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"And some--ah--young girl is at the other end?"
+
+"Sure thing."
+
+"Then if I could only get hold of my end of the wire I could--ah--call
+her up?"
+
+"I believe that's the idea."
+
+"And--she's for muh?"
+
+"So they say."
+
+"Is--is there any way to get a look at her first?"
+
+"You'd have to take her anyway, sometime."
+
+"But suppose I didn't like her?"
+
+The two young men sat laughing for a few moments, then Brown went on:
+
+"You see, Smith, my interview with her was such a curious episode that
+about all I did was to listen to what she was saying, so I don't know how
+details are worked out. She explained to me that The Green Mouse Society
+has just been formed, not only for the purpose of psychical research, but
+for applying practically and using commercially the discovery of the
+psychic currents. That's what The Green Mouse is trying to do: form
+itself into a company and issue stocks and bonds----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Certainly. It sounds like a madman's dream at first, but when you come
+to look into it--for instance, think of the millions of clients such a
+company would have. As example, a young man, ready for marriage, goes to
+The Green Mouse and pays a fee. The Green Mouse sorts out, identifies,
+and intercepts the young man's own particular current, hitches his
+subconscious self to it, and zip!--he's at one end of an invisible
+telephone and the only girl on earth is at the other.... What's the
+matter with their making a quick date for an introduction?"
+
+Smith said slowly: "Do you mean to tell me that any sane person came to
+you in your office with a proposition to take stock in such an
+enterprise?"
+
+"She did not even suggest it."
+
+"What did she want, then?"
+
+"She wanted," said Brown, "a perfectly normal, unimaginative business man
+who would volunteer to permit The Green Mouse Society to sort out his
+psychic current, attach him to it, and see what would happen."
+
+"She wants to experiment on _you?_"
+
+"So I understand."
+
+"And--you're not going to let her, are you?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because it's--it's idiotic!" said Smith, warmly. "I don't believe in
+such things--you don't, either--nobody does--but, all the same, you can't
+be perfectly sure in these days what devilish sort of game you might be
+up against."
+
+Brown smiled. "I told her, very politely, that I found it quite
+impossible to believe in such things; and she was awfully nice about it,
+and said it didn't matter what I believed. It seems that my name was
+chosen by chance--they opened the Telephone Directory at random and she,
+blindfolded, made a pencil mark on the margin opposite one of the names
+on the page. It happened to be my name. That's all."
+
+"Wouldn't let her do it!" said Smith, seriously.
+
+"Why not, as long as there's absolutely nothing in it? Besides, if it
+pleases her to have a try why shouldn't she? Besides, I haven't the
+slightest intention or desire to woo or wed anybody, and I'd like to see
+anybody make me."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you told her to go ahead?"
+
+"Certainly," said Brown serenely. "And she thanked me very prettily.
+She's well bred--exceptionally."
+
+"Oh! Then what did you do?"
+
+"We talked a little while."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"Well, for instance, I mentioned that curiously-baffling sensation which
+comes over everybody at times--the sudden conviction that everything that
+you say and do has been said and done by you before--somewhere. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"And she smiled and said that such sensations were merely echoes from the
+invisible psychic wire, and that repetitions from some previous
+incarnation were not unusual, particularly when the other person through
+whom the psychic current passed, was near by."
+
+"You mean to say that when a fellow has that queer feeling that it has
+all happened before, the--the predestined girl is somewhere in your
+neighborhood?"
+
+"That is what my pretty informant told me."
+
+"Who," asked Smith, "is this pretty informant?"
+
+"She asked permission to withhold her name."
+
+"Didn't she ask you to subscribe?"
+
+"No; she merely asked for the use of my name as reference for future
+clients if The Green Mouse Society was successful in my case."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+Brown laughed. "I said that if any individual or group of individuals
+could induce me, within a year, to fall in love with and pay court to any
+living specimen of human woman I'd cheerfully admit it from the house-
+tops and take pleasure in recommending The Green Mouse to everybody I
+knew who yet remained unmarried."
+
+They both laughed.
+
+"What rot we've been talking," observed Smith, rising and picking up his
+suitcase. "Here's our station, and we'd better hustle or we'll lose the
+boat. I wouldn't miss that week-end party for the world!"
+
+"Neither would I," said Beekman Brown.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+A CROSS-TOWN CAR
+
+
+_Concerning the Sudden Madness of One Brown_
+
+As the two young fellows, carrying their suitcases, emerged from the
+subway at Times Square into the midsummer glare and racket of Broadway
+and Forty-second Street, Brown suddenly halted, pressed his hand to his
+forehead, gazed earnestly up at the sky as though trying to recollect how
+to fly, then abruptly gripped Smith's left arm just above the elbow and
+squeezed it, causing the latter gentleman exquisite discomfort.
+
+"Here! Stop it!" protested Smith, wriggling with annoyance.
+
+Brown only gazed at him and then at the sky.
+
+"Stop it!" repeated Smith, astonished. "Why do you pinch me and then look
+at the sky? Is--is a monoplane attempting to alight on me? _What_ is the
+matter with you, anyway?"
+
+"That peculiar consciousness," said Brown, dreamily, "is creeping over
+me. Don't move--don't speak--don't interrupt me, Smith."
+
+"Let go of me!" retorted Smith.
+
+"Hush! Wait! It's certainly creeping over me."
+
+"What's creeping over you?"
+
+"You know what I mean. I am experiencing that strange feeling that all--
+er--all _this_--has happened before."
+
+"All what?--confound it!"
+
+"All _this!_ My standing, on a hot summer day, in the infernal din of
+some great city; and--and I seem to recall it vividly--after a fashion--
+the blazing sun, the stifling odor of the pavements; I seem to remember
+that very hackman over there sponging the nose of his horse--even that
+pushcart piled up with peaches! Smith! What is this maddeningly elusive
+memory that haunts me--haunts me with the peculiar idea that it has all
+occurred before?... Do you know what I mean?"
+
+"I've just admitted to you that everybody has that sort of fidget
+occasionally, and there's no reason to stand on your hindlegs about it.
+Come on or we'll miss our train."
+
+But Beekman Brown remained stock still, his youthful and attractive
+features puckered in a futile effort to seize the evanescent memories
+that came swarming--gnatlike memories that teased and distracted.
+
+"It's as if the entire circumstances were strangely familiar," he said;
+"as though everything that you and I do and say had once before been done
+and said by us under precisely similar conditions--somewhere--sometime."
+
+"We'll miss that boat at the foot of Forty-second Street," cut in Smith
+impatiently. "And if we miss the boat we lose our train."
+
+Brown gazed skyward.
+
+"I never felt this feeling so strongly in all my life," he muttered;
+"it's--it's astonishing. Why, Smith, I _knew_ you were going to say
+that."
+
+"Say what?" demanded Smith.
+
+"That we would miss the boat and the train. Isn't it funny?"
+
+"Oh, very. I'll say it again sometime if it amuses you; but, meanwhile,
+as we're going to that week-end at the Carringtons we'd better get into a
+taxi and hustle for the foot of West Forty-second Street. Is there
+anything very funny in that?"
+
+"I knew _that_, too. I knew you'd say we must take a taxi!" insisted
+Brown, astonished at his own "clairvoyance."
+
+"Now, look here," retorted Smith, thoroughly vexed; "up to five minutes
+ago you were reasonable. What the devil's the matter with you, Beekman
+Brown?"
+
+"James Vanderdynk Smith, I don't know. Good Heavens! I knew you were
+going to say that to me, and that I was going to answer that way!"
+
+"Are you coming or are you going to talk foolish on this broiling
+curbstone the rest of the afternoon?" inquired Smith, fiercely.
+
+"Jim, I tell you that everything we've done and said in the last five
+minutes we have done and said before--somewhere--perhaps on some other
+planet; perhaps centuries ago when you and I were Romans and wore
+togas----"
+
+"Confound it! What do I care," shouted Smith, "whether we were Romans and
+wore togas? We are due this century at a house party on this planet. They
+expect us on this train. Are you coming? If not--kindly relax that
+crablike clutch on my elbow before partial paralysis ensues."
+
+"Smith, wait! I tell you this is somehow becoming strangely portentous.
+I've got the funniest sensation that something is going to happen to me."
+
+"It will," said Smith, dangerously, "if you don't let go my elbow."
+
+But Beekman Brown, a prey to increasing excitement, clung to his friend.
+
+"Wait just one moment, Jim; something remarkable is likely to occur! I--I
+never before felt this way--so strongly--in all my life. Something
+extraordinary is certainly about to happen to me."
+
+"It has happened," said his friend, coldly; "you've gone dippy. Also,
+we've lost that train. Do you understand?"
+
+"I knew we would. Isn't that curious? I--I believe I can almost tell you
+what else is going to happen to us."
+
+"_I'll_ tell _you_," hissed Smith; "it's an ambulance for yours and ding-
+dong to the funny-house! _What_ are you trying to do now?" With real
+misgiving, for Brown, balanced on the edge of the gutter, began waving
+his arms in a birdlike way as though about to launch himself into aerial
+flight across Forty-second Street.
+
+"The car!" he exclaimed excitedly, "the cherry-colored cross-town car!
+Where is it? Do you see it anywhere, Smith?"
+
+"What? What do you mean? There's no cross-town car in sight. Brown, don't
+act like that! Don't be foolish! What on earth----"
+
+"It's coming! There's a car coming!" cried Brown.
+
+"Do you think you're a racing runabout and I'm a curve?"
+
+Brown waved him away impatiently.
+
+"I tell you that something most astonishing is going to occur--in a
+cherry-colored tram car.... And somehow there'll be some reason for me to
+get into it."
+
+"Into what?"
+
+"Into that cherry-colored car, because--because--there'll be a wicker
+basket in it--somebody holding a wicker basket--and there'll be--there'll
+be--a--a--white summer gown--and a big white hat----"
+
+Smith stared at his friend in grief and amazement. Brown stood balancing
+himself on the gutter's edge, pale, rapt, uttering incoherent prophecy
+concerning the advent of a car not yet visible anywhere in the immediate
+metropolitan vista.
+
+"Old man," began Smith with emotion, "I think you had better come very
+quietly somewhere with me. I--I want to show you something pretty and
+nice."
+
+"Hark!" exclaimed Brown.
+
+"Sure, I'll hark for you," said Smith, soothingly, "or I'll bark for you
+if you like, or anything if you'll just come quietly."
+
+"The cherry-colored car!" cried Brown, laboring under tremendous emotion.
+"Look, Smithy! That is the car!"
+
+"Sure, it is! I see it, old man. They run 'em every five minutes. What
+the devil is there to astonish anybody about a cross-town cruiser with a
+red water line?"
+
+"Look!" insisted Brown, now almost beside himself. "The wicker basket!
+The summer gown! Exactly as I foretold it! The big straw hat!--the--the
+_girl!_"
+
+And shoving Smith violently away he galloped after the cherry-colored
+car, caught it, swung himself aboard, and sank triumphant and breathless
+into the transverse seat behind that occupied by a wicker basket, a filmy
+summer frock, a big, white straw hat, and--a girl--the most amazingly
+pretty girl he had ever laid eyes on. After him, headlong, like a
+distracted chicken, rushed Smith and alighted beside him, panting,
+menacing.
+
+"Wha'--dyeh--board--this--car--for!" he gasped, sliding fiercely up
+beside Brown. "Get off or I'll drag you off!"
+
+But Brown only shook his head with an infatuated smile.
+
+"Is it that girl?" said Smith, incensed. "Are you a--a Broadway Don Juan,
+or are you a respectable lawyer with a glimmering sense of common decency
+and an intention to keep a social engagement at the Carringtons' to-day?"
+
+And Smith drew out his timepiece and flourished it furiously under
+Brown's handsome and sun-tanned nose.
+
+But Brown only slid along the seat away from him, saying:
+
+"Don't bother me, Jim; this is too momentous a crisis in my life to have
+a well-intentioned but intellectually dwarfed friend butting into me and
+running about under foot."
+
+"Intellectually d-d--do you mean _me?_" asked Smith, unable to believe
+his ears. "_Do_ you?"
+
+"Yes, I do! Because a miracle suddenly happens to me on Forty-second
+Street, and you, with your mind of a stockbroker, unable to appreciate
+it, come clattering and clamoring after me about a house party--a common-
+place, every-day, social appointment, when I have a full-blown miracle on
+my hands!"
+
+"What miracle?" faltered Smith, stupefied.
+
+"What miracle? Haven't I been telling you that I've been having that
+queer sense that all this has happened before? Didn't I suddenly begin--
+as though compelled by some unseen power--to foretell things? Didn't I
+prophesy the coming of this cross-town car? Didn't I even name its color
+before it came into sight? Didn't I warn you that I'd probably get into
+it? Didn't I reveal to you that a big straw hat and a pretty summer
+gown----"
+
+"Confound it!" almost shouted Smith, "There are about five thousand
+cherry-colored cross-town cars in this town. There are about five million
+white hats and dresses in this borough. There are five billion girls
+wearing 'em----!" "Yes; but the _wicker basket_" breathed Brown. "How do
+you account for _that?_... And, anyway, you annoy me, Smith. Why don't
+you get out of the car and go somewhere?"
+
+"I want to know where you are going before I knock your head off."
+
+"I don't know," replied Brown, serenely.
+
+"Are you actually attempting to follow that girl?" whispered Smith,
+horrified.
+
+"Yes.... It sounds low, doesn't it? But it really isn't. It is something
+I can't explain--you couldn't understand even if I tried to enlighten
+you. The sentiment I harbor is too lofty for some to comprehend, too
+vague, too pure, too ethereal for----"
+
+"I'm as lofty and ethereal as you are!" retorted Smith, hotly. "And I
+know a--an ethereal Lothario when I see him, too!"
+
+"I'm not--though it looks like it--and I forgive you, Smithy, for losing
+your temper and using such language."
+
+"Oh, you do?" said Smith, grinning with rage.
+
+"Yes," nodded Brown, kindly. "I forgive you, but don't call me that
+again. You mean well, but I'm going to find out at last what all this
+maddening, tantalizing, unexplained and mysterious feeling that it all
+has occurred before really is. I'm going to trace it to its source; I'm
+going to compare notes with this highly intelligent girl."
+
+"You're going to _speak_ to her?"
+
+"I am. I must. How else can I compare data."
+
+"I hope she'll call the police. If she doesn't _I_ will."
+
+"Don't worry. She's part of this strange situation. She'll comprehend as
+soon as I begin to explain. She is intelligent; you only have to look at
+her to understand that."
+
+Smith choking with impotent fury, nevertheless ventured a swift glance.
+Her undeniable beauty only exasperated him. "To think--to _think_," he
+burst out, "that a modest, decent, law-loving business man like me should
+suddenly awake to find his boyhood friend had turned into a godless
+votary of Venus!"
+
+"I'm not a votary of Venus!" retorted Brown, turning pink. "I'll punch
+you if you say it again. I'm as decent and respectable a business man as
+you are! And my grammar is better. And, thank Heaven! I've intellect
+enough to recognize a miracle when it happens to me.... Do you think I am
+capable of harboring any sentiments that might bring the blush of
+coquetry to the cheek of modesty? Do you?"
+
+"Well--well, _I_ don't know what you're up to!" Smith raised his voice in
+bewilderment and despair. "I don't know what possesses you to act this
+way. People don't experience miracles in New York cross-town cars. The
+wildest stretch of imagination could only make a coincidence out of this.
+There are trillions of girls in cross-town cars dressed just like this
+one."
+
+"But the basket!"
+
+"Another coincidence. There are quadrillions of wicker baskets."
+
+"Not," said Brown, "with the contents of this one."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Smith instinctively turned to look at the basket balanced daintily on the
+girl's knees.
+
+He strove to penetrate its wicker exterior with concentrated gaze. He
+could see nothing but wicker.
+
+"Well," he began angrily, "what _is_ in that basket? And how do _you_
+know it--you lunatic?"
+
+"Will you believe me if I tell you?"
+
+"If you can offer any corroborative evidence----"
+
+"Well, then--there's a cat in that basket."
+
+"A--what?"
+
+"A cat."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I don't know how I know, but there's a big, gray cat in that basket."
+
+"Why a _gray_ one?"
+
+"I can't tell, but it _is_ gray, and it has six toes on every foot."
+
+Smith truly felt that he was now being trifled with.
+
+"Brown," he said, trying to speak civilly, "if anybody in the five
+boroughs had come to me with affidavits and told me yesterday how you
+were going to behave this morning----"
+
+His voice, rising unconsciously as the realization of his outrageous
+wrongs dawned upon him, rang out above the rattle and grinding of the
+car, and the girl turned abruptly and looked straight at him and then at
+Brown.
+
+The pure, fearless beauty of the gaze, the violet eyes widening a little
+in surprise, silenced both young men.
+
+She inspected Brown for an instant, then turned serenely to her calm
+contemplation of the crowded street once more. Yet her dainty, close-set
+ears looked as though they were listening.
+
+The young men gazed at one another.
+
+"That girl is well bred," said Smith in a low, agitated voice. "You--you
+wouldn't think of venturing to speak to her!"
+
+"I'm obliged to, I tell you! This all happened before. I recognize
+everything as it occurs.... Even to your making a general nuisance of
+yourself."
+
+Smith straightened up.
+
+"I'm going to push you forcibly from this car. Do you remember _that_
+incident?"
+
+[Illustration: "The lid of the basket tilted a little. Then a plaintive
+voice said 'Meow-w'."]
+
+"No," said Brown with conviction, "that incident did not happen. You only
+threatened to do it. I remember now."
+
+In spite of himself Smith felt a slight chill creep up over his neck and
+inconvenience his spine.
+
+He said, deeply agitated: "What a terrible position for me to be in--with
+a friend suddenly gone mad in the streets of New York and running after a
+basket containing what he believes to be a cat. A _Cat!_ Good----"
+
+Brown gripped his arm. "Watch it!" he breathed.
+
+The lid of the basket tilted a little, between lid and rim a soft, furry,
+six-toed gray paw was thrust out. Then a plaintive voice said, "Meow-w!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+THE LID OFF
+
+
+_An Alliance, Offensive, Defensive, and Back-Fensive_
+
+Smith, petrified, looked blankly at the paw.
+
+For a while he remained stupidly incapable of speech or movement, then,
+as though arousing from a bad dream:
+
+"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked with an effort. "This car is
+bound to stop sometime, I suppose, and--and then what?"
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to do. Whatever I do will be the thing that
+ought to happen to me, to that cat and to that girl--that is the thing
+which is destined to happen. That's all I know about it."
+
+His friend passed an unsteady hand across his brow.
+
+"This whole proceeding is becoming a nightmare," he said unsteadily. "Am
+I awake? Is this Forty-second Street? Hold up some fingers, Brown, and
+let me guess how many you hold up, and if I guess wrong I'm home in bed
+asleep and the whole thing is off."
+
+Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.
+
+"You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere. And if I don't come go on
+alone to the Carringtons'.... You don't mind going on and fixing things
+up with the Carringtons, do you?"
+
+"Brown, _do_ you believe that The Green Mouse Society has got hold of
+you? _Do_ you?"
+
+"I don't know and don't care.... Smith, I ask you plainly, did you ever
+before see such a perfectly beautiful girl as that one is?"
+
+"Beekman, do you believe anything queer is going to result? You don't
+suppose _she_ has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?"
+
+"Anything to do with it? How?"
+
+"I mean," he sank his voice to hoarser depths, "how do you know but that
+this girl, who pretends to pay no attention to us, _might_ be a--a--one
+of those clever, professional mesmerists who force you to follow 'em, and
+get you into their power, and exhibit you, and make you eat raw potatoes
+and tallow candles and tacks before an audience."
+
+He peeped furtively at Brown, who did not appear uneasy.
+
+"All I'm afraid of," added Smith, sullenly, "is that you'll get yourself
+into vaudeville or the patrol wagon."
+
+He waited, but Brown made no reply.
+
+"Oh, very well," he said, coldly. "I'll take a cab back to the boat."
+
+No observation from Brown.
+
+"So, _good_-by, old fellow"--with some emotion.
+
+"Good-by," said Beekman Brown, absently.
+
+In fact, he did not even notice when his thoroughly offended partner left
+the car, so intent was he in following the subtly thrilling train of
+thought which tantalized him, mocked him, led him nowhere, yet always
+lured him to fresh endeavor of memory. _Where_ had all this occurred
+before? When? What was going to happen next--happen inexorably, as it had
+once happened, or as it once should have happened, in some dim, bygone
+age when he and that basket and that cat and this same hauntingly lovely
+girl existed together on earth--or perhaps upon some planet, swimming far
+out beyond the ken of men with telescopes?
+
+He looked at the girl, strove to consider her impersonally, for her
+youthful beauty began to disturb him. Then cold doubt crept in; something
+of the monstrosity of the proceeding chilled his enthusiasm for occult
+research. Should he speak to her?
+
+Certainly, it was a dreadful thing to do--an offense the enormity of
+which was utterly inexcusable except under the stress of a purely
+impersonal and scientific necessity for investigating a mental phase of
+humanity which had always thrilled him with a curiosity most profound.
+
+He folded his arms and began to review in cold blood the circumstances
+which had led to his present situation in a cross-town car. Number one,
+and he held up one finger:
+
+As it comes, at times, to every normal human, the odd idea had come to
+him that what he was saying and doing as he emerged from the subway at
+Times Square was what he had, sometime, somewhere, said and done before
+under similar circumstances. That was the beginning.
+
+Number two, and he gravely held up a second finger:
+
+Always before when this idea had come to bother him it had faded after a
+moment or two, leaving him merely uneasy and dissatisfied.
+
+This time it persisted--intruding, annoying, exasperating him in his
+efforts to remember things which he could not recollect.
+
+Number three, and he held up a third finger:
+
+He _had_ begun to remember! As soon as he or Smith said or did anything
+he recollected having said or done it sometime, somewhere, or recollected
+that he _ought_ to have.
+
+Number four--four fingers in air, stiff, determined digits:
+
+He had not only, by a violent concentration of his memory, succeeded in
+recognizing the things said and done as having been said and done before,
+but suddenly he became aware that he was going to be able to foretell,
+vaguely, certain incidents that were yet to occur--like the prophesied
+advent of the cherry-colored car and the hat, gown, and wicker basket.
+
+He now had four fingers in the air; he examined them seriously, and then
+stuck up the fifth.
+
+"Here I am," he thought, "awake, perfectly sane, absolutely respectable.
+Why should a foolish terror of convention prevent me from asking that
+girl whether she knows anything which might throw some light on this most
+interesting mental phenomenon?... I'll do it."
+
+The girl turned her head slightly; speech and the politely perfunctory
+smile froze on his lips.
+
+She held up one finger; Brown's heart leaped. _Was_ that some cabalistic
+sign which he ought to recognize? But she was merely signaling the
+conductor, who promptly pulled the bell and lifted her basket for her
+when she got off.
+
+She thanked him; Brown heard her, and the crystalline voice began to ring
+in little bell-like echoes all through his ears, stirring endless little
+mysteries of memory.
+
+Brown also got off; his legs struck up a walk of their own volition,
+carrying him across the street, hoisting him into a north-bound Lexington
+Avenue car, and landing him in a seat behind the one where she had
+installed herself and her wicker basket.
+
+She seemed to be having some difficulty with the wicker basket;
+beseeching six-toed paws were thrust out persistently; soft meows pleaded
+for the right of liberty and pursuit of feline happiness. Several
+passengers smiled.
+
+Trouble increased as the car whizzed northward; the meows became wilder;
+mad scrambles agitated the basket; the lid bobbed and creaked; the girl
+turned a vivid pink and, bending close over the basket, attempted to
+soothe its enervated inmate.
+
+In the forties she managed to control the situation; in the fifties a
+frantic rush from within burst a string that fastened the basket lid, but
+the girl held it down with energy.
+
+In the sixties a tempest broke loose in the basket; harrowing yowls
+pierced the atmosphere; the girl, crimson with embarrassment and
+distress, signaled the conductor at Sixty-fourth Street and descended,
+clinging valiantly to a basket which apparently contained a pack of
+firecrackers in process of explosion.
+
+A classical heroine in dire distress invariably exclaims aloud: "Will
+_no_ one aid me?" Brown, whose automatic legs had compelled him to
+follow, instinctively awaited some similar appeal.
+
+It came unexpectedly; the kicking basket escaped from her arms, the lid
+burst open, and an extraordinarily large, healthy and indignant cat flew
+out, tail as big as a duster, and fled east on Sixty-fourth Street.
+
+The girl in the summer gown and white straw hat ran after the cat.
+Brown's legs ran, too.
+
+There was, and is, between the house on the northeast corner of Sixty-
+fourth Street and Lexington Avenue and the next house on Sixty-fourth, an
+open space guarded by an iron railing; through this the cat darted, fur
+on end, and, with a flying leap, took to the back fences.
+
+"Oh!" gasped the girl.
+
+Then Brown's legs did an extraordinary thing--they began to scramble and
+kick and shin up the iron railing, hoisting Brown over; and Brown's
+voice, pleasant, calm, reassuring, was busy, too: "If you will look out
+for my suitcase I think I can recover your cat.... It will give me great
+pleasure to recover your cat. I shall be very glad to have, the
+opportunity of recovering--puff--puff--your--puff--puff--c-cat!" And he
+dropped inside the iron railing and paused to recover his breath.
+
+The girl came up to the railing and gazed anxiously through at the corner
+of the only back fence she could perceive.
+
+"What a perfectly dreadful thing to happen!" she said in a voice not very
+steady. "It is exceedingly nice of you to help me catch Clarence. He is
+quite beside himself, poor lamb! You see, he has never before been in the
+city. I--I shall be distressed beyond m-measure if he is lost."
+
+"He went over those fences," said Brown, breathing faster. "I think I'd
+better go after him."
+
+"Oh--_would_ you mind? I'd be so very grateful. It seems so much to ask
+of you."
+
+"I'll do it," said Brown, firmly. "Every boy in New York has climbed back
+fences, and I'm only thirty."
+
+"It is most kind of you; but--but I don't know whether you could possibly
+get him to come to you. Clarence is timid with strangers."
+
+Brown had already clambered on to the wooden fence. He balanced himself
+there, astride. Whitewash liberally decorated coat and trousers.
+
+"I see him," he said.
+
+"W-what is he doing?"
+
+"Squatting on a trellis three back yards away." And Brown lifted a
+blandishing voice: "Here, Clarence--Clarence--Clarence! Here, kitty--
+kitty--kitty! Good pussy! Nice Clarence!"
+
+"Does he come?" inquired the girl, peering wistfully through the railing.
+
+"He does not," said Brown. "Perhaps you had better call."
+
+"Here, puss--puss--puss--puss!" she began gently in that fascinating,
+crystalline voice which seemed to set tiny silvery chimes ringing in
+Brown's ears: "Here, Clarence, darling--Betty's own little kitty-cat!"
+
+"If he doesn't come to _that_," thought Brown, "he _is_ a brute." And
+aloud: "If you could only let him see you; he sits there blinking at me."
+
+"Do you think he'd come if he saw me?"
+
+"Who wouldn't?" thought Brown, and answered, calmly: "I think so.... Of
+course, you couldn't get up here."
+
+"I could.... But I'd better not.... Besides, I live only a few houses
+away--Number 161--and I _could_ go through into the back yard."
+
+"But you'd better not attempt to climb the fence. Have one of the
+servants do it; we'll get the cat between us then and corner him."
+
+"There are no servants in the house. It's closed for the summer--all
+boarded up!"
+
+"Then how can you get in?"
+
+"I have a key to the basement.... Shall I?"
+
+"And climb up on the fence?"
+
+"Yes--if I must--if it's necessary to save Clarence.... Shall I?"
+
+"Why can't I shoo him into your yard."
+
+"He doesn't know our yard. He's a country cat; he's never stayed in town.
+I was taking him with me to Oyster Bay.... I came down from a week-end at
+Stockbridge, where some relatives kept Clarence for us while we were
+abroad during the winter.... I meant to stop and get some things in the
+house on my way back to Oyster Bay.... Isn't it a perfectly wretched
+situation?... We--the entire family--adore Clarence--and--I-I'm so
+anxious----"
+
+Her fascinating underlip trembled, but she controlled it.
+
+"I'll get that cat if it takes a month!" said Brown. Then he flushed; he
+had not meant to speak so warmly.
+
+The girl flushed too. I am so grateful.... But how----"
+
+"Wait," said Brown; and, addressing Clarence in a softly alluring voice,
+he began cautiously to crawl along the fences toward that unresponsive
+animal. Presently he desisted, partly on account of a conspiracy engaged
+in between his trousers and a rusty nail. The girl was now beyond range
+of his vision around the corner.
+
+"Miss--ah--Miss--er--er--Betty!" he called.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Clarence has retreated over another back yard."
+
+"How horrid!"
+
+"How far down do you live?"
+
+She named the number of doors, anxiously adding: "Is Clarence farther
+down the block? Oh, please, be careful. Please, don't drive him past our
+yard. If you will wait I--I'll let myself into the house and--I'll manage
+to get up on the fence."
+
+"You'll ruin your gown."
+
+"I don't care about my gown."
+
+"These fences are the limit! Full of spikes and nails.... Will you be
+careful?"
+
+"Yes, very."
+
+"The nails are rusty. I--I am h-horribly afraid of lockjaw."
+
+"Then don't remain there an instant."
+
+"I mean--I'm afraid of it for you."
+
+There was a silence; they couldn't see each other. Brown's heart was
+beating fast.
+
+"It is very generous of you to--think of me," came her voice, lower but
+very friendly.
+
+"I ca-can't avoid it," he stammered, and wanted to kick himself for what
+he had blurted out.
+
+Another pause--longer this time. And then:
+
+"I am going to enter my house and climb up on the fence.... Would you
+mind waiting a moment?"
+
+"I will wait here," said Beekman Brown, "until I see you." He added to
+himself: "I'm going mad rapidly and I know it and don't care.... _What_--
+a--girl!"
+
+While he waited, legs swinging, astride the back fence, he examined his
+injuries--thoughtfully touched the triangular tear in his trousers,
+inspected minor sartorial and corporeal lacerations, set his hat firmly
+upon his head, and gazed across the monotony of the back-yard fences at
+Clarence. The cat eyed him disrespectfully, paws tucked under, tail
+curled up against his well-fed flank--disillusioned, disgusted,
+unapproachable.
+
+Presently, through the palings of a back yard on Sixty-fifth Street,
+Brown saw a small boy, evidently the progeny of some caretaker, regarding
+him intently.
+
+"Say, mister," he began as soon as noticed, "you have tore your pants on
+a nail."
+
+"Thanks," said Brown, coldly; "will you be good enough to mind your
+business?"
+
+"I thought I'd tell you," said the small boy, delightedly aware that the
+information displeased Brown. "They're tore awful, too. That's what you
+get for playin' onto back fences. Y'orter be ashamed."
+
+Brown feigned unconsciousness and folded his arms with dignity; but the
+next moment he straightened up, quivering.
+
+"You young devil!" he said; "if you pull that slingshot again I'll come
+over there and destroy you!"
+
+At the same moment above the fence line down the block a white straw hat
+appeared; then a youthful face becomingly flushed; then two dainty,
+gloved hands grasping the top of the fence.
+
+"I am here," she called across to him.
+
+The small boy, who had climbed to the top of his fence, immediately
+joined the conversation:
+
+"Your girl's a winner, mister," he observed, critically.
+
+"Are you going to keep quiet?" demanded Brown, starting across the fence.
+
+"Sure," said the small boy, carelessly.
+
+And, settling down on his lofty perch of observation, he began singing:
+
+_"Lum' me an' the woild is mi-on._"
+
+The girl's cheeks became pinker; she looked at the small boy appealingly.
+
+"Little boy," she said, "if you'll run away somewhere I'll give you ten
+cents."
+
+"No," said the terror, "I want to see him an' you catch that cat."
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," suggested Brown, inspired. "I'll give you a
+dollar if you'll help us catch the cat."
+
+"You're on!" said the boy, briskly. "What'll I do? Touch her up with this
+bean-shooter?"
+
+"No; put that thing into your pocket!" exclaimed Brown, sharply. "Now
+climb across to Sixty-fourth Street and stand by that iron railing so
+that the cat can't bolt out into the street, and," he added, wrapping a
+dollar bill around a rusty nail and tossing it across the fence, "here's
+what's coming to you."
+
+The small boy scrambled over nimbly, ran squirrel-like across the
+transverse fence, dipped, swarmed over the iron railing and stood on
+guard.
+
+"Say, mister," he said, "if the cat starts this way you and your girl
+start a hollerin' like----"
+
+"All right," interrupted Brown, and turned toward the vision of
+loveliness and distress which was now standing on the top of her own back
+fence holding fast to a wistaria trellis and flattering Clarence with low
+and honeyed appeals.
+
+The cat, however, was either too stupid or too confused to respond; he
+gazed blankly at his mistress, and when Brown began furtively edging his
+way toward him Clarence arose, stood a second in alert indecision, then
+began to back away.
+
+"We've got him between us!" called out Brown. "If you'll stand ready to
+seize him when I drive him----"
+
+There was a wild scurry, a rush, a leap, frantic clawing for foothold.
+
+"Now, Miss Betty! Quick!" cried Brown. "Don't let him pass you."
+
+She spread her skirts, but the shameless Clarence rushed headlong between
+the most delicately ornamental pair of ankles in Manhattan.
+
+"Oh-h!" cried the girl in soft despair, and made a futile clutch; but she
+could not arrest the flight of Clarence, she merely upset him, turning
+him for an instant into a furry pinwheel, whirling through mid-air,
+landing in her yard, rebounding like a rubber ball, and disappearing,
+with one flying leap, into a narrow opening in the basement masonry.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Brown, precariously balanced on the next fence.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "this is becoming positively ghastly. He's
+bolted into our cellar."
+
+"Why, that's all right, isn't it?" asked Brown. "All you have to do is to
+go inside, descend to the cellar, and light the gas."
+
+"There's no gas."
+
+"You have electric light?"
+
+"Yes, but it's turned off at the main office. The house is closed for the
+summer, you know."
+
+Brown, balancing cautiously, walked the intervening fence like an amateur
+on a tightrope.
+
+Her pretty hat was a trifle on one side; her cheeks brilliant with
+excitement and anxiety. Utterly oblivious of herself and of appearances
+in her increasing solicitude for the adored Clarence, she sat the fence,
+cross saddle, balancing with one hand and pointing with the other to the
+barred ventilator into which Clarence had darted.
+
+A wisp of sunny hair blew across her crimson cheek; slender, active,
+excitedly unconscious of self, she seemed like some eager, adorable
+little gamin perched there, intent on mischief.
+
+"If you'll drop into our yard," she said, "and place that soap box
+against the ventilator, Clarence can't get out that way!"
+
+It was done before she finished the request. She disengaged herself from
+the fencetop, swung over, hung an instant, and dropped into a soft flower
+bed.
+
+Breathing fast, disheveled, they confronted one another on the grass. His
+blue suit of serge was smeared with whitewash; her gown was a sight. She
+felt for her hat instinctively, repinned it at hazard, looked at her
+gloves, and began to realize what she had done.
+
+"I--I couldn't help it," she faltered; "I couldn't leave Clarence in a
+city of five m-million strangers--all alone--terrified out of his senses--
+could I? I had rather--rather be thought--anything than be c-cruel to a
+helpless animal."
+
+Brown dared not trust himself to answer. She was too beautiful and his
+emotion was too deep. So he bent over and attempted to dust his garments
+with the flat of his hand.
+
+"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice. "Are your clothes quite
+ruined?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mind," he protested happily, "I really don't mind a bit. If
+you'll only let me help you corner that infern--that unfortunate cat I
+shall be perfectly happy."
+
+She said, with heightened color: "It is exceedingly nice of you to say
+so.... I--I don't quite know--what do you think we had better do?"
+
+"Suppose," he said, "you go into the basement, unlock the cellar door and
+call. He can't bolt this way."
+
+She nodded and entered the house. A few moments later he heard her
+calling, so persuasively that it was all he could do not to run to her,
+and why on earth that cat didn't he never could understand.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+BETTY
+
+
+_In Which the Remorseless and Inexorable Results of Psychical Research
+Are Revealed to the Very Young_
+
+At intervals for the next ten minutes her fresh, sweet, fascinating voice
+came to him where he stood in the yard; then he heard it growing fainter,
+more distant, receding; then silence.
+
+Listening, he suddenly heard a far, rushing sound from subterranean
+depths--like a load of coal being put in--then a frightened cry.
+
+He sprang into the basement, ran through laundry and kitchen. The cellar
+door swung wide open above the stairs which ran down into darkness; and
+as he halted to listen Clarence dashed up out of the depths, scuttled
+around the stairs and fled upward into the silent regions above.
+
+"Betty!" he cried, forgetting in his alarm the lesser conventions, "where
+are you?"
+
+"Oh, dear--oh, dear!" she wailed. "I am in such a dreadful plight. Could
+you help me, please?"
+
+"Are you hurt?" he asked. Fright made his voice almost inaudible. He
+struck a match with shaking fingers and ran down the cellar stairs.
+
+"Betty! Where are you?"
+
+"Oh, I am here--in the coal."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I--I can't seem to get out; I stepped into the coal pit in the dark and
+it all--all slid with me and over me and I'm in it up to the shoulders."
+
+Another match flamed; he saw a stump of a candle, seized it, lighted it,
+and, holding it aloft, gazed down upon the most heart rending spectacle
+he had ever witnessed.
+
+The next instant he grasped a shovel and leaped to the rescue. She was
+quite calm about it; the situation was too awful, the future too hopeless
+for mere tears. What had happened contained all the dignified elements of
+a catastrophe. They both realized it, and when, madly shoveling, he at
+last succeeded in releasing her she leaned her full weight on his own,
+breathing rapidly, and suffered him to support and guide her through the
+flame-shot darkness to the culinary regions above.
+
+Here she sank down on a chair for one moment in utter collapse. Then she
+looked up, resolutely steadying her voice:
+
+"Could anything on earth more awful have happened to a girl?" she asked,
+lips quivering in spite of her. She stretched out what had once been a
+pair of white gloves, she looked down at what had been a delicate summer
+gown of white. "How," she asked with terrible calmness, "am I to get to
+Oyster Bay?"
+
+He dropped on to a kitchen chair opposite her, clasping his coal-stained
+hands between his knees, utterly incapable of speech.
+
+She looked at her shoes--once snowy white; with a shudder she stripped
+the soiled gloves from elbow to wrist and flung them aside. Her arms and
+hands formed a starling contrast to the remainder of the ensemble.
+
+"What," she asked, "am I to do?"
+
+"The thing to do," he said, "is to telephone to your family at Oyster
+Bay."
+
+"The telephone has been disconnected. So has the water--we can't even
+w-wash our hands!" she faltered.
+
+He said: "I can go out and telephone to your family to send a maid with
+some clothes for you--if you don't mind being left alone in an empty
+house for a little while."
+
+"No, I don't; but," she gazed uncertainly at the black opening of the
+cellar, "but, please, don't be gone very long, will you?"
+
+He promised fervidly. She gave him the number and her family's name, and
+he left by the basement door.
+
+He was gone a long time, during which, for a while, she paced the floor,
+unaffectedly wringing her hands and contemplating herself and her
+garments in the laundry looking-glass.
+
+At intervals she tried to turn on the water, hoping for a few drops at
+least; at intervals she sat down to wait for him; then, the inaction
+becoming unendurable, musing goaded her into motion, and she ascended to
+the floor above, groping through the dimness in futile search for
+Clarence. She heard him somewhere in obscurity, scurrying under furniture
+at her approach, evidently too thoroughly demoralized to recognize her
+voice. So, after a while, she gave it up and wandered down to the pantry,
+instinct leading her, for she was hungry and thirsty; but she knew there
+could be nothing eatable in a house closed for the summer.
+
+She lifted the pantry window and opened the blinds; noon sunshine flooded
+the place, and she began opening cupboards and refrigerators, growing
+hungrier every moment.
+
+Then her eyes fell upon dozens of bottles of Apollinaris, and with a
+little cry of delight she knelt down, gathered up all she could carry,
+and ran upstairs to the bathroom adjoining her own bedchamber.
+
+"At least," she said to herself, "I can cleanse myself of this dreadful
+coal!" and in a few moments she was reveling, elbow deep, in a marble
+basin brimming with Apollinaris.
+
+As the stain of the coal disappeared she remembered a rose-colored
+morning gown reposing in her bedroom clothespress; and she found more
+than that there--rose stockings and slippers and a fragrant pile of
+exquisitely fine and more intimate garments, so tempting in their
+freshness that she hurried with them into the dressing room; then began
+to make rapid journeys up and downstairs, carrying dozens of quarts of
+Apollinaris to the big porcelain tub, into which she emptied them,
+talking happily to herself all the time.
+
+"If he returns I can talk to him over the banisters!... He's a nice
+boy.... Such a funny boy not to remember me.... And I've thought of him
+quite often.... I wonder if I've time for just one, delicious plunge?"
+She listened; ran to the front windows and looked out through the blinds.
+He was nowhere in sight.
+
+Ten minutes later, delightfully refreshed, she stood regarding herself in
+her lovely rose-tinted morning gown, patting her bright hair into
+discipline with slim, deft fingers, a half-smile on her lips, lids
+closing a trifle over the pensive violet eyes.
+
+"Now," she said aloud, "I'll talk to him over the banisters when he
+returns; it's a little ungracious, I suppose, after all he has done, but
+it's more conventional.... And I'll sit here and read until they send
+somebody from Sandcrest with a gown I can travel in.... And then we'll
+catch Clarence and call a cab----"
+
+A distant tinkling from the area bell interrupted her.
+
+"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "I quite forgot that I had to let him in!"
+
+Another tinkle. She cast a hurried and doubtful glance over her attire.
+It was designed for the intimacy of her boudoir.
+
+"I--I _couldn't_ talk to him out of the window! I've been shocking enough
+as it is!" she thought; and, finger tips on the banisters, she ran down
+the three stairs and appeared at the basement grille, breathless,
+radiant, forgetting, as usual, her self-consciousness in thinking of him,
+a habit of this somewhat harebrained and headlong girl which had its root
+in perfect health of body and wholesomeness of mind.
+
+"I found some clothes--not the sort I can go out in!" she said, laughing
+at his astonishment, as she unlocked the grille. "So, please, overlook my
+attire; I was _so_ full of coal dust! and I found sufficient Apollinaris
+for my necessities.... _What_ did they say at Sandcrest?"
+
+He said very soberly: "We've got to discuss this situation. Perhaps I had
+better come in for a few minutes--if you don't mind."
+
+"No, I don't mind.... Shall we sit in the drying room?" leading the way.
+"Now tell me what is the matter? You rather frighten me, you know. Is--is
+anything wrong at Sandcrest?"
+
+"No, I suppose not." He touched his flushed face with his handkerchief;
+"I couldn't get Oyster Bay on the 'phone."
+
+"W-why not?"
+
+"The wires are out of commission as far as Huntington; there's no use--I
+tried everything! Telegraph and telephone wires were knocked out in this
+morning's electric storm, it seems."
+
+She gazed at him, hands folded on her knee, left leg crossed over, foot
+swinging.
+
+"This," she said calmly, "is becoming serious. Will you tell me what I am
+to do?"
+
+"Haven't you anything to travel in?"
+
+"Not one solitary rag."
+
+"Then--you'll have to stay here to-night and send for some of your
+friends--you surely know somebody who is still in town, don't you?"
+
+"I really don't. This is the middle of July. I don't know a woman in
+town."
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Besides," she said, "we have no light, no water, nothing to eat in the
+house, no telephone to order anything----"
+
+He said: "I foresaw that you would probably be obliged to remain here, so
+when I left the telephone office I took the liberty of calling a taxi and
+visiting the electric light people, the telephone people and the nearest
+plumber. It seems he is your own plumber--Quinn, I believe his name is;
+and he's coming in half an hour to turn on the water."
+
+"Did you think of doing all that?" she asked, astonished.
+
+"Oh, that wasn't anything. And I ventured to telephone the Plaza to serve
+luncheon and dinner here for you----"
+
+"You _did?_"
+
+"And I wired to Dooley's Agency to send you a maid for to-day----"
+
+"That was perfectly splendid of you!"
+
+"They promised to send one as soon as possible.... And I think that may
+be the plumber now," as a tinkle came from the area bell.
+
+It was not the plumber; it was waiters bearing baskets full of silver,
+china, table linen, ice, fruits, confections, cut flowers, and, in
+warmers, a most delectable luncheon.
+
+Four impressive individuals commanded by a butler formed the
+processional, filing solemnly up the basement stairs to the dining room,
+where they instantly began to lay the table with dexterous celerity.
+
+In the drying room below Betty and Beekman Brown stood confronting each
+other.
+
+"I suppose," began Brown with an effort, "that I had better go now."
+
+Betty said thoughtfully: "I suppose you must."
+
+"Unless," continued Brown, "you think I had better remain--somewhere on
+the premises--until your maid arrives."
+
+"That might be safer," said Betty, more thoughtfully.
+
+"Your maid will probably be here in a few minutes."
+
+"Probably," said Betty, head bent, slim, ringless fingers busy with the
+sparkling drop that glimmered pendant from her neckchain.
+
+Silence--the ironing board between them--she standing, bright head
+lowered, worrying the jewel with childish fingers; he following every
+movement, fascinated, spellbound.
+
+After a moment, without looking up: "You have been very, very nice to me--
+in the nicest possible way," she said.... "I am not going to forget it
+easily--even if I might wish to."
+
+"I can never forget _you!_... I d-don't want to."
+
+The sparkling pendant escaped her fingers; she picked it up again and
+spoke as though gravely addressing it:
+
+"Some day somewhere," she said, looking at the jewel, "perhaps chance--
+the hazard of life--may bring us to--togeth--to acquaintance--a more
+formal acquaintance than this.... I hope so. This has been a little--
+irregular, and perhaps you had better not wait for my maid.... I hope we
+may meet--sometime."
+
+"I hope so, too," he managed to say, with so little fervor and so
+successful an imitation of her politely detached interest in convention
+that she raised her eyes. They dropped immediately, because his quiet
+voice and speech scarcely conformed to the uncontrolled protest in his
+eyes.
+
+For a moment she stood, passing the golden links through her white
+fingers like a young novice with a rosary. Steps on the stairs disturbed
+them; the recessional had begun; four solemn persons filed out the area
+gate. At the same moment, suave and respectful, her butler pro tem.
+presented himself at the doorway:
+
+"Luncheon is served, madam."
+
+"Thank you." She looked uncertainly at Brown, hesitated, flushed a
+trifle.
+
+"I will stay here and admit the plumber and then--then--I'll g-go," he
+said with a heartbroken smile.
+
+"I suppose you took the opportunity to lunch when you went out?" she
+said. Her inflection made it a question.
+
+Without answering he stepped back to allow her to pass. She moved
+forward, turned, undecided.
+
+"_Have_ you lunched?"
+
+"Please don't feel that you ought to ask me," he began, and checked
+himself as the vivid pink deepened in her cheeks. Then she freed herself
+of embarrassment with a little laugh.
+
+"Considering," she said, "that we have been chasing cats on the back
+fences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in my
+own cellar, I can't believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheon
+with me.... Is it?"
+
+"It is ador--it is," he corrected himself firmly, "exceedingly civil of
+you to ask me!"
+
+"Then--will you?" almost timidly.
+
+"I will. I shall not pretend any more. I'd rather lunch with you than be
+President of this Republic."
+
+The butler pro tem. seated her.
+
+"You see," she said, "a place had already been laid for you." And with
+the faintest trace of malice in her voice: "Perhaps your butler had his
+orders to lay two covers. Had he?"
+
+"From me?" he protested, reddening.
+
+"You don't suspect _me_, do you?" she asked, adorably mischievous. Then
+glancing over the masses of flowers in the center and at the corners of
+the lace cloth: "This is deliciously pretty. But you are either
+dreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am. Which is it?"
+
+"I think both are true," he said, laughing.
+
+And a little while later when he returned from the basement after
+admitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber:
+
+"Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?" she said, greeting
+his return with delightfully fearless eyes. "Such Astrakan caviar! Such
+salad! Everything I care for most. And how on earth you guessed I can't
+imagine.... I'm beginning to think you are rather wonderful."
+
+They lifted the long, slender glasses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded one
+another over the frosty rims--a long, curious glance from her; a straight
+gaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long.
+
+Later, when she gave the signal, they rose as though they had often dined
+together, and moved leisurely out through the dim, shrouded drawing-rooms
+where, in the golden dusk, the odor of camphor hung.
+
+She had taken a great cluster of dewy Bride's roses from the centerpiece,
+and as she walked forward, sedately youthful, beside him, her fresh,
+young face brooded over the fragrance of the massed petals.
+
+"Sweet--how sweet!" she murmured to herself, and as they reached the end
+of the vista she half turned to face him, dreamily, listless, confident.
+
+They looked at one another, she with chin brushing the roses.
+
+"The strangest of all," she said, "is that it _seems_ all right--and--and
+we _know_ that it is all quite wrong.... Had you better go?"
+
+"Unless I ought to wait and make sure your maid does not fail you....
+Shall I?" he asked evenly.
+
+She did not answer. He drew a linen-swathed armchair toward her; she
+absently seated herself and lay back, caressing the roses with delicate
+lips and chin.
+
+Twice she looked up at him, standing there by the boarded windows.
+Sunshine filtered through the latticework at the top--enough for them to
+see each other as in a dull afterglow.
+
+"I wonder how soon my maid will come," she mused, dropping the loose
+roses on her knees. "If she is going to be very long about it perhaps--
+perhaps you might care to find a chair--if you have decided to wait."
+
+He drew one from a corner and seated himself, pulses hammering his
+throat.
+
+Through the stillness of the house sounded at intervals the clink of
+glass from the pantry. Other sounds from above indicated the plumber's
+progress from floor to floor.
+
+"Do you realize," she said impulsively, "how _very_ nice you have been to
+me? What a perfectly horrid position I might have been in, with poor
+Clarence on the back fence! And suppose I had dared follow him alone to
+the cellar? I--I might have been there yet--up to my neck in coal?"
+
+She gazed into space with considerable emotion.
+
+"And now," she said, "I am safe here in my own home. I have lunched
+divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe
+indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light
+and the telephone will be in working order before very long--and it is
+_all_ due to you!"
+
+"I--I did a few things I almost w-wish I hadn't," stammered Brown,
+"b-because I can't, somehow, decently t-tell you how tremendously
+I--I--" He stuck fast.
+
+"What?"
+
+"It would look as though I were presuming on a t-trifling service
+rendered, and--oh, I can't say it; I want to, but I can't."
+
+"Say what? Please, I don't mind what you are--are going to say."
+
+"It's--it's that I----"
+
+"Y-es?" in soft encouragement.
+
+"W-want to know you most tremendously now. I don't want to wait several
+years for chance and hazard."
+
+"O-h!" as though the information conveyed a gentle shock to her. Her low-
+breathed exclamation nearly finished Brown.
+
+"I knew you'd think it unpardonable for me--at such a time--to venture
+to--to--ask--say--express--convey----"
+
+"Why do you--how can I--where could we--" She recovered herself
+resolutely. "I do not think we ought to take advantage of an accident
+like this.... Do you? Besides, probably, in the natural course of social
+events----"
+
+"But it may be years! months! weeks!" insisted Brown, losing control of
+himself.
+
+"I should hope it would at least be a decently reasonable interval of
+several weeks----"
+
+"But I don't know what to do if I never see you again for weeks! I c-care
+so much--for--you."
+
+She shrank back in her chair, and in her altered face he read that he had
+disgraced himself.
+
+"I knew I was going to," he said in despair. "I couldn't keep it--I
+couldn't stop it. And now that you see what sort of a man I am I'm going
+to tell you more."
+
+"You need not," she said faintly.
+
+"I must. Listen! I--I don't even know your full name--all I know is that
+it is Betty, and that your cat's name is Clarence and your plumber's name
+is Quinn. But if I didn't know anything at all concerning you it would
+have been the same. I suppose you will think me insane if I tell you that
+before the car, on which you rode, came into sight I _knew_ you were on
+it. And I--cared--for--you--before I ever saw you."
+
+"I don't understand----"
+
+"I know you don't. _I_ don't. All I understand is that what you and I
+have done has been done by us before, sometime, somewhere--part only--
+down to--down to where you changed cars. Up to that moment, before you
+took the Lexington Avenue car, I recognized each incident as it
+occurred.... But when all this happened to us before I must have lost
+courage--for I did not recognize anything after that except that I cared
+for you.... _Do_ you understand one single word of what I have been
+saying?"
+
+The burning color in her face had faded slowly while he was speaking; her
+lifted eyes grew softer, serious, as he ended impetuously.
+
+She looked at him in retrospective silence. There was no mistaking his
+astonishing sincerity, his painfully earnest endeavor to impart to her
+some rather unusual ideas in which he certainly believed. No man who
+looked that way at a woman could mean impertinence; her own intelligence
+satisfied her that he had not meant and could never mean offense to any
+woman.
+
+"Tell me," she said quietly, "just what you mean. It is not possible for
+you to--care--for--me.... Is it?"
+
+He disclosed to her, beginning briefly with his own name, material and
+social circumstances, a pocket edition of his hitherto uneventful career,
+the advent that morning of the emissary from The Green Mouse, his
+discussion with Smith, the strange sensation which crept over him as he
+emerged from the tunnel at Forty-second Street, his subsequent
+altercation with Smith, and the events that ensued up to the eruption of
+Clarence.
+
+He spoke in his most careful attorney's manner, frank, concise,
+convincing, free from any exaggeration of excitement or emotion. And she
+listened, alternately fascinated and appalled as, step by step, his story
+unfolded the links in an apparently inexorable sequence involving this
+young man and herself in a predestined string of episodes not yet ended--
+if she permitted herself to credit this astounding story.
+
+Sensitively intelligent, there was no escaping the significance of the
+only possible deduction. She drew it and blushed furiously. For a moment,
+as the truth clamored in her brain, the self-evidence of it stunned her.
+But she was young, and the shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous,
+almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lips
+parted in outraged protest--parted and remained so, wordless, silent--the
+soundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had imperceptibly
+begun to tremble.
+
+Her head sank slowly; she laid her white hands above the roses heaped in
+her lap.
+
+For a long while she remained so. And he did not speak.
+
+First the butler went away. Then Mr. Quinn followed. The maid had not yet
+arrived. The house was very still.
+
+And after the silence had worn his self-control to the breaking point he
+rose and walked to the dining room and stood looking down into the yard.
+The grass out there was long and unkempt; roses bloomed on the fence;
+wistaria, in its deeper green of midsummer, ran riot over the trellis
+where Clarence had basely dodged his lovely mistress, and, after making a
+furry pin wheel of himself, had fled through the airhole into Stygian
+depths.
+
+Somewhere above, in the silent house, Clarence was sulkily dissembling.
+
+"I suppose," said Brown, quietly coming back to where the girl was
+sitting in the golden dusk, "that I might as well find Clarence while we
+are waiting for your maid. May I go up and look about?"
+
+And taking her silence as assent, he started upstairs.
+
+He hunted carefully, thoroughly, opening doors, peeping under furniture,
+investigating clothespresses, listening at intervals, at intervals
+calling with misleading mildness. But, like him who died in malmsey,
+Clarence remained perjured and false to all sentiments of decency so
+often protested purringly to his fair young mistress.
+
+Mechanically Brown opened doors of closets, knowing, if he had stopped to
+think, that cats don't usually turn knobs and let themselves into tightly
+closed places.
+
+In one big closet on the fifth floor, however, as soon as he opened the
+door there came a rustle, and he sprang forward to intercept the
+perfidious one; but it was only the air stirring the folds of garments
+hanging on the wall.
+
+As he turned to step forth again the door gently closed with an ominous
+click, shutting him inside. And after five minutes' frantic fussing he
+realized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strange
+house, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, who might, at
+any moment now that the telephone was in order, call a cab and flee from
+a man who had tried to explain to her that they were irrevocably
+predestined for one another.
+
+Calling and knocking were dignified and permissible, but they did no
+good. To kick violently at the door was not dignified, but he was obliged
+to do it. Evidently the closet was too remote for the sound to penetrate
+down four flights of stairs.
+
+He tried to break down the door--they do it in all novels. He only
+rebounded painfully, ineffectively, which served him right for reading
+fiction.
+
+It irked him to shout; he hesitated for a long while; then sudden
+misgiving lest she might flee the house seized him and he bellowed. It
+was no use.
+
+The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruising
+himself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes and
+textures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder and
+madder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence of
+which he had never dreamed himself capable.
+
+Then he sat down. He remained perfectly still for a long while, listening
+and delicately feeling his hurts. A curious drowsiness began to irritate
+him; later the irritation subsided and he felt a little sleepy.
+
+His heart, however, thumped like an inexpensive clock; the cedar-tainted
+air in the closet grew heavier; he felt stupid, swaying as he rose. No
+wonder, for the closet was as near air-tight as it could be made.
+Fortunately he did not realize it.
+
+And, meanwhile, downstairs, Betty was preparing for flight.
+
+She did not know where she was going--how far away she could get in a
+rose-silk morning gown. But she had discovered, in a clothespress, an
+automobile duster, cap, and goggles; on the strength of these she tried
+the telephone, found it working, summoned a coupé, and was now awaiting
+its advent. But the maid from Dooley's must first arrive to take charge
+of the house and Clarence until she, Betty, could summon her family to
+her assistance and defy The Green Mouse, Beekman Brown, and Destiny
+behind her mother's skirts.
+
+Flight was, therefore, imperative--it was absolutely indispensable that
+she put a number of miles between herself and this young man who had just
+informed her that Fate had designed them for one another.
+
+She was no longer considering whether she owed this amazing young man any
+gratitude, or what sort of a man he might be, agreeable, well-bred,
+attractive; all she understood was that this man had suddenly stepped
+into her life, politely expressing his conviction that they could not,
+ultimately, hope to escape from each other. And, beginning to realize the
+awful import of his words, the only thing that restrained her from
+instant flight on foot was the hidden Clarence. She could not abandon her
+cat. She must wait for that maid. She waited. Meanwhile she hunted up
+Dooley's Agency in the telephone book and called them up. They told her
+the maid was on the way--as though Dooley's Agency could thwart Destiny
+with a whole regiment of its employees!
+
+She had discarded her roses with a shudder; cap, goggles, duster, lay in
+her lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she'd flee. If Brown came
+back before the maid arrived she'd tell him plainly what she had decided
+on, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering the
+incredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline to
+encourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her.
+
+At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independent
+affair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series of
+beats which annoyed her.
+
+"It is true," she admitted to herself, "that he is a gentleman, and I can
+scarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave him
+without any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I must
+remember that."
+
+Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularly
+as she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and a
+pencil, and wrote rapidly:
+
+"_Dear Mr. Brown:_
+
+"If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can't help it. The maid
+will stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of the
+family. I don't mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you told
+me about our--about what you told me.... I'm sorry you tore your clothes.
+
+"Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or your
+conduct, which was perfectly ('charming' scratched out) proper. It is
+only that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to ('marry'
+scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and a
+new line begun).
+
+"It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choice
+in life left her--to be forced, by what you say are occult currents,
+into--friendship--with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So I
+don't think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to present
+us to each other. This doesn't sound right, but you will surely
+understand.
+
+"Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, and
+childish--but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you are
+perfectly nice--but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifying
+to me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will--won't
+you?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see you
+again.
+
+"So I am only going to thank you, and say ('with all my heart' crossed
+out) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous and
+considerate--most--most----"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of Beekman
+Brown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy and
+looked at her.
+
+She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mind
+evoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on the
+back of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded.
+
+What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him for
+many minutes now. Why was he so still?
+
+She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder,
+listening.
+
+Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs.
+
+Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? Had
+Clarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can't annihilate
+big, strong young men. But _where_ was he? Had he, pursuing his quest,
+emerged through the scuttle on to the roof--and--and--fallen off?
+
+Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor,
+listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, opening
+doors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searching
+more quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quite
+steady. There was no reply.
+
+Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking up
+her rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously.
+
+A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet at
+hand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of the
+cedar press and tore it wide open.
+
+He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolled rugs, clothes hangers and
+furs, quite motionless.
+
+She knew enough to run into the servants' rooms, fling open the windows
+and, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youth
+across the floor and into the fresh air.
+
+"O-h!" she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she
+took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency,
+performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise
+which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.
+
+It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he
+made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became
+articulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. He
+opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that
+were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the
+floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear
+of death, looked back, breathless, trembling.
+
+"That is a devil of a place, that closet," he said faintly.
+
+She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed,
+being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips--felt his lips on
+them.
+
+Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the
+heart, stilling it--silencing pulse and breath--nay, thought itself. She
+heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:
+
+"I cared for you. You give me life--and I adore you.... Let me. It will
+not harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; but
+unless some day you will prove it for me--Betty--the problem of life is
+but a sorry sum--a total of ciphers without end.... No other two people
+in all the world could be what we are and what we have been to each
+other. No other two people could dare to face what we dare face." He
+paused: "Dare we, Betty?"
+
+Her eyes turned from his. He rose unsteadily, supported on one arm; she
+sprang to her feet, looked at him, and, as he made an awkward effort to
+rise, suddenly bent forward and gave him both hands in aid.
+
+"Wait--wait!" she said; "let me try to think, if I can. Don't speak to me
+again--not yet--not now."
+
+But, at intervals, as they descended the flights of stairs, she turned
+instinctively to watch his progress, for he still moved with difficulty.
+
+In the drawing-room they halted, he leaning heavily on the back of a
+chair, she, distrait, restless, pacing the polished parquet, treading her
+roses under foot, turning from time to time to look at him--a strange,
+direct, pure-lidded gaze that seemed to freshen his very soul.
+
+Once he stooped and picked up one of the trodden roses bruised by her
+slim foot; once, as she passed him, pacing absently the space between the
+door and him, he spoke her name.
+
+But: "Wait!" she breathed. "You have said everything. It is for me to
+reply--if I speak at all. C-can't you wait for--me?"
+
+"Have I angered you?"
+
+She halted, head high, superb in her slim, young beauty.
+
+"Do I look it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Nor I. Let me find out."
+
+The room had become dimmer; the light on her hair and face and hands
+glimmered dully as she passed and re-passed him in her restless progress--
+restless, dismayed, frightened progress toward a goal she already saw
+ahead--close ahead of her--every time she turned to look at him. She
+already knew the end.
+
+_That_ man! And she knew that already he must be, for her, something that
+she could never again forget--something she must reckon with forever and
+ever while life endured.
+
+She paused and inspected him almost insolently. Suddenly the rush of the
+last revolt overwhelmed her; her eyes blazed, her white hands tightened
+into two small clenched fists--and then tumult died in her ringing ears,
+the brightness of the eyes was quenched, her hands relaxed, her head sank
+low, lower, never again to look on this man undismayed, heart free,
+unafraid--never again to look into this man's eyes with the unthinking,
+unbelieving tranquillity born of the most harmless skepticism in the
+world.
+
+She stood there in silence, heard his step beside her, raised her head
+with an effort.
+
+"Betty!"
+
+Her hands quivered, refusing surrender. He bent and lifted them, pressing
+them to his eyes, his forehead. Then lowered them to the level of his
+lips, holding them suspended, eyes looking into hers, waiting.
+
+Suddenly her eyes closed, a convulsive little tremor swept her, she
+pressed both clasped hands against his lips, her own moved, but no words
+came--only a long, sweet, soundless sigh, soft as the breeze that stirs
+the crimson maple buds when the snows of spring at last begin to melt.
+
+From a dark corner under the piano Clarence watched them furtively.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+SYBILLA
+
+
+_Showing What Comes of Disobedience, Rosium, and Flour-Paste_
+
+About noon Bushwyck Carr bounced into the gymnasium, where the triplets
+had just finished their fencing lesson.
+
+"Did any of you three go into the laboratory this morning?" he demanded,
+his voice terminating in a sort of musical bellow, like the blast of a
+mellow French horn on a touring car.
+
+The triplets--Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla--all clothed precisely
+alike in knee kilts, plastrons, gauntlets and masks, came to attention,
+saluting their parent with their foils. The Boznovian fencing mistress,
+Madame Tzinglala, gracefully withdrew to the dressing room and departed.
+
+"Which of you three girls went into the laboratory this morning?"
+repeated their father impatiently.
+
+The triplets continued to stand in a neat row, the buttons of their foils
+aligned and resting on the hardwood floor. In graceful unison they
+removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded
+the author of their being attentively--more attentively still when that
+round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his
+monocle into an angry left eye and glared.
+
+"Didn't I warn you to keep out of that laboratory?" he asked wrathfully;
+"didn't I explain to you that it was none of your business? I believe I
+informed you that whatever is locked up in that room is no concern of
+yours. Didn't I?"
+
+"Yes, Pa-_pah_."
+
+"Well, confound it, what did you go in for, then?"
+
+An anxious silence was his answer. "You didn't all go in, did you?" he
+demanded in a melodious bellow.
+
+"Oh, no, Pa-_pah!_"
+
+"Did two of you go?"
+
+"Oh-h, n-o, Pa-_pah!_"
+
+"Well, which one did?"
+
+The line of beauty wavered for a moment; then Sybilla stepped slowly to
+the front, three paces, and halted with downcast eyes.
+
+"I told you not to, didn't I?" said her father, scowling the monocle out
+of his eye and reinserting it.
+
+"Y-yes, Pa-_pah_."
+
+"But you _did?_"
+
+"Y-yes----"
+
+"That will do! Flavilla! Drusilla! You are excused," dismissing the two
+guiltless triplets with a wave of the terrible eyeglass; and when they
+had faced to the rear and retired in good order, closing the door behind
+them, he regarded his delinquent daughter in wrathy and rubicund dismay.
+
+"What did you see in that laboratory?" he demanded.
+
+Sybilla began to count on her fingers. "As I walked around the room I
+noticed jars, bottles, tubes, lamps, retorts, blowpipes, batteries----"
+
+"Did you notice a small, shiny machine that somewhat resembles the
+interior economy of a watch?"
+
+"Yes, Pa-_pah_, but I haven't come to that yet----"
+
+"Did you go near it?"
+
+"Quite near----"
+
+"You didn't touch it, did you?"
+
+"I was going to tell you----"
+
+"_Did_ you?" he bellowed musically. "Answer me, Sybilla!"
+
+"Y-yes--I did."
+
+"What did you suppose it to be?"
+
+"I thought--we all thought--that you kept a wireless telephone instrument
+in there----"
+
+"Why? Just because I happen to be president of the Amalgamated Wireless
+Trust Company?"
+
+"Yes. And we were dying to see a wireless telephone work.... I thought
+I'd like to call up Central--just to be sure I could make the thing go--
+_What_ is the matter, Pa-_pah?_"
+
+He dropped into a wadded armchair and motioned Sybilla to a seat
+opposite. Then with another frightful facial contortion he reimbedded the
+monocle.
+
+"So you deliberately opened that door and went in to rummage?"
+
+"No," said the girl; "we were--skylarking a little, on our way to the
+gymnasium; and I gave Brasilia a little shove toward the laboratory door,
+and then Flavilla pushed me--very gently--and somehow I--the door flew
+open and my mask fell off and rolled inside; and I went in after it. That
+is how it happened--partly."
+
+She lifted her dark and very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then
+they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the
+polished floor with the point of her foil. "That is partly how," she
+repeated.
+
+"What is the other part?"
+
+"The other part was that, having unfortunately disobeyed you, and being
+already in the room, I thought I might as well stay and take a little
+peep around----"
+
+Her father fairly bounced in his padded chair. The velvet-eyed descendant
+of Eve shot a fearful glance at him and continued, still casually tracing
+invisible arabesques with her foil's point.
+
+"You see, don't you," she said, "that being actually _in_, I thought I
+might as well do something before I came out again, which would make my
+disobedience worth the punishment. So I first picked up my mask, then I
+took a scared peep around. There were only jars and bottles and
+things.... I was dreadfully disappointed. The certainty of being punished
+and then, after all, seeing nothing but bottles, _did_ seem rather
+unfair.... So I--walked around to--to see if I could find something to
+look at which would repay me for the punishment.... There is a proverb,
+isn't there Pa-_pah?_--something about being executed for a lamb----"
+
+"Go on!" he said sharply.
+
+"Well, all I could find that looked as though I had no business to touch
+it was a little jeweled machine----"
+
+"_That_ was it! Did you touch it?"
+
+"Yes, several times. Was it a wireless?"
+
+"Never mind! Yes, it's one kind of a wireless instrument. Go on!"
+
+Sybilla shook her head:
+
+"I'm sure I don't see why you are so disturbingly emphatic; because I
+haven't an idea how to send or receive a wireless message, and I hadn't
+the vaguest notion how that machine might work. I tried very hard to make
+it go; I turned several screws and pushed all the push-buttons----"
+
+Mr. Carr emitted a hollow, despairing sound--a sort of musical groan--and
+feebly plucked at space.
+
+"I tried every lever, screw, and spring," she went on calmly, "but the
+machine must have been out of order, for I only got one miserable little
+spark----"
+
+"You got a _spark?_"
+
+"Yes--just a tiny, noiseless atom of white fire----"
+
+Her father bounced to his feet and waved both hands at her distractedly.
+
+"Do you know what you've done?" he bellowed.
+
+"N-no----"
+
+"Well, you've prepared yourself to fall in love! And you've probably
+induced some indescribable pup to fall in love with you! And _that's_
+what you've done!"
+
+"In--_love!_"
+
+"Yes, you have!"
+
+"But how can a common wireless telephone----"
+
+"It's another kind of a wireless. Your brother-in-law, William Destyn,
+invented it; I'm backing it and experimenting with it. I told you to keep
+out of that room. I hung up a sign on the door: _'Danger! Keep out!'_"
+
+"W-was that thing loaded?"
+
+"Yes, it _was_ loaded!"
+
+"W-what with?"
+
+"Waves!" shouted her father, furiously. "Psychic waves! You little ninny,
+we've just discovered that the world and everything in it is enveloped in
+psychic waves, as well as invisible electric currents. The minute you got
+near that machine and opened the receiver, waves from your subconscious
+personality flowed into it. And the minute you touched that spring and
+got a spark, your psychic waves had signaled, by wireless, the
+subconscious personality of some young man--some insufferable pup--who'll
+come from wherever he is at present--from the world's end if need be--and
+fall in love with you."
+
+Mr. Carr jumped ponderously up and down in pure fury; his daughter
+regarded him in calm consternation.
+
+"I am so very, very sorry," she said; "but I am quite certain that I am
+not going to fall in love----"
+
+"You can't help it," roared her father, "if that instrument worked."
+
+"Is--is that what it's f-for?"
+
+"That's what it's invented for; that's why I'm putting a million into it.
+Anybody on earth desiring to meet the person with whom they're destined,
+some time or other, to fall in love, can come to us, in confidence, buy a
+ticket, and be hitched on to the proper psychic connection which insures
+speedy courtship and marriage--Damnation!"
+
+"Pa-_pah!_"
+
+"I can't help it! Any self-respecting, God-fearing father would swear! Do
+you think I ever expected to have my daughters mixed up with this
+machine? My daughters wooed, engaged and married by _machinery!_ And
+you're only eighteen; do you hear me? I won't have it! I'll certainly not
+have it!"
+
+"But, dear, I don't in the least intend to fall in love and marry at
+eighteen. And if--_he_--really--comes, I'll tell him very frankly that I
+could not think of falling in love. I'll quietly explain that the machine
+went off by mistake and that I am only eighteen; and that Flavilla and
+Drusilla and I are not to come out until next winter. That," she added
+innocently, "ought to hold him."
+
+"The thing to do," said her father, gazing fixedly at her, "is to keep
+you in your room until you're twenty!"
+
+"Oh, Pa-_pah!_"
+
+Mr. Carr smote his florid brow.
+
+"You'll stay in for a week, anyway!" he thundered mellifluously. "No
+motoring party for you! That's your punishment. You'll be safe for today,
+anyhow; and by evening William Destyn will be back from Boston and I'll
+consult him as to the safest way to keep you out of the path of this
+whippersnapper you have managed to wake up--evoke--stir out of space--
+wherever he may be--whoever he may be--whatever he chances to call
+himself----"
+
+"George," she murmured involuntarily.
+
+"_What!!_"
+
+She looked at her father, abashed, confused.
+
+"How absurd of me," she said. "I don't know why I should have thought of
+that name, George; or why I should have said it out loud--that way--I
+really don't----"
+
+"Who do you know named George?"
+
+"N-nobody in particular that I can think of----"
+
+"Sybilla! Be honest!"
+
+"Really, I don't; I am always honest."
+
+He knew she was truthful, always; but he said:
+
+"Then why the devil did you look--er--so, so moonily at me and call me
+George?"
+
+"I can't imagine--I can't understand----"
+
+"Well, _I_ can! You don't realize it, but that cub's name must be George!
+I'll look out for the Georges. I'm glad I've been warned. I'll see that
+no two-legged object named George enters this house! You'll never go
+anywhere where there's anybody named George if I can prevent it."
+
+"I--I don't want to," she returned, almost ready to cry. "You are very
+cruel to me----"
+
+"I wish to be. I desire to be a monster!" he retorted fiercely. "You're
+an exceedingly bad, ungrateful, undutiful, disobedient and foolish child.
+Your sisters and I are going to motor to Westchester and lunch there with
+your sister and your latest brother-in-law. And if they ask why you
+didn't come I'll tell them that it's because you're undutiful, and that
+you are not to stir outdoors for a week, or see anybody who comes into
+this house!"
+
+"I--I suppose I d-deserve it," she acquiesced tearfully. "I'm quite ready
+to be disciplined, and quite willing not to see anybody named George--
+ever! Besides, you have scared me d-dreadfully! I--I don't want to go out
+of the house."
+
+And when her father had retired with a bounce she remained alone in the
+gymnasium, eyes downcast, lips quivering. Later still, sitting in
+precisely the same position, she heard the soft whir of the touring car
+outside; then the click of the closing door.
+
+"There they go," she said to herself, "and they'll have such a jolly
+time, and all those very agreeable Westchester young men will be there--
+particularly Mr. Montmorency.... I _did_ like him awfully; besides, his
+name is Julian, so it is p-perfectly safe to like him--and I _did_ want
+to see how Sacharissa looks after her bridal trip."
+
+Her lower lip trembled; she steadied it between her teeth, gazed
+miserably at the floor, and beat a desolate tattoo on it with the tip of
+her foil.
+
+"I am being well paid for my disobedience," she whimpered. "Now I can't
+go out for a week; and it's April; and when I do go out I'll be so
+anxious all the while, peeping furtively at every man who passes and
+wondering whether his name might be George.... And it is going to be
+horridly awkward, too.... Fancy their bringing up some harmless dancing
+man named George to present to me next winter, and I, terrified, picking
+up my débutante skirts and running.... I'll actually be obliged to flee
+from every man until I know his name isn't George. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
+What an awful outlook for this summer when we open the house at Oyster
+Bay! What a terrible vista for next winter!"
+
+She naïvely dabbed a tear from her long lashes with the back of her
+gauntlet.
+
+Her maid came, announcing luncheon, but she would have none of it, nor
+any other offered office, including a bath and a house gown.
+
+"You go away somewhere, Bowles," she said, "and please, don't come near
+me, and don't let anybody come anywhere in my distant vicinity, because I
+am v-very unhappy, Bowles, and deserve to be--and I--I desire to be alone
+with c-conscience."
+
+"But, Miss Sybilla----"
+
+"No, no, no! I don't even wish to hear your voice--or anybody's. I don't
+wish to hear a single human sound of any description. I--_what_ is that
+scraping noise in the library?"
+
+"A man, Miss Sybilla----"
+
+"A _man!_ W-what's his name?"
+
+"I don't know, miss. He's a workman--a paper hanger."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Did you wish me to ask him to stop scraping, miss?"
+
+Sybilla laughed: "No, thank you." And she continued, amused at herself
+after her maid had withdrawn, strolling about the gymnasium, making
+passes with her foil at ring, bar, and punching bag. Her anxiety, too,
+was subsiding. The young have no very great capacity for continued
+anxiety. Besides, the first healthy hint of incredulity was already
+creeping in. And as she strolled about, swishing her foil, she mused
+aloud at her ease:
+
+"What an extraordinary and horrid machine!... _How_ can it do such
+exceedingly common things? And what a perfectly unpleasant way to fall in
+love--by machinery!... I had rather not know who I am some day to--to
+like--very much.... It is far more interesting to meet a man by accident,
+and never suspect you may ever come to care for him, than to buy a
+ticket, walk over to a machine full of psychic waves and ring up some
+strange man somewhere on earth."
+
+With a shudder of disdain she dropped on to a lounge and took her face
+between both hands.
+
+She was like her sisters, tall, prettily built, and articulated, with the
+same narrow feet and hands--always graceful when lounging, no matter what
+position her slim limbs fell into.
+
+And now, in her fencing skirts of black and her black stockings, she was
+exceedingly ornamental, with the severe lines of the plastron accenting
+the white throat and chin, and the scarlet heart blazing over her own
+little heart--unvexed by such details as love and lovers. Yes, unvexed;
+for she had about come to the conclusion that her father had frightened
+her more than was necessary; that the instrument had not really done its
+worst; in fact, that, although she had been very disobedient, she had had
+a rather narrow escape; and nothing more serious than paternal
+displeasure was likely to be visited upon her.
+
+Which comforted her to an extent that brought a return of appetite; and
+she rang for luncheon, and ate it with the healthy nonchalance usually so
+characteristic of her and her sisters.
+
+"Now," she reflected, "I'll have to wait an hour for my bath"--one of the
+inculcated principles of domestic hygiene. So, rising, she strolled
+across the gymnasium, casting about for something interesting to do.
+
+She looked out of the back windows. In New York the view from back
+windows is not imposing.
+
+Tiring of the inartistic prospect she sauntered out and downstairs to see
+what her maid might be about. Bowles was sewing; Sybilla looked on for a
+while with languid interest, then, realizing that a long day of
+punishment was before her, that she deserved it, and that she ought to
+perform some act of penance, started contritely for the library with
+resolute intentions toward Henry James.
+
+As she entered she noticed that the bookshelves, reaching part way to the
+ceiling, were shrouded in sheets. Also she encountered a pair of
+sawhorses overlaid with boards, upon which were rolls of green flock
+paper, several pairs of shears, a bucket of paste, a large, flat brush, a
+knife and a T-square.
+
+"The paper hanger man," she said. "He's gone to lunch. I'll have time to
+seize on Henry James and flee."
+
+Now Henry James, like some other sacred conventions, was, in that
+library, a movable feast. Sometimes he stood neatly arranged on one
+shelf, sometimes on another. There was no counting on Henry.
+
+Sybilla lifted the sheets from the face of one case and peered closer.
+Henry was not visible. She lifted the sheets from another case; no Henry;
+only G.P.R., in six dozen rakish volumes.
+
+Sybilla peeped into a third case. Then a very unedifying thing occurred.
+Surely, surely, this was Sybilla's disobedient day. She saw a forbidden
+book glimmering in old, gilded leather--she saw its classic back turned
+mockingly toward her--the whole allure of the volume was impudent, dog-
+eared, devil-may-care-who-reads-me.
+
+She took it out, replaced it, looked hard, hard for Henry, found him not,
+glanced sideways at the dog-eared one, took a step sideways.
+
+"I'll just see where it was printed," she said to herself, drawing out
+the book and backing off hastily--so hastily that she came into collision
+with the sawhorse table, and the paste splashed out of the bucket.
+
+But Sybilla paid no heed; she was examining the title page of old Dog-
+ear: a rather wonderful title page, printed in fascinating red and black
+with flourishes.
+
+"I'll just see whether--" And the smooth, white fingers hesitated; but
+she had caught a glimpse of an ancient engraving on the next page--a very
+quaint one, that held her fascinated.
+
+"I wonder----"
+
+She turned the next page. The first paragraph of the famous classic began
+deliciously. After a few moments she laughed, adding to herself: "I can't
+see what harm----"
+
+There was no harm. Her father had meant another book; but Sybilla did not
+know that.
+
+"I'll just glance through it to--to--be sure that I mustn't read it."
+
+She laid one hand on the paper hanger's table, vaulted up sideways, and,
+seated on the top, legs swinging, buried herself in the book, unconscious
+that the overturned paste was slowly fastening her to the spattered table
+top.
+
+An hour later, hearing steps on the landing, she sprang--that is, she
+went through all the graceful motions of springing lightly to the floor.
+But she had not budged an inch. No Gorgon's head could have consigned her
+to immovability more hopeless.
+
+Restrained from freedom by she knew not what, she made one frantic and
+demoralized effort--and sank back in terror at the ominous tearing sound.
+
+She was glued irrevocably to the table.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+THE CROWN PRINCE
+
+
+_Wherein the Green Mouse Squeaks_
+
+A few minutes later the paper hanging young man entered, swinging an
+empty dinner pail and halted in polite surprise before a flushed young
+girl in full fencing costume, who sat on his operating table, feet
+crossed, convulsively hugging a book to the scarlet heart embroidered on
+her plastron.
+
+"I--hope you don't mind my sitting here," she managed to say. "I wanted
+to watch the work."
+
+"By all means," he said pleasantly. "Let me get you a chair----"
+
+"No, thank you. I had rather sit th-this way. Please begin and don't mind
+if I watch you."
+
+The young man appeared to be perplexed.
+
+"I'm afraid," he ventured, "that I may require that table for cutting
+and----"
+
+"Please--if you don't mind--begin to paste. I am in-intensely interested
+in p-pasting--I like to w-watch p-paper p-pasted on a w-wall."
+
+Her small teeth chattered in spite of her; she strove to control her
+voice--strove to collect her wits.
+
+He stood irresolute, rather astonished, too.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, "but----"
+
+"_Please_ paste; won't you?" she asked.
+
+"Why, I've got to have that table to paste on----"
+
+"Then d-don't think of pasting. D-do anything else; cut out some strips.
+I am so interested in watching p-paper hangers cut out things--"
+
+"But I need the table for that, too----"
+
+"No, you don't. You can't be a--a very skillful w-workman if you've got
+to use your table for everything----"
+
+[Illustration: "'I'm afraid', he ventured 'that I may require that table
+for cutting.'"]
+
+He laughed. "You are quite right; I'm not a skillful paper hanger."
+
+"Then," she said, "I am surprised that you came here to paper our
+library, and I think you had better go back to your shop and send a
+competent man."
+
+He laughed again. The paper hanger's youthful face was curiously
+attractive when he laughed--and otherwise, more or less.
+
+He said: "I came to paper this library because Mr. Carr was in a hurry,
+and I was the only man in the shop. I didn't want to come. But they made
+me.... I think they're rather afraid of Mr. Carr in the shop.... And this
+work _must_ be finished today."
+
+She did not know what to say; anything to keep him away from the table
+until she could think clearly.
+
+"W-why didn't you want to come?" she asked, fighting for time. "You said
+you didn't want to come, didn't you?"
+
+"Because," he said, smiling, "I don't like to hang wall paper."
+
+"But if you are a paper hanger by trade----"
+
+"I suppose you think me a real paper hanger?"
+
+She was cautiously endeavoring to free one edge of her skirt; she nodded
+absently, then subsided, crimsoning, as a faint tearing of cloth sounded.
+
+"Go on," she said hurriedly; "the story of your career is _so_
+interesting. You say you adore paper hanging----"
+
+"No, I don't," he returned, chagrined. "I say I hate it."
+
+"Why do you do it, then?"
+
+"Because my father thinks that every son of his who finishes college
+ought to be disciplined by learning a trade before he enters a
+profession. My oldest brother, De Courcy, learned to be a blacksmith; my
+next brother, Algernon, ran a bakery; and since I left Harvard I've been
+slapping sheets of paper on people's walls----"
+
+"Harvard?" she repeated, bewildered.
+
+"Yes; I was 1907."
+
+"_You!_"
+
+He looked down at his white overalls, smiling.
+
+"Does that astonish you, Miss Carr?--you are Miss Carr, I suppose----"
+
+"Sybilla--yes--we're--we're triplets," she stammered.
+
+"The beauti--the--the Carr triplets! And you are one of them?" he
+exclaimed, delighted.
+
+"Yes." Still bewildered, she sat there, looking at him. How
+extraordinary! How strange to find a Harvard man pasting paper! Dire
+misgivings flashed up within her.
+
+"Who are you?" she asked tremulously. "Would you mind telling me your
+name. It--it isn't--_George!_"
+
+He looked up in pleased surprise:
+
+"So you know who I am?"
+
+"N-no. But--it isn't George--is it?"
+
+"Why, yes----"
+
+"O-h!" she breathed. A sense of swimming faintness enveloped her: she
+swayed; but an unmistakable ripping noise brought her suddenly to
+herself.
+
+"I am afraid you are tearing your skirt somehow," he said anxiously. "Let
+me----"
+
+"No!"
+
+The desperation of the negative approached violence, and he involuntarily
+stepped back.
+
+For a moment they faced one another; the flush died out on her cheeks.
+
+"If," she said, "your name actually is George, this--this is the most--
+the most terrible punishment--" She closed her eyes with her fingers as
+though to shut out some monstrous vision.
+
+"What," asked the amazed young man, "has my name to do with----"
+
+Her hands dropped from her eyes; with horror she surveyed him, his paste-
+spattered overalls, his dingy white cap, his dinner pail.
+
+"I--I _won't_ marry you!" she stammered in white desperation. "I _won't!_
+If you're not a paper hanger you look like one! I don't care whether
+you're a Harvard man or not--whether you're playing at paper hanging or
+not--whether your name is George or not--I won't marry you--I won't! I
+_won't!_"
+
+With the feeling that his senses were rapidly evaporating the young man
+sat down dizzily, and passed a paste-spattered but well-shaped hand
+across his eyes.
+
+Sybilla set her lips and looked at him.
+
+"I don't suppose," she said, "that you understand what I am talking
+about, but I've got to tell you at once; I can't stand this sort of
+thing."
+
+"W-what sort of thing?" asked the young man, feebly.
+
+"Your being here in this house--with me----"
+
+"I'll be very glad to go----"
+
+"Wait! _That_ won't do any good! You'll come back!"
+
+"N-no, I won't----"
+
+"Yes, you will. Or I--I'll f-follow you----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"One or the other! We can't help it, I tell you. _You_ don't understand,
+but I do. And the moment I knew your name was George----"
+
+"What the deuce has that got to do with anything?" he demanded, turning
+red in spite of his amazement.
+
+"Waves!" she said passionately, "psychic waves! I--somehow--knew that
+he'd be named George----"
+
+"Who'd be named George?"
+
+"_He!_ The--man... And if I ever--if you ever expect me to--to c-care for
+a man all over overalls----"
+
+"But I don't--Good Heavens!--I don't expect you to care for--for
+overalls----"
+
+"Then why do you wear them?" she asked in tremulous indignation.
+
+The young man, galvanized, sprang from his chair and began running about,
+taking little, short, distracted steps. "Either," he said, "I need mental
+treatment immediately, or I'll wake up toward morning.... I--don't know
+what you're trying to say to me. I came here to--to p-paste----"
+
+"That machine sent you!" she said. "The minute I got a spark you
+started----"
+
+"Do you think I'm a motor? Spark! Do you think I----"
+
+"Yes, I do. You couldn't help it; I know it was my own fault, and this--
+_this_ is the dreadful punishment--g-glued to a t-table top--with a man
+named George----"
+
+"What!!!"
+
+"Yes," she said passionately, "everything disobedient I have done has
+brought lightning retribution. I was forbidden to go into the laboratory;
+I disobeyed and--you came to hang wall paper! I--I took a b-book--which I
+had no business to take, and F-fate glues me to your horrid table and
+holds me fast till a man named George comes in...."
+
+Flushed, trembling, excited, she made a quick and dramatic gesture of
+despair; and a ripping sound rent the silence.
+
+"_Are you pasted to that table?_" faltered the young man, aghast.
+
+"Yes, I am. And it's utterly impossible for you to aid me in the
+slightest, except by pretending to ignore it."
+
+"But you--you can't remain there!"
+
+"I can't help remaining here," she said hotly, "until you go."
+
+"Then I'd better----"
+
+"No! You shall _not_ go! I--I won't have you go away--disappear somewhere
+in the city. Certainty is dreadful enough, but it's better than the awful
+suspense of knowing you are somewhere in the world, and are sure to come
+back sometime----"
+
+"But I don't want to come back!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Why should I
+wish to come back? Have I said--acted--done--looked--_Why_ should you
+imagine that I have the slightest interest in anything or in--in--anybody
+in this house?"
+
+"Haven't you?"
+
+"No!... And I cannot ignore your--your amazing--and intensely
+f-flattering fear that I have d-designs--that I desire--in other words,
+that I--er--have dared to cherish impossible aspirations in connection
+with a futile and absurd hope that one day you might possibly be induced
+to listen to any tentative suggestion of mine concerning a matrimonial
+alliance----"
+
+He choked and turned a dull red.
+
+She reddened, too, but said calmly:
+
+"Thank you for putting it so nicely. But it is no use. Sooner or later
+you and I will be obliged to consider a situation too hopeless to admit
+of discussion."
+
+"What situation?"
+
+"Ours."
+
+"I can't see any situation--except your being glued--I _beg_ your
+pardon!--but I must speak truthfully."
+
+"So must I. Our case is too desperate for anything but plain and terrible
+truths. And the truths are these: _I_ touched the forbidden machine and
+got a spark; your name is George; _I'm_ glued here, unable to escape;
+_you_ are not rude enough to go when I ask you not to.... And now--here--
+in this room, you and I must face these facts and make up our minds....
+For I simply _must_ know what I am to expect; I can't endure--I couldn't
+live with this hanging over me----"
+
+"_What_ hanging over you?"
+
+He sprang to his feet, waving his dinner pail around in frantic circles:
+
+"What is it, in Heaven's name, that is hanging over you?"
+
+"Over _you_, too!"
+
+"Over me?"
+
+"Certainly. Over us both. We are headed straight for m-marriage."
+
+"T-to _each other?_"
+
+"Of course," she said faintly. "Do you think I'd care whom you are going
+to marry if it wasn't I? Do you think I'd discuss my own marital
+intentions with you if you did not happen to be vitally concerned?"
+
+"Do _you_ expect to marry _me?_" he gasped.
+
+"I--I don't _want_ to: but I've got to."
+
+He stood petrified for an instant, then with a wild look began to gather
+up his tools.
+
+She watched him with the sickening certainty that if he got away she
+could never survive the years of suspense until his inevitable return. A
+mad longing to get the worst over seized her. She knew the worst, knew
+what Fate held for her. And she desired to get it over--have the worst
+happen--and be left to live out the shattered remains of her life in
+solitude and peace.
+
+"If--if we've got to marry," she began unsteadily, "why not g-get it over
+quickly--and then I don't mind if you go away."
+
+She was quite mad: that was certain. He hastily flung some brushes into
+his tool kit, then straightened up and gazed at her with deep compassion.
+
+"Would you mind," she asked timidly, "getting somebody to come in and
+marry us, and then the worst will be over, you see, and we need never,
+never see each other again."
+
+He muttered something soothing and began tying up some rolls of wall
+paper.
+
+"Won't you do what I ask?" she said pitifully. "I-I am almost afraid
+that--if you go away without marrying me I could not live and endure
+the--the certainty of your return."
+
+He raised his head and surveyed her with deepest pity. Mad--quite mad!
+And so young--so exquisite... so perfectly charming in body! And the mind
+darkened forever.... How terrible! How strange, too; for in the pure-
+lidded eyes he seemed to see the soft light of reason not entirely
+quenched.
+
+Their eyes encountered, lingered; and the beauty of her gaze seemed to
+stir him to the very wellspring of compassion.
+
+"Would it make you any happier to believe--to know," he added hastily,
+"that you and I were married?"
+
+"Y-yes, I think so."
+
+"Would you be quite happy to believe it?"
+
+"Yes--if you call that happiness."
+
+"And you would not be unhappy if I never returned?"
+
+"Oh, no, no! I--that would make me--comparatively--happy!"
+
+"To be married to me, and to know you would never again see me?"
+
+"Yes. Will you?"
+
+"Yes," he said soothingly. And yet a curious little throb of pain
+flickered in his heart for a moment, that, mad as she undoubtedly was,
+she should be so happy to be rid of him forever.
+
+He came slowly across the room to the table on which she was sitting. She
+drew back instinctively, but an ominous ripping held her.
+
+"Are you going for a license and a--a clergyman?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, no," he said gently, "that is not necessary. All we have to do is to
+take each other's hands--so----"
+
+She shrank back.
+
+"You will have to let me take your hand," he explained.
+
+She hesitated, looked at him fearfully, then, crimson, laid her slim
+fingers in his.
+
+The contact sent a quiver straight through him; he squared his shoulders
+and looked at her.... Very, very far away it seemed as though he heard
+his heart awaking heavily.
+
+What an uncanny situation! Strange--strange--his standing here to humor
+the mad whim of this stricken maid--this wonderfully sweet young
+stranger, looking out of eyes so lovely that he almost believed the dead
+intelligence behind them was quickening into life again.
+
+"What must we do to be married?" she whispered.
+
+"Say so; that is all," he answered gently. "Do you take me for your
+husband?"
+
+"Yes.... Do you t-take me for your--wife?"
+
+"Yes, dear----"
+
+"Don't say _that_!... Is it--over?"
+
+"All over," he said, forcing a gayety that rang hollow in the pathos of
+the mockery and farce.... But he smiled to be kind to her; and, to make
+the poor, clouded mind a little happier still, he took her hand again and
+said very gently:
+
+"Will it surprise you to know that you are now a princess?"
+
+"A--_what?_" she asked sharply.
+
+"A princess." He smiled benignly on her, and, still beaming, struck a not
+ungraceful attitude.
+
+"I," he said, "am the Crown Prince of Rumtifoo."
+
+She stared at him without a word; gradually he lost countenance; a vague
+misgiving stirred within him that he had rather overdone the thing.
+
+"Of course," he began cheerfully, "I am an exile in disguise--er--
+disinherited and all that, you know."
+
+She continued to stare at him.
+
+"Matters of state--er--revolution--and that sort of thing," he mumbled,
+eying her; "but I thought it might gratify you to know that I am Prince
+George of Rumtifoo----"
+
+"_What!_"
+
+The silence was deadly.
+
+"Do you know," she said deliberately, "that I believe you think I am
+mentally unsound. _Do_ you?"
+
+"I--you--" he began to stutter fearfully.
+
+"_Do_ you?"
+
+"W-well, either you or I----"
+
+"Nonsense! I _thought_ that marriage ceremony was a miserably inadequate
+affair!... And I am hurt--grieved--amazed that you should do such a--a
+cowardly----"
+
+"What!" he exclaimed, stung to the quick.
+
+"Yes, it is cowardly to deceive a woman."
+
+"I meant it kindly--supposing----"
+
+"That I am mentally unsound? Why do you suppose that?"
+
+"Because--Good Heavens--because in this century, and in this city, people
+who never before saw one another don't begin to talk of marrying----"
+
+"I explained to you"--she was half crying now, and her voice broke
+deliciously--"I told you what I'd done, didn't I?"
+
+"You said you had got a spark," he admitted, utterly bewildered by her
+tears. "Don't cry--please don't. Something is all wrong here--there is
+some terrible misunderstanding. If you will only explain it to me----"
+
+She dried her eyes mechanically: "Come here," she said. "I don't believe
+I did explain it clearly."
+
+And, very carefully, very minutely, she began to tell him about the
+psychic waves, and the instrument, and the new company formed to exploit
+it on a commercial basis.
+
+She told him what had happened that morning to her; how her disobedience
+had cost her so much misery. She informed him about her father, and that
+florid and rotund gentleman's choleric character.
+
+"If you are here when I tell him I'm married," she said, "he will
+probably frighten you to death; and that's one of the reasons why I wish
+to get it over and get you safely away before he returns. As for me, now
+that I know the worst, I want to get the worst over and--and live out my
+life quietly somewhere.... So now you see why I am in such a hurry, don't
+you?"
+
+He nodded as though stunned, leaning there on the table, hands folded,
+head bent.
+
+"I am so very sorry--for you," she said. "I know how you must feel about
+it. But if we are obliged to marry some time had we not better get it
+over and then--never--see--one another----"
+
+He lifted his head, then stood upright.
+
+Her soft lips were mute, but the question still remained in her eyes.
+
+So, for a long while, they looked at each other; and the color under his
+cheekbones deepened, and the pink in her cheeks slowly became pinker.
+
+"Suppose," he said, under his breath, "that I--wish--to return--to you?"
+
+"_I_ do not wish it----"
+
+"Try."
+
+"Try to--to wish for----"
+
+"For my return. Try to wish that you also desire it. Will you?"
+
+"If you are going to--to talk that way--" she stammered.
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"Then--then----"
+
+"Is there any reason why I should not, if we are engaged?" he asked. "We
+_are_--engaged, are we not?"
+
+"Engaged?"
+
+"Yes. Are we?"
+
+"I--yes--if you call it----"
+
+"I do.... And we are to be--married?" He could scarcely now speak the
+word which but a few moments since he pronounced so easily; for a totally
+new significance attached itself to every word he uttered.
+
+"Are we?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then--if I--if I find that I----"
+
+"Don't say it," she whispered. She had turned quite white.
+
+"Will you listen----"
+
+"No. It--it isn't true--it cannot be."
+
+"It is coming truer every moment.... It is very, very true--even now....
+It is almost true.... And now it has come true. Sybilla!"
+
+White, dismayed, she gazed at him, her hands instinctively closing her
+ears. But she dropped them as he stepped forward.
+
+"I love you, Sybilla. I wish to marry you.... Will you try to care for
+me--a little----"
+
+"I couldn't--I can't even try----"
+
+"Dear----"
+
+He had her hands now; she twisted them free; he caught them again. Over
+their interlocked hands she bowed her head, breathless, cheeks aflame,
+seeking to cover her eyes.
+
+"Will you love me, Sybilla?"
+
+She struggled silently, desperately.
+
+"_Will_ you?"
+
+"No.... Let me go----"
+
+"Don't cry--please, dear--" His head, bowed beside hers over their
+clasped hands, was more than she could endure; but her upflung face,
+seeking escape, encountered his. There was a deep, indrawn breath, a sob,
+and she lay, crying her heart out, in his arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Darling!"
+
+"W-what?"
+
+It is curious how quickly one recognizes unfamiliar forms of address.
+
+"You won't cry any more, will you?" he whispered.
+
+"N-n-o," sighed Sybilla.
+
+"Because we _do_ love each other, don't we?"
+
+"Y-yes, George." Then, radiant, yet sweetly shamed, confident, yet
+fearful, she lifted her adorable head from his shoulder.
+
+"George," she said, "I am beginning to think that I'd like to get off
+this table."
+
+"You poor darling!"
+
+"And," she continued, "if you will go home and change your overalls for
+something more conventional, you shall come and dine with us this
+evening, and I will be waiting for you in the drawing-room.... And,
+George, although some of your troubles are now over----"
+
+"All of them, dearest!" he cried with enthusiasm.
+
+"No," she said tenderly, "you are yet to meet Pa-_pah_."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS
+
+
+_A Chapter Concerning Drusilla, Pa-pah and a Minion_
+
+Capital had now been furnished for The Green Mouse, Limited; a great
+central station of white marble was being built, facing Madison Avenue
+and occupying the entire block front between Eighty-second and Eighty-
+third streets.
+
+The building promised to be magnificent; the plans provided for a
+thousand private operating rooms, each beautifully furnished in Louis XVI
+style, a restaurant, a tea room, a marriage licence bureau, and an
+emergency chapel where first aid clergymen were to be always in
+attendance.
+
+In each of the thousand Louis XVI operating rooms a Destyn-Carr wireless
+instrument was to stand upon a rococo table. A maid to every two rooms, a
+physician to every ten, and smelling salts to each room, were provided
+for in this gigantic enterprise.
+
+Millions of circulars were being prepared to send broadcast over the
+United States. They read as follows:
+
+ARE YOU IN LOVE? IF NOT, WHY NOT?
+
+Wedlock by Wireless. Marriage by Machinery. A Wondrous Wooer Without
+Words! No more doubt; no more hesitation; no more uncertainty. The
+Destyn-Carr Wireless Apparatus does it all for you. Happy Marriage
+Guaranteed or money eagerly refunded!
+
+Psychical Science says that for every man and woman on earth there is a
+predestined mate!
+
+That mate can be discovered for you by The Green Mouse, Limited.
+
+Why waste time with costly courtship? Why frivol? Why fuss?
+
+There is only ONE mate created for YOU. You pay us; We find that ONE,
+thereby preventing mistakes, lawsuits, elopements, regrets, grouches,
+alimony.
+
+Divorce Absolutely Eliminated
+
+By Our Infallible Wireless Method
+
+Success Certain
+
+It is now known the world over that Professor William Augustus Destyn has
+discovered that the earth we live on is enveloped in Psychical Currents.
+By the Destyn-Carr instrument these currents may be tapped, controlled
+and used to communicate between two people of opposite sex whose
+subconscious and psychic personalities are predestined to affinity and
+amorous accord. In other words, when psychic waves from any individual
+are collected or telegraphed along these wireless psychical currents,
+only that one affinity attuned to receive them can properly respond.
+
+_We catch your psychic waves for you. We send them out into the world._
+
+WATCH THAT SPARK!
+
+When you see a tiny bluish-white spark tip the tentacle of the Destyn-
+Carr transmitter,
+
+THE WORLD IS YOURS!
+
+for $25.
+
+Our method is quick, painless, merciful and certain. Fee, twenty-five
+dollars in advance. Certified checks accepted.
+
+THE GREEN MOUSE, Limited.
+
+President              PROF. WM. AUGUSTUS DESTYN.
+Vice-Presidents        THE HON. KILLIAN VAN K. VANDERDYNK.
+                       THE HON. GEORGE GRAY, 3D.
+Treasurer              THE HON. BUSHWYCK CARR.
+
+These circulars were composed, illuminated and printed upon vellum by
+what was known as an "Art" community in West Borealis, N.J. Several tons
+were expected for delivery early in June.
+
+Meanwhile, the Carr family and its affiliations had invested every cent
+they possessed in Green Mouse, Limited; and those who controlled the
+stock were Bushwyck Carr; William Augustus Destyn and Mrs. Destyn, née
+Ethelinda Carr; Mr. Killian Van K. Vanderdynk and Mrs. Vanderdynk, née
+Sacharissa Carr; George Gray and Mrs. Gray, very lately Sybilla Carr; and
+the unmarried triplets, Flavilla and Drusilla Carr.
+
+Remembering with a shudder how Bell Telephone and Standard Oil might once
+have been bought for a song, Bushwyck Carr determined that in this case
+his pudgy fingers should not miss the forelock of Time and the divided
+skirts of Chance.
+
+Squinting at the viewless ether through his monocle he beheld millions in
+it; so did William Augustus Destyn and the other sons-in-law.
+
+Only the unmarried triplets, Flavilla and Drusilla, remained amiably
+indifferent in the midst of all these family financial scurryings and
+preparations to secure world patents in a monopoly which promised the
+social regeneration of the globe.
+
+The considerable independent fortunes that their mother had left them
+they invested in Green Mouse, at their father's suggestion; but further
+than that they took no part in the affair.
+
+For a while the hurry and bustle and secret family conferences mildly
+interested them. Very soon, however, the talk of psychic waves and
+millions bored them; and as soon as the villa at Oyster Bay was opened
+they were glad enough to go.
+
+Here, at Oyster Bay, there was some chance of escaping their money-mad
+and wave-intoxicated family; they could entertain and be entertained by
+both of the younger sets in that dignified summer resort; they could
+wander about their own vast estate alone; they could play tennis, sail,
+swim, ride, and drive their tandem.
+
+But best of all--for they were rather seriously inclined at the age of
+eighteen, or, rather, on the verge of nineteen--they adored sketching, in
+water colors, out of doors.
+
+Scrubby forelands set with cedars, shadow-flecked paths under the scrub
+oak, meadows where water glimmered, white sails off Center Island and
+Cooper's Bluff--Cooper's Bluff from the north, northeast, east,
+southeast, south--this they painted with never-tiring, Pecksniffian
+patience, boxing the compass around it as enthusiastically as that
+immortal architect circumnavigated Salisbury Cathedral.
+
+And one delicious morning in early June, when the dew sparkled on the
+poison ivy and the air was vibrant with the soft monotone of mosquitoes
+and the public road exhaled a delicate aroma of crude oil, Drusilla and
+Flavilla, laden with sketching-blocks, color-boxes, camp-stools, white
+umbrellas and bonbons, descended to the great hall, on sketching bent.
+
+Mr. Carr also stood there, just outside on the porch, red, explosive,
+determined legs planted wide apart, defying several courtly reporters,
+who for a month had patiently and politely appeared every hour to learn
+whether Mr. Carr had anything to say about the new invention, rumors of
+which were flying thick about Park Row.
+
+"No, I haven't!" he shouted in his mellow and sonorously musical bellow.
+"I have told you one hundred times that when I have anything to say I'll
+send for you. Now, permit me to inform you, for the hundred and first
+consecutive time, that I have nothing to say--which won't prevent you
+from coming back in an hour and standing in exactly the same ridiculous
+position you now occupy, and asking me exactly the same unmannerly
+questions, and taking the same impertinent snapshots at my house and my
+person!"
+
+He executed a ferocious facial contortion, clapped the monocle into his
+left eye, and squinted fiercely.
+
+"I'm getting tired of this!" he continued. "When I wake in the morning
+and look out of my window there are always anywhere from one to twenty
+reporters decorating my lawn! That young man over there is the worst and
+most persistent offender!"--scowling at a good-looking youth in white
+flannels, who immediately blushed distressingly. "Yes, you are, young
+man! I'm amazed that you have the decency to blush! Your insolent sheet,
+the Evening Star, refers to my Trust Company as a Green Mouse Trap and a
+_Mouse_leum. It also publishes preposterous pictures of myself and
+family. Dammit, sir, they even produce a photograph of Orlando, the
+family cat! You did it, I am told. Did you?"
+
+"I am trying to do what I can for my paper, Mr. Carr," said the young
+man. "The public is interested."
+
+Mr. Carr regarded him with peculiar hatred.
+
+"Come here," he said; "I _have_ got something to say to _you_."
+
+The young man cautiously left the ranks of his fellows and came up on the
+porch. Behind Mr. Carr, in the doorway, stood Drusilla and Flavilla. The
+young man tried not to see them; he pretended not to. But he flushed
+deeply.
+
+"I want to know," demanded Mr. Carr, "why the devil you are always around
+here blushing. You've been around here blushing for a month, and I want
+to know why you do it."
+
+The youth stood speechless, features afire to the tips of his glowing
+ears.
+
+"At first," continued Mr. Carr, mercilessly, "I had a vague hope that you
+might perhaps be blushing for shame at your profession; I heard that you
+were young at it, and I was inclined to be sorry for you. But I'm not
+sorry any more!"
+
+The young man remained crimson and dumb.
+
+"Confound it," resumed Mr. Carr, "I want to know why the deuce you come
+and blush all over my lawn. I won't stand it! I'll not allow anybody to
+come blushing around me----"
+
+Indignation choked him; he turned on his heel to enter the house and
+beheld Flavilla and Drusilla regarding him, wide-eyed.
+
+He went in, waving them away before him.
+
+"I've taught that young pup a lesson," he said with savage satisfaction.
+"I'll teach him to blush at me! I'll----"
+
+"But why," asked Drusilla, "are you so cruel to Mr. Yates? We like him."
+
+"Mr.--Mr. _Yates!_" repeated her father, astonished. "Is that his name?
+And who told _you?_"
+
+"He did," said Drusilla, innocently.
+
+"He--that infernal newspaper bantam----"
+
+"Pa-_pah!_ Please don't say that about Mr. Yates. He is really
+exceedingly kind and civil to us. Every time you go to town on business
+he comes and sketches with us at----"
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Carr, with the calm of deadly fury, "so he goes to
+Cooper's Bluff with you when I'm away, does he?"
+
+Flavilla said: "He doesn't exactly go with us; but he usually comes there
+to sketch. He makes sketches for his newspaper."
+
+"Does he?" asked her father, grinding his teeth.
+
+"Yes," said Drusilla; "and he sketches so beautifully. He made such
+perfectly charming drawings of Flavilla and of me, and he drew pictures
+of the house and gardens, and of all the servants, and"--she laughed--"I
+once caught a glimpse in his sketch-book of the funniest caricature of
+you----"
+
+The expression on her father's face was so misleading in its terrible
+calm that she laughed again, innocently.
+
+"It was not at all an offensive caricature, you know--really it was not a
+caricature at all--it was _you_--just the way you stand and look at
+people when you are--slightly--annoyed----"
+
+"Oh, he is so clever," chimed in Flavilla, "and is so perfectly well-bred
+and so delightful to us--to Drusilla particularly. He wrote the prettiest
+set of verses--To Drusilla in June--just dashed them off while he was
+watching her sketch Cooper's Bluff from the southwest----"
+
+"He is really quite wonderful," added Drusilla, sincerely, "and so
+generous and helpful when my drawing becomes weak and wobbly----"
+
+"Mr. Yates shows Drusilla how to hold her pencil," said Flavilla,
+becoming warmly earnest in her appreciation of this self-sacrificing
+young man. "He often lays aside his own sketching and guides Drusilla's
+hand while she holds the pencil----"
+
+"And when I'm tired," said Drusilla, "and the water colors get into a
+dreadful mess, Mr. Yates will drop his own work and come and talk to me
+about art--and other things----"
+
+"He is _so_ kind!" cried Flavilla in generous enthusiasm.
+
+"And _so_ vitally interesting," said Drusilla.
+
+"And so talented!" echoed Flavilla.
+
+"And so--" Drusilla glanced up, beheld something in the fixed stare of
+her parent that frightened her, and rose in confusion. "Have I said--
+done--anything?" she faltered.
+
+With an awful spasm Mr. Carr jerked his congested features into the
+ghastly semblance of a smile.
+
+"Not at all," he managed to say. "This is very interesting--what you tell
+me about this p-pu--this talented young man. Does he--does he seem--
+attracted toward you--unusually attracted?"
+
+"Yes," said Drusilla, smiling reminiscently.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because he once said so."
+
+"S-said--w-what?"
+
+"Why, he said quite frankly that he thought me the most delightful girl
+he had ever met."
+
+"What--else?" Mr. Carr's voice was scarcely audible.
+
+"Nothing," said Drusilla; "except that he said he cared for me very much
+and wished to know whether I ever could care very much for him.... I told
+him I thought I could. Flavilla told him so, too.... And we all felt
+rather happy, I think; at least I did."
+
+Her parent emitted a low, melodious sort of sound, a kind of mellifluous
+howl.
+
+"Pa-pah!" they exclaimed in gentle consternation.
+
+He beat at the empty air for a moment like a rotund fowl about to seek
+its roost. Suddenly he ran distractedly at an armchair and kicked it.
+
+They watched him in sorrowful amazement.
+
+"If we are going to sketch Cooper's Bluff this morning," observed
+Drusilla to Flavilla, "I think we had better go--quietly--by way of the
+kitchen garden. Evidently Pa-pah does not care for Mr. Yates."
+
+Orlando, the family cat, strolled in, conciliatory tail hoisted. Mr. Carr
+hurled a cushion at Orlando, then beat madly upon his own head with both
+hands. Servants respectfully gave him room; some furniture was
+overturned--a chair or two--as he bounced upward and locked and bolted
+himself in his room.
+
+What transports of fury he lived through there nobody else can know; what
+terrible visions of vengeance lit up his outraged intellect, what cold
+intervals of quivering hate, what stealthy schemes of reprisal, what
+awful retribution for young Mr. Yates were hatched in those dreadful
+moments, he alone could tell. And as he never did tell, how can I know?
+
+However, in about half an hour his expression of stony malignity changed
+to a smile so cunningly devilish that, as he caught sight of himself in
+the mirror, his corrugated countenance really startled him.
+
+"I must smooth out--smooth out!" he muttered. "Smoothness does it!" And
+he rang for a servant and bade him seek out a certain Mr. Yates among the
+throng of young men who had been taking snapshots.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+DRUSILLA
+
+
+_During Which Chapter Mr. Carr Sings and One of His Daughters Takes her
+Postgraduate_
+
+Mr. Yates came presently, ushered by Ferdinand, and looking extremely
+worried. Mr. Carr received him in his private office with ominous
+urbanity.
+
+"Mr. Yates," he said, forcing a distorted smile, "I have rather abruptly
+decided to show you exactly how one of the Destyn-Carr instruments is
+supposed to work. Would you kindly stand here--close by this table?"
+
+Mr. Yates, astounded, obeyed.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Carr, with a deeply creased smile, "here is the famous
+Destyn-Carr apparatus. That's quite right--take a snapshot at it without
+my permission----"
+
+"I--I thought----"
+
+"Quite right, my boy; I intend you shall know all about it. You see it
+resembles the works of a watch.... Now, when I touch this spring the
+receiver opens and gathers in certain psychic waves which emanate from
+the subconscious personality of--well, let us say you, for example!...
+And now I touch this button. You see that slender hairspring of Rosium
+uncurl and rise, trembling and waving about like a tentacle?"
+
+Young Yates, notebook in hand, recovered himself sufficiently to nod. Mr.
+Carr leered at him:
+
+"That tentacle," he explained, "is now seeking some invisible, wireless,
+psychic current along which it is to transmit the accumulated psychic
+waves. As soon as the wireless current finds the subconscious personality
+of the woman you are destined to love and marry some day----"
+
+"I?" exclaimed young Yates, horrified.
+
+"Yes, you. Why not? Do you mind my trying it on you?"
+
+"But I am already in love," protested the young man, turning, as usual, a
+ready red. "I don't care to have you try it on me. Suppose that machine
+should connect me with--some other--girl----"
+
+"It has!" cried Carr with a hideous laugh as a point of bluish-white fire
+tipped the tentacle for an instant. "You're tied fast to something
+feminine! Probably a flossy typewriter--or a burlesque actress--somebody
+you're fitted for, anyway!" He clapped on his monocle, and glared
+gleefully at the stupefied young man.
+
+"That will teach you to enter my premises and hold my daughter's hand
+when she is drawing innocent pictures of Cooper's Bluff!" he shouted.
+"That will teach you to write poems to my eighteen-year-old daughter,
+Drusilla; that will teach you to tell her you are in love with her--you
+young pup!"
+
+"I am in love with her!" said Yates, undaunted; but he was very white
+when he said it. "I do love her; and if you had behaved halfway decently
+I'd have told you so two weeks ago!"
+
+Mr. Carr turned a delicate purple, then, recovering, laughed horribly.
+
+"Whether or not you were once in love with my daughter is of no
+consequence now. That machine has nullified your nonsense! That
+instrument has found you your proper affinity--doubtless below stairs----"
+
+"I _am_ still in love with Drusilla," repeated Yates, firmly.
+
+"I tell you, you're not!" retorted Carr. "Didn't I turn that machine on
+you? It has never missed yet! The Green Mouse has got _you_ in the
+Mouseleum!"
+
+"You are mistaken," insisted Yates, still more firmly. "I was in love
+with your daughter Drusilla before you started the machine; and I love
+her yet! Now! At the present time! This very instant I am loving her!"
+
+"You can't!" shouted Carr.
+
+"Yes, I can. And I do!"
+
+"No, you don't! I tell you it's a scientific and psychical impossibility
+for you to continue to love her! Your subconscious personality is now in
+eternal and irrevocable accord and communication with the subconscious
+personality of some chit of a girl who is destined to love and marry you!
+And she's probably a ballet-girl, at that!"
+
+"I shall marry Drusilla!" retorted the young man, very pale; "because I
+am quite confident that she loves me, though very probably she doesn't
+know it yet."
+
+"You talk foolishness!" hissed Carr. "This machine has settled the whole
+matter! Didn't you see that spark?"
+
+"I saw a spark--yes!"
+
+"And do you mean to tell me you are not beginning to feel queer?"
+
+"Not in the slightest."
+
+"Look me squarely in the eye, young man, and tell me whether you do not
+have a sensation as though your heart were cutting capers?"
+
+"Not in the least," said Yates, calmly. "If that machine worked at all it
+wouldn't surprise me if you yourself had become entangled in it--caught
+in your own machine!"
+
+"W-what!" exclaimed Carr, faintly.
+
+"It wouldn't astonish me in the slightest," repeated Yates, delighted to
+discover the dawning alarm in the older man's features. "_You_ opened the
+receiver; _you_ have psychic waves as well as I. _I_ was in love at the
+time; _you_ were not. What was there to prevent your waves from being
+hitched to a wireless current and, finally, signaling the subconscious
+personality of--of some pretty actress, for example?"
+
+Mr. Carr sank nervously onto a chair; his eyes, already wild, became
+wilder as he began to realize the risk he had unthinkingly taken.
+
+"Perhaps _you_ feel a little--queer. You look it," suggested the young
+man, in a voice made anxious by an ever-ready sympathy. "Can I do
+anything? I am really very sorry to have spoken so."
+
+A damp chill gathered on the brow of Bushwyck Carr. He _did_ feel a
+trifle queer. A curious lightness--a perfectly inexplicable buoyancy
+seemed to possess him. He was beginning to feel strangely youthful; the
+sound of his own heart suddenly became apparent. To his alarm it was
+beating playfully, skittishly. No--it was not even beating; it was
+skipping.
+
+"Y-Yates," he stammered, "you don't think that I could p-possibly have
+become inadvertently mixed up with that horrible machine--do you?"
+
+Now Yates was a generous youth; resentment at the treatment meted out to
+him by this florid, bad-tempered and pompous gentleman changed to
+instinctive sympathy when he suddenly realized the plight his future
+father-in-law might now be in.
+
+"Yates," repeated Mr. Carr in an agitated voice, "tell me honestly: _do_
+you think there is anything unusual the matter with me? I--I seem to
+f-feel unusually--young. Do I look it? Have I changed? W-watch me while
+I walk across the room."
+
+Mr. Carr arose with a frightened glance at Yates, put on his hat, and
+fairly pranced across the room. "Great Heavens!" he faltered; "my hat's
+on one side and my walk is distinctly jaunty! Do you notice it, Yates?"
+
+"I'm afraid I do, Mr. Carr."
+
+"This--this is infamous!" gasped Mr. Carr. "This is--is outrageous! I'm
+forty-five! I'm a widower! I detest a jaunty widower! I don't want to be
+one; I don't want to----"
+
+Yates gazed at him with deep concern.
+
+"Can't you help lifting your legs that way when you walk--as though a
+band were playing? Wait, I'll straighten your hat. Now try it again."
+
+Mr. Carr pranced back across the room.
+
+"I _know_ I'm doing it again," he groaned, "but I can't help it! I--I
+feel so gay--dammit!--so frivolous--it's--it's that infernal machine.
+W-what am I to do, Yates," he added piteously, "when the world looks
+so good to me?"
+
+"Think of your family!" urged Yates. "Think of--of Drusilla."
+
+"Do you know," observed Carr, twirling his eyeglass and twisting his
+mustache, "that I'm beginning not to care what my family think!... Isn't
+it amazing, Yates? I--I seem to be somebody else, several years younger.
+Somewhere," he added, with a flourish of his monocle--"somewhere on earth
+there is a little birdie waiting for me."
+
+"Don't talk that way!" exclaimed Yates, horrified.
+
+"Yes, I will, young man. I repeat, with optimism and emphasis, that
+_somewhere_ there is a birdie----"
+
+"Mr. Carr!"
+
+"Yes, merry old Top!"
+
+"May I use your telephone?"
+
+"I don't care what you do!" said Carr, gayly. "Use my telephone if you
+like; pull it out by the roots and throw it over Cooper's Bluff, for all
+I care! But"--and a sudden glimmer of reason seemed to come over him--"if
+you have one grain of human decency left in you, you won't drag me and my
+terrible plight into that scurrilous New York paper of yours."
+
+"No," said Yates, "I won't. And that ends my career on Park Row. I'm
+going to telephone my resignation."
+
+Mr. Carr gazed calmly around and twisted his mustache with a satisfied
+and retrospective smile.
+
+"That's very decent of you, Yates; you must pardon me; I was naturally
+half scared to death at first; but I realize you are acting very
+handsomely in this horrible dilemma----"
+
+"Naturally," interrupted Yates. "I must stand by the family into which I
+am, as you know, destined to marry."
+
+"To be sure," nodded Carr, absently; "it really looks that way, doesn't
+it! And, Yates, you have no idea how I hated you an hour ago."
+
+"Yes, I have," said Yates.
+
+"No, you really have not, if you will permit me to contradict you, merry
+old Top. I--but never mind now. You have behaved in an unusually
+considerate manner. Who the devil are you, anyway?"
+
+Yates informed him modestly.
+
+"Well, why didn't you say so, instead of letting me bully you! I've known
+your father for twenty years. Why didn't you tell me you wanted to marry
+Drusilla, instead of coming and blushing all over the premises? I'd have
+told you she was too young; and she is! I'd have told you to wait; and
+you'd have waited. You'd have been civil enough to wait when I explained
+to you that I've already lost, by marriage, two daughters through that
+accursed machine. You wouldn't entirely denude me of daughters, would
+you?"
+
+"I only want one," said John Yates, simply.
+
+"Well, all right; I'm a decent father-in-law when I've got to be. I'm
+really a good sport. You may ask all my sons-in-law; they'll admit it."
+He scrutinized the young man and found him decidedly agreeable to look
+at, and at the same time a vague realization of his own predicament
+returned for a moment.
+
+"Yates," he said unsteadily, "all I ask of you is to keep this terrible
+n-news from my innocent d-daughters until I can f-find out what sort of a
+person is f-fated to lead me to the altar!"
+
+Yates took the offered hand with genuine emotion.
+
+"Surely," he said, "your unknown intended must be some charming leader in
+the social activities of the great metropolis."
+
+"Who knows! She may be m-my own l-laundress for all I know. She may be
+anything, Yates! She--she might even be b-black!"
+
+"Black!"
+
+Mr. Carr nodded, shuddered, dashed the unmanly moisture from his
+eyeglass.
+
+"I think I'd better go to town and tell my son-in-law, William Destyn,
+exactly what has happened to me," he said. "And I think I'll go through
+the kitchen garden and take my power boat so that those devilish
+reporters can't follow me. Ferdinand!" to the man at the door, "ring up
+the garage and order the blue motor, and tell those newspaper men I'm
+going to town. That, I think, will glue them to the lawn for a while."
+
+"About--Drusilla, sir?" ventured Yates; but Mr. Carr was already gone,
+speeding noiselessly out the back way, through the kitchen garden, and
+across the great tree-shaded lawn which led down to the boat landing.
+
+Across the distant hedge, from the beautiful grounds of his next-door
+neighbor, floated sounds of mirth and music. Gay flags fluttered among
+the trees. The Magnelius Grandcourts were evidently preparing for the
+brilliant charity bazaar to be held there that afternoon and evening.
+
+"To think," muttered Carr, "that only an hour ago I was agreeably and
+comfortably prepared to pass the entire afternoon there with my
+daughters, amid innocent revelry. And now I'm in flight--pursued by
+furies of my own invoking--threatened with love in its most hideous form--
+matrimony! Any woman I now look upon may be my intended bride for all I
+know," he continued, turning into the semiprivate driveway, bordered
+heavily by lilacs; "and the curious thing about it is that I really don't
+care; in fact, the excitement is mildly pleasing."
+
+He halted; in the driveway, blocking it, stood a red motor car--a little
+runabout affair; and at the steering-wheel sat a woman--a lady's maid by
+her cap and narrow apron, and an exceedingly pretty one, at that.
+
+When she saw Mr. Carr she looked up, showing an edge of white teeth in
+the most unembarrassed of smiles. She certainly was an unusually
+agreeable-looking girl.
+
+"Has something gone wrong with your motor?" inquired Mr. Carr,
+pleasantly.
+
+"I am afraid so." She didn't say "sir"; probably because she was too
+pretty to bother about such incidentals. And she looked at Carr and
+smiled, as though he were particularly ornamental.
+
+"Let me see," began Mr. Carr, laying his hand on the steering-wheel;
+"perhaps I can make it go."
+
+"It won't go," she said, a trifle despondently and shaking her charming
+head. "I've been here nearly half an hour waiting for it to do something;
+but it won't."
+
+Mr. Carr peered wisely into the acetylenes, looked carefully under the
+hood, examined the upholstery. He didn't know anything about motors.
+
+"I'm afraid," he said sadly, "that there's something wrong with the
+magne-e-to!"
+
+"Do you think it is as bad as that?"
+
+"I fear so," he said gravely. "If I were you I'd get out--and keep well
+away from that machine."
+
+"Why?" she asked nervously, stepping to the grass beside him.
+
+"It _might_ blow up."
+
+They backed away rather hastily, side by side. After a while they backed
+farther away, hand in hand.
+
+"I--I hate to leave it there all alone," said the maid, when they had
+backed completely out of sight of the car. "If there was only some safe
+place where I could watch and see if it is going to explode."
+
+They ventured back a little way and peeped at the motor.
+
+"You could take a rowboat and watch it from the water," said Mr. Carr.
+
+"But I don't know how to row."
+
+Mr. Carr looked at her. Certainly she was the most prepossessing specimen
+of wholesome, rose-cheeked and ivory-skinned womanhood that he had ever
+beheld; a trifle nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, he thought, but so
+sweet and fresh and with such charming eyes and manners.
+
+"I have," said Mr. Carr, "several hours at my disposal before I go to
+town on important business. If you like I will row you out in one of my
+boats, and then, from a safe distance, we can sit and watch your motor
+blow up. Shall we?"
+
+"It is most kind of you----"
+
+"Not at all. It would be most kind of you."
+
+She looked sideways at the motor, sideways at the water, sideways at Mr.
+Carr.
+
+It was a very lovely morning in early June.
+
+As Mr. Carr handed her into the rowboat with ceremony she swept him a
+courtesy. Her apron and manners were charmingly incongruous.
+
+When she was gracefully seated in the stern Mr. Carr turned for a moment,
+stared all Oyster Bay calmly in the face through his monocle, then,
+untying the painter, fairly skipped into the boat with a step distinctly
+frolicsome.
+
+"It's curious how I feel about this," he observed, digging both oars into
+the water.
+
+"_How_ do you feel, Mr. Carr?"
+
+"Like a bird," he said softly.
+
+And the boat moved off gently through the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay.
+
+At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gently
+caressing the classic contours of Cooper's Bluff, and upon that
+monumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla and
+Drusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates,
+in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod and
+looked at Drusilla.
+
+Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, brooded
+over Cooper's Bluff.
+
+"There's no use," said Drusilla at last; "one can draw a landscape from
+every point of view except looking _down_ hill. Mr. Yates, how on earth
+am I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?"
+
+"Perhaps," he said, "I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?"
+
+"Do you think that would help?"
+
+"I think it helps--somehow."
+
+Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed over
+it. She looked at the pad on her knees.
+
+After a while she said: "I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don't
+you?"
+
+They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers,
+and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.
+
+"It is very pleasant to have you here," she said dreamily.
+
+"It is very heavenly to be here," he said.
+
+"How generous you are to give us so much of your time!" murmured
+Drusilla.
+
+"I think so, too," said Flavilla, washing a badger brush. "And I am
+becoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is."
+
+"Don't you like him as well as I do?" asked Drusilla.
+
+Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.
+
+"Not quite as well," she said frankly. "You know, Drusilla, you are very
+nearly in love with him." And she resumed her sketching.
+
+Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarrassed. "Am I?" she said
+absently.
+
+[Illustration: "Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil
+again'"]
+
+"Are you?" he repeated, close to her shoulder.
+
+She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.
+
+"What is it--to love? Is it"--she looked at him undisturbed--"is it to be
+quite happy and lazy with a man like you?"
+
+He was silent.
+
+"I thought," she continued, "that there would be some hesitation, some
+shyness about it--some embarrassment. But there, has been none between
+you and me."
+
+He said nothing.
+
+She went on absently:
+
+"You said, the other day, very simply, that you cared a great deal for
+me; and I was not very much surprised. And I said that I cared very much
+for you.... And, by the way, I meant to ask you yesterday; are we
+engaged?"
+
+"Are we?" he asked.
+
+"Yes--if you wish.... Is _that_ all there is to an engagement?"
+
+"There's a ring," observed Flavilla, dabbing on too much ultramarine and
+using a sponge. "You've got to get her one, Mr. Yates."
+
+Drusilla looked at the man beside her and smiled.
+
+"How simple it is, after all!" she said. "I have read in the books Pa-pah
+permits us to read such odd things about love and lovers.... Are we
+lovers, Mr. Yates? But, of course, we must be, I fancy."
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"Some time or other, when it is convenient," observed Flavilla, "you
+ought to kiss each other occasionally."
+
+"That doesn't come until I'm a bride, does it?" asked Drusilla.
+
+"I believe it's a matter of taste," said Flavilla, rising and naively
+stretching her long, pretty limbs.
+
+She stood a moment on the edge of the bluff, looking down.
+
+"How curious!" she said after a moment. "There is Pa-pah on the water
+rowing somebody's maid about."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Yates, springing to his feet.
+
+"How extraordinary," said Drusilla, following him to the edge of the
+bluff; "and they're singing, too, as they row!"
+
+From far below, wafted across the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Mr.
+Carr's rich and mellifluous voice was wafted shoreward:
+
+"_I der-reamt that I dwelt in ma-arble h-a-l-ls._"
+
+The sunlight fell on the maid's coquettish cap and apron, and sparkled
+upon the buckle of one dainty shoe. It also glittered across the monocle
+of Mr. Carr.
+
+"Pa-_pah!_" cried Flavilla.
+
+Far away her parent waved a careless greeting to his offspring, then
+resumed his oars and his song.
+
+"How extraordinary!" said Flavilla. "Why do you suppose that Pa-_pah_ is
+rowing somebody's maid around the bay, and singing that way to her?"
+
+"Perhaps it's one of our maids," said Drusilla; "but that would be rather
+odd, too, wouldn't it, Mr. Yates?"
+
+"A--little," he admitted. And his heart sank.
+
+Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.
+
+"I'm going to see whose maid it is," she called back.
+
+Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried grass and watched her sister.
+
+Yates stood beside her in bitter dejection.
+
+So _this_ was the result! His unfortunate future father-in-law was done
+for. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answer
+had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by
+mistake, summoned his own affinity! And _what_ an affinity! A saucy
+soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the _coulisse_ of a
+Parisian theater!
+
+Yates looked at Drusilla. What an awful blow was impending! She never
+could have suspected it, but there, in that boat, sat her future
+stepmother in cap and apron!--his own future stepmother-in-law!
+
+And in the misery of that moment's realization John Chillingham Yates
+showed the material of which he was constructed.
+
+"Dear," he said gently.
+
+"Do you mean me?" asked Drusilla, looking up in frank surprise.
+
+And at the same time she saw on his face a look which she had never
+before encountered there. It was the shadow of trouble; and it drew her
+to her feet instinctively.
+
+"What is it, Jack?" she asked.
+
+She had never before called him anything but Mr. Yates.
+
+"What is it?" she repeated, turning away beside him along the leafy path;
+and with every word another year seemed, somehow, to be added to her
+youth. "Has anything happened, Jack? Are you unhappy--or ill?"
+
+He did not speak; she walked beside him, regarding him with wistful eyes.
+
+So there was more of love than happiness, after all; she began to half
+understand it in a vague way as she watched his somber face. There
+certainly was more of love than a mere lazy happiness; there was
+solicitude and warm concern, and desire to comfort, to protect.
+
+"Jack," she said tremulously.
+
+He turned and took her unresisting hands. A quick thrill shot through
+her. Yes, there _was_ more to love than she had expected.
+
+"Are you unhappy?" she asked. "Tell me. I can't bear to see you this way.
+I--I never did--before."
+
+"Will you love me; Drusilla?"
+
+"Yes--yes, I will, Jack."
+
+"Dearly?"
+
+"I do--dearly." The first blush that ever tinted her cheek spread and
+deepened.
+
+"Will you marry me, Drusilla?"
+
+"Yes.... You frighten me."
+
+She trembled, suddenly, in his arms. Surely there were more things to
+love than she had dreamed of in her philosophy. She looked up as he bent
+nearer, understanding that she was to be kissed, awaiting the event which
+suddenly loomed up freighted with terrific significance.
+
+There was a silence, a sob.
+
+"Jack--darling--I--I love you so!"
+
+Flavilla was sketching on her camp-stool when they returned.
+
+"I'm horridly hungry," she said. "It's luncheon time, isn't it? And, by
+the way, it's all right about that maid. She was on her way to serve in
+the tea pavilion at Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's bazaar, and her runabout
+broke down and nearly blew up."
+
+"What on earth are you talking about?" exclaimed Drusilla.
+
+"I'm talking about Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's younger sister from
+Philadelphia, who looks perfectly sweet as a lady's maid. Tea," she
+added, "is to be a dollar a cup, and three if you take sugar. And," she
+continued, "if you and I are to sell flowers there this afternoon we'd
+better go home and dress.... _What_ are you smiling at, Mr. Yates?"
+
+Drusilla naturally supposed she could answer that question.
+
+"Dearest little sister," she said shyly and tenderly, "we have something
+very wonderful to tell you."
+
+"What is it?" asked Flavilla.
+
+"We--we are--engaged," whispered Drusilla, radiant.
+
+"Why, I knew that already!" said Flavilla.
+
+"Did you?" sighed her sister, turning to look at her tall, young lover.
+"I didn't.... Being in love is a much more complicated matter than you
+and I imagined, Flavilla. Is it not, Jack?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+FLAVILLA
+
+
+_Containing a Parable Told with Such Metaphorical Skill that the Author
+Is Totally Unable to Understand It_
+
+The Green Mouse now dominated the country; the entire United States was
+occupied in getting married. In the great main office on Madison Avenue,
+and in a thousand branch offices all over the Union, Destyn-Carr machines
+were working furiously; a love-mad nation was illuminated by their
+sparks.
+
+Marriage-license bureaus had been almost put out of business by the
+sudden matrimonial rush; clergymen became exhausted, wedding bells in the
+churches were worn thin, California and Florida reported no orange crops,
+as all the blossoms had been required for brides; there was a shortage of
+solitaires, traveling clocks, asparagus tongs; and the corner in rice
+perpetrated by some conscienceless captain of industry produced a panic
+equaled only by a more terrible _coup_ in slightly worn shoes.
+
+All America was rushing to get married; from Seattle to Key West the
+railroads were blocked with bridal parties; a vast hum of merrymaking
+resounded from the Golden Gate to Governor's Island, from Niagara to the
+Gulf of Mexico. In New York City the din was persistent; all day long
+church bells pealed, all day long the rattle of smart carriages and hired
+hacks echoed over the asphalt. A reporter of the _Tribune_ stood on top
+of the New York Life tower for an entire week, devouring cold-slaw
+sandwiches and Marie Corelli, and during that period, as his affidavit
+runs, "never for one consecutive second were his ample ears free from the
+near or distant strains of the Wedding March."
+
+And over all, in approving benediction, brooded the wide smile of the
+greatest of statesmen and the great smile of the widest of statesmen--
+these two, metaphorically, hand in hand, floated high above their people,
+scattering encouraging blessings on every bride.
+
+A tremendous rise in values set in; the newly married required homes;
+architects were rushed to death; builders, real-estate operators,
+brokers, could not handle the business hurled at them by impatient
+bridegrooms.
+
+Then, seizing time by the fetlock, some indescribable monster secured the
+next ten years' output of go-carts. The sins of Standard Oil were
+forgotten in the menace of such a national catastrophe; mothers' meetings
+were held; the excitement became stupendous; a hundred thousand brides
+invaded the Attorney-General's office, but all he could think of to say
+was: "Thirty centuries look down upon you!"
+
+These vague sentiments perplexed the country. People understood that the
+Government meant well, but they also realized that the time was not far
+off when millions of go-carts would be required in the United States. And
+they no longer hesitated.
+
+All over the Union fairs and bazaars were held to collect funds for a
+great national factory to turn out carts. Alarmed, the Trust tried to
+unload; militant womanhood, thoroughly aroused, scorned compromise. In
+every city, town, and hamlet of the nation entertainments were given,
+money collected for the great popular go-cart factory.
+
+The affair planned for Oyster Bay was to be particularly brilliant--a
+water carnival at Center Island with tableaux, fireworks, and
+illuminations of all sorts.
+
+Reassured by the magnificent attitude of America's womanhood, business
+discounted the collapse of the go-cart trust and began to recover from
+the check very quickly. Stocks advanced, fluctuated, and suddenly whizzed
+upward like skyrockets; and the long-expected wave of prosperity
+inundated the country. On the crest of it rode Cupid, bow and arrows
+discarded, holding aloft in his right hand a Destyn-Carr machine.
+
+For the old order of things had passed away; the old-fashioned doubts and
+fears of courtship were now practically superfluous.
+
+Anybody on earth could now buy a ticket and be perfectly certain that
+whoever he or she might chance to marry would be the right one--the one
+intended by destiny.
+
+Yet, strange as it may appear, there still remained, here and there, a
+few young people in the United States who had no desire to be safely
+provided for by a Destyn-Carr machine.
+
+Whether there was in them some sporting instinct, making hazard
+attractive, or, perhaps, a conviction that Fate is kind, need not be
+discussed. The fact remains that there were a very few youthful and
+marriageable folk who had no desire to know beforehand what their fate
+might be.
+
+One of these unregenerate reactionists was Flavilla. To see her entire
+family married by machinery was enough for her; to witness such
+consummate and collective happiness became slightly cloying. Perfection
+can be overdone; a rift in a lute relieves melodious monotony, and when
+discords cease to amuse, one can always have the instrument mended or buy
+a banjo.
+
+"What I desire," she said, ignoring the remonstrances of the family, "is
+a chance to make mistakes. Three or four nice men have thought they were
+in love with me, and I wouldn't take anything for the--experience. Or,"
+she added innocently, "for the chances that some day three or four more
+agreeable young men may think they are in love with me. One learns by
+making mistakes--very pleasantly."
+
+Her family sat in an affectionately earnest row and adjured her--four
+married sisters, four blissful brothers-in-law, her attractive
+stepmother, her father. She shook her pretty head and continued sewing on
+the costume she was to wear at the Oyster Bay Venetian Fête and Go-cart
+Fair.
+
+"No," she said, threading her needle and deftly sewing a shining, silvery
+scale onto the mermaid's dress lying across her knees, "I'll take my
+chances with men. It's better fun to love a man not intended for me, and
+make him love me, and live happily and defiantly ever after, than to have
+a horrid old machine settle you for life."
+
+"But you are wasting time, dear," explained her stepmother gently.
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not. I've been engaged three times and I've enjoyed it
+immensely. That isn't wasting time, is it? And it's _such_ fun!
+He thinks he's in love and you think you're in love, and you have such an
+agreeable time together until you find out that you're spoons on somebody
+else. And then you find out you're mistaken and you say you always want
+him for a friend, and you presently begin all over again with a perfectly
+new man----"
+
+"Flavilla!"
+
+"Yes, Pa-_pah_."
+
+"Are you utterly demoralized!"
+
+"Demoralized? Why? Everybody behaved as I do before you and William
+invented your horrid machine. Everybody in the world married at hazard,
+after being engaged to various interesting young men. And I'm not
+demoralized; I'm only old-fashioned enough to take chances. Please let
+me."
+
+The family regarded her sadly. In their amalgamated happiness they
+deplored her reluctance to enter where perfect bliss was guaranteed.
+
+Her choice of rôle and costume for the Seawanhaka Club water tableaux
+they also disapproved of; for she had chosen to represent a character now
+superfluous and out of date--the Lorelei who lured Teutonic yachtsmen to
+destruction with her singing some centuries ago. And that, in these
+times, was ridiculous, because, fortified by a visit to the nearest
+Destyn-Carr machine, no weak-minded young sailorman would care what a
+Lorelei might do; and she could sing her pretty head off and comb herself
+bald before any Destyn-Carr inoculated mariner would be lured overboard.
+
+But Flavilla obstinately insisted on her scaled and fish-tailed costume.
+When her turn came, a spot-light on the clubhouse was to illuminate the
+float and reveal her, combing her golden hair with a golden comb and
+singing away like the Musical Arts.
+
+"And," she thought secretly, "if there remains upon this machine-made
+earth one young man worth my kind consideration, it wouldn't surprise me
+very much if he took a header off the Yacht Club wharf and requested me
+to be his. And I'd be very likely to listen to his suggestion."
+
+So in secret hopes of this pleasing episode--but not giving any such
+reason to her protesting family--she vigorously resisted all attempts to
+deprive her of her fish scales, golden comb, and rôle in the coming water
+fête. And now the programmes were printed and it was too late for them to
+intervene.
+
+She rose, holding out the glittering, finny garment, which flashed like a
+collapsed fish in the sunshine.
+
+"It's finished," she said. "Now I'm going off somewhere by myself to
+rehearse."
+
+"In the water?" asked her father uneasily.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+As Flavilla was a superb swimmer nobody could object. Later, a maid went
+down to the landing, stowed away luncheon, water-bottles and costume in
+the canoe. Later, Flavilla herself came down to the water's edge,
+hatless, sleeves rolled up, balancing a paddle across her shoulders.
+
+As the paddle flashed and the canoe danced away over the sparkling waters
+of Oyster Bay, Flavilla hummed the threadbare German song which she was
+to sing in her rôle of Lorelei, and headed toward Northport.
+
+"The thing to do," she thought to herself, "is to find some nice, little,
+wooded inlet where I can safely change my costume and rehearse. I must
+know whether I can swim in this thing--and whether I can sing while
+swimming about. It would be more effective, I think, than merely sitting
+on the float, and singing and combing my hair through all those verses."
+
+The canoe danced across the water, the paddle glittered, dipped, swept
+astern, and flashed again. Flavilla was very, very happy for no
+particular reason, which is the best sort of happiness on earth.
+
+There is a sandy neck of land which obstructs direct navigation between
+the sacred waters of Oyster Bay and the profane floods which wash the
+gravelly shores of Northport.
+
+"I'll make a carry," thought Flavilla, beaching her canoe. Then, looking
+around her at the lonely stretch of sand flanked by woods, she realized
+at once that she need seek no farther for seclusion.
+
+First of all, she dragged the canoe into the woods, then rapidly
+undressed and drew on the mermaid's scaly suit, which fitted her to the
+throat as beautifully as her own skin.
+
+It was rather difficult for her to navigate on land, as her legs were
+incased in a fish's tail, but, seizing her comb and mirror, she managed
+to wriggle down to the water's edge.
+
+A few sun-warmed rocks jutted up some little distance from shore; with a
+final and vigorous wriggle Flavilla launched herself and struck out for
+the rocks, holding comb and mirror in either hand.
+
+Fishtail and accessories impeded her, but she was the sort of swimmer who
+took no account of such trifles; and after a while she drew herself up
+from the sea, and, breathless, glittering, iridescent, flopped down upon
+a flat rock in the sunshine. From which she took a careful survey of the
+surroundings.
+
+Certainly nobody could see her here. Nobody would interrupt her either,
+because the route of navigation lay far outside, to the north. All around
+were woods; the place was almost landlocked, save where, far away through
+the estuary, a blue and hazy horizon glimmered in the general direction
+of New England.
+
+So, when she had recovered sufficient breath she let down the flashing,
+golden-brown hair, sat up on the rock, lifted her pretty nose skyward,
+and poured forth melody.
+
+As she sang the tiresome old Teutonic ballad she combed away vigorously,
+and every now and then surveyed her features in the mirror.
+
+  _Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten
+  Dass ich so traurig bin----_
+
+she sang happily, studying her gestures with care and cheerfully flopping
+her tail.
+
+She had a very lovely voice which had been expensively cultivated. One or
+two small birds listened attentively for a while, then started in to help
+her out.
+
+On the veranda of his bungalow, not very far from Northport, stood a
+young man of pleasing aspect, knickerbockers, and unusually symmetrical
+legs. His hands reposed in his pockets, his eyes behind their eyeglasses
+were fixed dreamily upon the skies. Somebody over beyond that screen of
+woods was singing very beautifully, and he liked it--at first.
+
+However, when the unseen singer had been singing the Lorelei for an hour,
+steadily, without intermission, an expression of surprise gradually
+developed into uneasy astonishment upon his clean-cut and unusually
+attractive features.
+
+"That girl, whoever she is, can sing, all right," he reflected, "but why
+on earth does she dope out the same old thing?"
+
+He looked at the strip of woods, but could see nothing of the singer. He
+listened; she continued to sing the Lorelei.
+
+"It can't be a phonograph," he reasoned. "No sane person could endure an
+hour of that fool song. No sane person would sing it for an hour,
+either."
+
+Disturbed, he picked up the marine glasses, slung them over his shoulder,
+walked up on the hill back of the bungalow, selected a promising tree,
+and climbed it.
+
+Astride a lofty limb the lord of Northport gazed earnestly across the
+fringe of woods. Something sparkled out there, something moved,
+glittering on a half-submerged rock. He adjusted the marine glasses and
+squinted through them.
+
+"Great James!" he faltered, dropping them; and almost followed the
+glasses to destruction on the ground below.
+
+How he managed to get safely to earth he never knew. "Either I'm crazy,"
+he shouted aloud, "or there's a--a mermaid out there, and I'm going to
+find out before they chase me to the funny house!"
+
+There was a fat tub of a boat at his landing; he reached the shore in a
+series of long, distracted leaps, sprang aboard, cast off, thrust both
+oars deep into the water, and fairly hurled the boat forward, so that it
+alternately skipped, wallowed, scuttered, and scrambled, like a hen
+overboard.
+
+"This is terrible," he groaned. "If I _didn't_ see what I think I saw,
+I'll eat my hat; if I did see what I'm sure I saw, I'm madder than the
+hatter who made it!"
+
+Nearer and nearer, heard by him distinctly above the frantic splashing of
+his oars, her Lorelei song sounded perilously sweet and clear.
+
+"Oh, bunch!" he moaned; "it's horribly like the real thing; and here I
+come headlong, as they do in the story books----"
+
+He caught a crab that landed him in a graceful parabola in the bow, where
+he lay biting at the air to recover his breath. Then his boat's nose
+plowed into the sandy neck of land; he clambered to his feet, jumped out,
+and ran headlong into the belt of trees which screened the singer. Speed
+and gait recalled the effortless grace of the kangaroo; when he
+encountered logs and gullies he rose grandly, sailing into space, landing
+with a series of soft bounces, which presently brought him to the other
+side of the woods.
+
+And there, what he beheld, what he heard, almost paralyzed him. Weak-
+kneed, he passed a trembling hand over his incredulous eyes; with the
+courage of despair, he feebly pinched himself. Then for sixty sickening
+seconds he closed his eyes and pressed both hands over his ears. But when
+he took his hands away and opened his terrified eyes, the exquisitely
+seductive melody, wind blown from the water, thrilled him in every fiber;
+his wild gaze fell upon a distant, glittering shape--white-armed, golden-
+haired, fish-tailed, slender body glittering with silvery scales.
+
+The low rippling wash of the tide across the pebbly shore was in his
+ears; the salt wind was in his throat. He saw the sun flash on golden
+comb and mirror, as her snowy fingers caressed the splendid masses of her
+hair; her song stole sweetly seaward as the wind veered.
+
+A terrible calm descended upon him.
+
+"This is interesting," he said aloud.
+
+A sickening wave of terror swept him, but he straightened up, squaring
+his shoulders.
+
+"I may as well face the fact," he said, "that I, Henry Kingsbury, of
+Pebble Point, Northport, L.I., and recently in my right mind, am now,
+this very moment, looking at a--a mermaid in Long Island Sound!"
+
+He shuddered; but he was sheer pluck all through. Teeth might chatter,
+knees smite together, marrow turn cold; nothing on earth or Long Island
+could entirely stampede Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point.
+
+His clutch on his self-control in any real crisis never slipped; his
+mental steering-gear never gave way. Again his pallid lips moved in
+speech:
+
+"The--thing--to--do," he said very slowly and deliberately, "is to swim
+out and--and touch it. If it dissolves into nothing I'll probably feel
+better----"
+
+He began to remove coat, collar, and shoes, forcing himself to talk
+calmly all the while.
+
+"The thing to do," he went on dully, "is to swim over there and get a
+look at it. Of course, it isn't really there. As for drowning--it really
+doesn't matter.... In the midst of life we are in Long Island.... And, if
+it _is_ there--I c-c-can c-capture it for the B-B-Bronx----"
+
+Reason tottered; it revived, however, as he plunged into the s. w.[A] of
+Oyster Bay and struck out, silent as a sea otter for the shimmering shape
+on the ruddy rocks.
+
+[Footnote A: Sparkling Waters or Sacred Waters.]
+
+Flavilla was rehearsing with all her might; her white throat swelled with
+the music she poured forth to the sky and sea; her pretty fingers played
+with the folds of burnished hair; her gilded hand-mirror flashed, she
+gently beat time with her tail.
+
+So thoroughly, so earnestly, did she enter into the spirit of the siren
+she was representing that, at moments, she almost wished some fisherman
+might come into view--just to see whether he'd really go overboard after
+her.
+
+However, audacious as her vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely
+unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the
+floating weeds almost at her feet.
+
+"Goodness," she said faintly, and attempted to rise. But her fish tail
+fettered her.
+
+"Are you real!" gasped Kingsbury.
+
+"Y-yes.... Are you?"
+
+"Great James!" he half shouted, half sobbed, "are you _human?_"
+
+"V-very. Are _you?_"
+
+He clutched at the weedy rock and dragged himself up. For a moment he lay
+breathing fast, water dripping from his soaked clothing. Once he feebly
+touched the glittering fish tail that lay on the rock beside him. It
+quivered, but needle and thread had been at work there; he drew a deep
+breath and closed his eyes.
+
+When he opened them again she was looking about for a likely place to
+launch herself into the bay; in fact, she had already started to glide
+toward the water; the scraping of the scales aroused him, and he sat up.
+
+"I heard singing," he said dreamily, "and I climbed a tree and saw--you!
+Do you blame me for trying to corroborate a thing like _you?_"
+
+"You thought I was a _real_ one?"
+
+"I thought that I thought I saw a real one."
+
+She looked at him hopefully.
+
+"Tell me, _did_ my singing compel you to swim out here?"
+
+"I don't know what compelled me."
+
+"But--you _were_ compelled?"
+
+"I--it seems so----"
+
+"O-h!" Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin
+and gazed at him.
+
+"To think," she said softly, "that you believed me to be a real siren,
+and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock! Isn't
+it exciting?"
+
+He looked at her, then turned red:
+
+"Yes, it is," he said.
+
+Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she
+surveyed him with intense interest. He was at a disadvantage; the sleek,
+half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not
+exhibit him at his best.
+
+But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had
+actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human
+being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.
+
+"Please fix your hair," she said, handing him her comb and mirror.
+
+"My hair?"
+
+"Certainly. I want to look at you."
+
+He thought her request rather extraordinary, but he sat up and with the
+aid of the mirror, scraped away at his wet hair, parting it in the middle
+and combing it deftly into two gay little Mercury wings. Then, fishing in
+the soaked pockets of his knickerbockers, he produced a pair of smart
+pince-nez, which he put on, and then gazed up at her.
+
+"Oh!" she said, with a quick, indrawn breath, "you _are_ attractive!"
+
+At that he turned becomingly scarlet.
+
+Leaning on one lovely, bare arm, burnished hair clustering against her
+cheeks, she continued to survey him in delighted approval which sometimes
+made him squirm inwardly, sometimes almost intoxicated him.
+
+"To think," she murmured, "that _I_ lured _you_ out here!"
+
+"I _am_ thinking about it," he said.
+
+She laid her head on one side, inspecting him with frankest approval.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "what your name is. I am Flavilla Carr."
+
+"Not one of the Carr triplets!"
+
+"Yes--but," she added quickly, "I'm not married. Are you?"
+
+"Oh, no, no, no!" he said hastily. "I'm Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point,
+Northport----"
+
+"Master and owner of the beautiful but uncertain _Sappho?_ Oh, tell me,
+_are_ you the man who has tipped over so many times in Long Island Sound?
+Because I--I adore a man who has the pluck to continue to capsize every
+day or two."
+
+"Then," he said, "you can safely adore me, for I am that yachtsman who
+has fallen off the _Sappho_ more times than the White Knight fell off his
+horse."
+
+"I--I _do_ adore you!" she exclaimed impulsively.
+
+"Of course, you d-d-don't mean that," he stammered, striving to smile.
+
+"Yes--almost. Tell me, you--I know you are not like other men! _You_
+never have had anything to do with a Destyn-Carr machine, have you?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Neither have I.... And so you are not in love--are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Neither am I. Oh, I am so glad that you and I have waited, and not
+become engaged to somebody by machinery.... I wonder whom you are
+destined for."
+
+"Nobody--by machinery."
+
+She clapped her hands. "Neither am I. It is too stupid, isn't it? I
+_don't_ want to marry the man I ought to marry. I'd rather take chances
+with a man who attracts me and who is attracted by me.... There was, in
+the old days--before everybody married by machinery--something not
+altogether unworthy in being a siren, wasn't there?... It's perfectly
+delightful to think of your seeing me out here on the rocks, and then
+instantly plunging into the waves and tearing a foaming right of way to
+what might have been destruction!"
+
+Her flushed, excited face between its clustering curls looked straight
+into his.
+
+"It _was_ destruction," he said. His own voice sounded odd to him. "Utter
+destruction to my peace of mind," he said again.
+
+"You--don't think that you love me, do you?" she asked. "That would be
+too--too perfect a climax.... _Do_ you?" she asked curiously.
+
+"I--think so."
+
+"Do--do you _know_ it?" He gazed bravely at her: "Yes."
+
+She flung up both arms joyously, then laughed aloud:
+
+"Oh, the wonder of it! It is too perfect, too beautiful! You really love
+me? Do you? Are you _sure_?"
+
+"Yes.... Will you try to love me?"
+
+"Well, you know that sirens don't care for people.... I've already been
+engaged two or three times.... I don't mind being engaged to you."
+
+"Couldn't you care for me, Flavilla?"
+
+"Why, yes. I do.... Please don't touch me; I'd rather not. Of course, you
+know, I couldn't really love you so quickly unless I'd been subjected to
+one of those Destyn-Carr machines. You know that, don't you? But," she
+added frankly, "I wouldn't like to have you get away from me. I--I feel
+like a tender-hearted person in the street who is followed by a lost
+cat----"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Oh, I _didn't_ mean anything unpleasant--truly I didn't. You know how
+tenderly one feels when a poor stray cat comes trotting after one----"
+
+He got up, mad all through.
+
+"_Are_ you offended?" she asked sorrowfully. "When I didn't mean anything
+except that my heart--which is rather impressionable--feels very warmly
+and tenderly toward the man who swam after me.... Won't you understand,
+please? Listen, we have been engaged only a minute, and here already is
+our first quarrel. You can see for yourself what would happen if we ever
+married."
+
+"It wouldn't be machine-made bliss, anyway," he said.
+
+That seemed to interest her; she inspected him earnestly.
+
+"Also," he added, "I thought you desired to take a sportsman's chances?"
+
+"I--do."
+
+"And I thought you didn't want to marry the man you ought to marry."
+
+"That is--true."
+
+"Then you certainly ought not to marry me--but, will you?"
+
+"How can I when I don't--love you."
+
+"You don't love me because you ought not to on such brief
+acquaintance.... But _will_ you love me, Flavilla?"
+
+She looked at him in silence, sitting very still, the bright hair veiling
+her cheeks, the fish's tail curled up against her side.
+
+"_Will_ you?"
+
+"I don't know," she said faintly.
+
+"Try."
+
+"I--am."
+
+"Shall I help you?"
+
+Evidently she had gazed at him long enough; her eyes fell; her white
+fingers picked at the seaweed pods. His arm closed around her; nothing
+stirred but her heart.
+
+"Shall I help you to love me?" he breathed.
+
+"No--I am--past help." She raised her head.
+
+"This is all so--so wrong," she faltered, "that I think it must be
+right.... Do you truly love me?... Don't kiss me if you do.... Now I
+believe you.... Lift me; I can't walk in this fish's tail.... Now set me
+afloat, please."
+
+He lifted her, walked to the water's edge, bent and placed her in the
+sea. In an instant she had darted from his arms out into the waves,
+flashing, turning like a silvery salmon.
+
+"Are you coming?" she called back to him.
+
+He did not stir. She swam in a circle and came up beside the rock. After
+a long, long silence, she lifted up both arms; he bent over. Then, very
+slowly, she drew him down into the water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I am quite sure," she said, as they sat together at luncheon on the
+sandspit which divides Northport Bay from the s.w. of Oyster Bay, "that
+you and I are destined for much trouble when we marry; but I love you so
+dearly that I don't care."
+
+"Neither do I," he said; "will you have another sandwich?"
+
+And, being young and healthy, she took it, and biting into it, smiled
+adorably at her lover.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+OTHER BOOKS BY
+
+ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+
+It was Mr. Chambers himself who wrote of the caprices of the Mystic
+Three--Fate, Chance, and Destiny--and how it frequently happened that a
+young man "tripped over the maliciously extended foot of Fate and fell
+plump into the open arms of Destiny." Perhaps it was due to one of the
+pranks of the mystic sisters that Mr. Chambers himself should lay down
+his brush and palette and take up the pen. Mr. Chambers studied art in
+Paris for seven years. At twenty-four his paintings were accepted at the
+Salon; at twenty-eight he had returned to New York and was busy as an
+illustrator for _Life, Truth_, and other periodicals. But already the
+desire to write was coursing through him. The Latin Quarter of Paris,
+where he had studied so long, seemed to haunt him; he wanted to tell its
+story. So he did write the story and, in 1893, published it under the
+title of "In the Quarter." The same year he published another book, "The
+King in Yellow," a grewsome tale, but remarkably successful. The easel
+was pushed aside; the painter had become writer.
+
+Writing of Mr. Chambers's novel of last fall
+
+THE DANGER MARK
+
+in _The Bookman_, Dr. Frederic Taber Cooper said, "In this last field
+(the society novel) it would seem as though Mr. Chambers had, at length,
+found himself; and the fact that the last of the four books is the best
+and most sustained and most honest piece of work he has yet done affords
+solid ground for the belief that he has still better and maturer volumes
+yet to come. There is no valid reason why Mr. Chambers should not
+ultimately be remembered as the novelist who left behind him a
+comprehensive human comedy of New York."
+
+This is another novel of society life like "The Fighting Chance" and "The
+Firing Line." The chief characters in the story are a boy and a girl,
+inheritors of a vast fortune, whose parents are dead, and who have been
+left in the guardianship of a large Trust Company. They are brought up
+with no companions of their own age and are a unique pair when turned
+out, on coming of age, into New York society--two children educated by a
+great machine, possessors of fabulous wealth, with every inherited
+instinct for good and evil set free for the first time. The fact that the
+girl has acquired the habit of dropping a little cologne on a lump of
+sugar and nibbling it when tired or depressed gives an indication of the
+struggle that the children have before them, a struggle of their own, in
+the midst of their luxurious surroundings, more vital, more real,
+perhaps, than any that Mr. Chambers has yet depicted. It is a tense,
+powerful, highly dramatic story, handling a delicate subject without
+offense to the taste or the judgment of the most critical reader.
+
+Mr. Chambers's third novel of society life is
+
+THE FIRING LINE
+
+Its scenes are laid principally at Palm Beach, and no more distinct yet
+delicately tinted picture of an American fashionable resort, in the full
+blossom of its brief, recurrent glory, has ever been drawn. In this book,
+Mr. Chambers's purpose is to show that the salvation of society lies in
+the constant injection of new blood into its veins. His heroine, the
+captivating Shiela Cardross, of unknown parentage, yet reared in luxury,
+suddenly finds herself on life's firing line, battling with one of the
+most portentous problems a young girl ever had to face. Only a master
+writer could handle her story; Mr. Chambers does it most successfully.
+
+THE YOUNGER SET
+
+is the second of Mr. Chambers's society novels. It takes the reader into
+the swirling society life of fashionable New York, there to wrestle with
+that ever-increasing evil, the divorce question. As a student of life,
+Mr. Chambers is thorough; he knows society; his pictures are so accurate
+that he enables the reader to imbibe the same atmosphere as if he had
+been born and brought up in it. Moreover, no matter how intricate the
+plot may be or how great the lesson to be taught, the romance in the
+story is always foremost. For "The Younger Set," Mr. Chambers has
+provided a hero with a rigid code of honor and the grit to stick to it,
+even though it be unfashionable and out of date. He is a man whom
+everyone would seek to emulate.
+
+The earliest of Mr. Chambers's society novels is
+
+THE FIGHTING CHANCE
+
+It is the story of a young man who has inherited with his wealth a
+craving for liquor, and a girl who has inherited a certain rebelliousness
+and a tendency toward dangerous caprice. The two, meeting on the brink of
+ruin, fight out their battles--two weaknesses joined with love to make a
+strength.
+
+It is sufficient to say of this novel that more than five million people
+have read it. It has taken a permanent place among the best fiction of
+the period.
+
+SPECIAL MESSENGER
+
+is the title of Mr. Chambers's novel just preceding "The Danger Mark." It
+is the romance of a young woman spy and scout in the Civil War. As a
+special messenger in the Union service, she is led into a maze of
+critical situations, but her coolness and bravery and winsome personality
+always carry her on to victory. The story is crowded with dramatic
+incident, the roar of battle, the grim realities of war; and, at times,
+in sharp contrast, comes the tenderest of romance. It is written with an
+understanding and sympathy for the viewpoint of the partisans on both
+sides of the conflict.
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+is a novel of the Revolutionary War. It is the fourth, chronologically,
+of a series of which "Cardigan" and "The Maid-at-Arms" were the first
+two. The third has not yet been written. These novels of New York in the
+Revolutionary days are another striking example of the enthusiasm which
+Mr. Chambers puts into his work. To write an accurate and successful
+historical novel, one must be a historian as well as a romancer. Mr.
+Chambers is an authority on New York State history during the Colonial
+period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up
+old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The
+facts are not obtrusive, but they are there, interwoven in the gauzy woof
+of the artist's imagination. That is why these romances carry conviction
+always, why we breathe the very air of the period as we read them.
+
+IOLE
+
+Another splendid example of the author's versatility is this farcical,
+humorous satire on the _art nouveau_ of to-day, Mr. Chambers, with all
+his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a
+pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the
+Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and eat nuts and fruit, and
+listen to him while he lectures them and everybody else on art. It is
+easy to imagine what happens when several rich and practical young New
+Yorkers stumble upon this group. Everybody is happy in the end.
+
+One might run on for twenty books more, but there is not space enough
+more than to mention "The Tracer of Lost Persons," "The Tree of Heaven,"
+"Some Ladies in Haste," and Mr. Chambers's delightful nature books for
+children, telling how _Geraldine_ and _Peter_ go wandering through
+"Outdoor-Land," "Mountain-Land," "Orchard-Land," "River-Land," "Forest-
+Land," and "Garden-Land." They, in turn, are as different from his novels
+in fancy and conception as each of his novels from the other.
+
+Mr. Chambers is a born optimist. The labor of writing is a natural
+enjoyment to him. In reading anything he has written, one is at once
+impressed with the ease with which it moves along. There is no straining
+after effects, no affectations, no hysteria; but always there is a
+personality, an individuality that appeals to the best side of the
+reader's nature and somehow builds up a personal relation between him and
+the author. Perhaps it is this consummate skill, this remarkable ability
+to win the reader that has enabled Mr. Chambers to increase his audience
+year after year, until it now numbers millions; and it is only just that
+critics should, as they frequently do, proclaim him "the most popular
+writer in the country."
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN MOUSE***
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+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Green Mouse, by Robert W. Chambers</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+<!--
+body {margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; background-color: white}
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Green Mouse, by Robert W. Chambers,
+Illustrated by Edmund Frederick</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Green Mouse</p>
+<p>Author: Robert W. Chambers</p>
+<p>Release Date: December 12, 2003  [eBook #10441]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: iso-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN MOUSE***</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center><h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Richard Prairie, Tonya Allen,<br>
+            and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</h3></center>
+
+<hr class="full">
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_a.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/frontis.jpg"><img src="images/frontis_th.jpg" alt="She almost wished some fisherman might come into view."></a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_b.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h1>THE GREEN MOUSE</h1>
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>ROBERT W. CHAMBERS</h2>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_c.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<h3>ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY</h3>
+
+<h3>EDMUND FREDERICK</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_d.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h3>1910</h3>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h3>TO</h3>
+
+<h3>MY FRIEND</h3>
+
+<h3>JOHN CORBIN</h3>
+
+<br><br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+Folly and Wisdom, Heavenly twins,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Sons of the god Imagination,<br>
+Heirs of the Virtues--which were Sins<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Till Transcendental Contemplation<br>
+Transmogrified their outer skins--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Friend, do you follow me? For I<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Have lost myself, I don't know why.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+Resuming, then, this erudite<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And decorative Dedication,--<br>
+Accept it, John, with all your might<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;In Cinquecentic resignation.<br>
+You may not understand it, quite,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;But if you've followed me all through,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;You've done far more than I could do.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_e.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_f.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>
+To the literary, literal, and scientific mind purposeless fiction is
+abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined;
+the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to
+believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works
+suitable for man, woman, child, and suffragette, are to adorn the
+lingerie-laden counters in our great department shops.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is, then, with animation and confidence that the author politely
+offers to a regenerated nation this modern, moral, literary, and highly
+scientific work, thinly but ineffectually disguised as fiction, in
+deference to the prejudices of a few old-fashioned story-readers who
+still survive among us.
+</p>
+
+<h3>R. W. C.</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_g.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_xi.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_xii.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<a href="#i">I.    An Idyl of the Idle</a><br>
+<a href="#ii">II.   The Idler</a><br>
+<a href="#iii">III.  The Green Mouse</a><br>
+<a href="#iv">IV.   An Ideal Idol</a><br>
+<a href="#v">V.    Sacharissa</a><br>
+<a href="#vi">VI.   In Wrong</a><br>
+<a href="#vii">VII.  The Invisible Wire</a><br>
+<a href="#viii">VIII. "In Heaven and Earth"</a><br>
+<a href="#ix">IX.   A Cross-town Car</a><br>
+<a href="#x">X.    The Lid Off</a><br>
+<a href="#xi">XI.   Betty</a><br>
+<a href="#xii">XII.  Sybilla</a><br>
+<a href="#xiii">XIII. The Crown Prince</a><br>
+<a href="#xiv">XIV.  Gentlemen of the Press</a><br>
+<a href="#xv">XV.   Drusilla</a><br>
+<a href="#xvi">XVI.  Flavilla</a><br>
+</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp_xiii.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/frontis.jpg">"She almost wished some fisherman might come into view"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp012.jpg">"'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp086.jpg">"'Are you not terribly impatient?' she inquired"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp122.jpg">"The lid of the basket tilted a little.... Then a plaintive voice said 'Meow-w!'"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp198.jpg">"'I'm afraid,' he ventured, 'that I may require that table for cutting'"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp248.jpg">"'Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil again'"</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp001.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h2><a name="i">I</a></h2>
+
+<h3>AN IDYL OF THE IDYL</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>In Which a Young Man Arrives at His Last Ditch and a Young Girl Jumps
+Over It</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Utterly unequipped for anything except to ornament his environment, the
+crash in Steel stunned him. Dazed but polite, he remained a passive
+observer of the sale which followed and which apparently realized
+sufficient to satisfy every creditor, but not enough for an income to
+continue a harmlessly idle career which he had supposed was to continue
+indefinitely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had never earned a penny; he had not the vaguest idea of how people
+made money. To do something, however, was absolutely necessary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wasted some time in finding out just how much aid he might expect from
+his late father's friends, but when he understood the attitude of society
+toward a knocked-out gentleman he wisely ceased to annoy society, and
+turned to the business world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here he wasted some more time. Perhaps the time was not absolutely
+wasted, for during that period he learned that he could use nobody who
+could not use him; and as he appeared to be perfectly useless, except for
+ornament, and as a business house is not a kindergarten, and furthermore,
+as he had neither time nor money to attend any school where anybody could
+teach him anything, it occurred to him to take a day off for minute and
+thorough self-examination concerning his qualifications and even his
+right to occupy a few feet of space upon the earth's surface.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four years at Harvard, two more in postgraduate courses, two more in
+Europe to perfect himself in electrical engineering, and a year at home
+attempting to invent a wireless apparatus for intercepting and
+transmitting psychical waves had left him pitifully unfit for wage
+earning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There remained his accomplishments; but the market was overstocked with
+assorted time-killers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His last asset was a trivial though unusual talent--a natural manual
+dexterity cultivated since childhood to amuse himself--something he never
+took seriously. This, and a curious control over animals, had, as the
+pleasant years flowed by, become an astonishing skill which was much more
+than sleight of hand; and he, always as good-humored as well-bred, had
+never refused to amuse the frivolous, of which he was also one, by
+picking silver dollars out of space and causing the proper card to fall
+fluttering from the ceiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Day by day, as the little money left him melted away, he continued his
+vigorous mental examination, until the alarming shrinkage in his funds
+left him staring fixedly at his last asset. Could he use it? Was it an
+asset, after all? How clever was he? Could he face an audience and
+perform the usual magician tricks without bungling? A slip by a careless,
+laughing, fashionable young amateur amusing his social equals at a house
+party is excusable; a bungle by a hired professional meant an end to hope
+in that direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he rented a suite of two rooms on Central Park West, furnished them
+with what remained from better days, bought the necessary paraphernalia
+of his profession, and immured himself for practice before entering upon
+his contemplated invasion of Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbor. And one very
+lovely afternoon in May, when the Park from his windows looked like a
+green forest, and puff on puff of perfumed air fluttered the curtains at
+his opened windows, he picked up his gloves and stick, put on his hat,
+and went out to walk in the Park; and when he had walked sufficiently he
+sat down on a bench in a flowery, bushy nook on the edge of a bridle
+path.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Few people disturbed the leafy privacy; a policeman sauntering southward
+noted him, perhaps for future identification. The spectacle of a
+well-built, well-groomed, and fashionable young man sitting moodily upon a
+park bench was certainly to be noted. It is not the fashion for
+fashionable people to sit on park benches unless they contemplate self,
+as well as social, destruction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the policeman lingered for a while in the vicinity, but not hearing
+any revolver shot, presently sauntered on, buck-skinned fist clasped
+behind his broad back, squinting at a distant social gathering composed
+entirely of the most exclusive nursemaids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man looked up into the pleasant blue above, then his
+preoccupied gaze wandered from woodland to thicket, where the scarlet
+glow of Japanese quince mocked the colors of the fluttering scarlet
+tanagers; where orange-tinted orioles flashed amid tangles of golden
+Forsythia; and past the shrubbery to an azure corner of water, shimmering
+under the wooded slope below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That sense of languor and unrest, of despondency threaded by hope which
+fair skies and sunshine and new leaves bring with the young year to the
+young, he felt. Yet there was no bitterness in his brooding, for he was a
+singularly generous young man, and there was no vindictiveness mixed with
+the memories of his failures among those whose cordial respect for his
+father had been balanced between that blameless gentleman's wealth and
+position.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A gray squirrel came crawling and nosing through the fresh grass; he
+caught its eyes, and, though the little animal was plainly bound
+elsewhere on important business, the young man soon had it curled up on
+his knee, asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a while he amused himself by using his curious power, alternately
+waking the squirrel and allowing it to bound off, tail twitching, and
+then calling it back, slowly but inexorably to climb his trousers and
+curl up on his knee and sleep an uncanny and deep sleep which might end
+only at the young man's pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He, too, began to feel the subtle stillness of the drowsing woodland;
+musing there, caressing his short, crisp mustache, he watched the purple
+grackle walking about in iridescent solitude, the sun spots waning and
+glowing on the grass; he heard the soft, garrulous whimper of waterfowl
+along the water's edge, the stir of leaves above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought of various personal matters: his poverty, the low ebb of his
+balance at the bank, his present profession, his approaching début as an
+entertainer, the chances of his failure. He thought, too, of the
+astounding change in his life, the future, vacant of promise, devoid of
+meaning, a future so utterly new and blank that he could find in it
+nothing to speculate upon. He thought also, and perfectly impersonally,
+of a girl whom he had met now and then upon the stairs of the apartment
+house which he now inhabited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Evidently there had been an ebb in her prosperity; the tumble of a New
+Yorker's fortune leads from the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence
+through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she painted
+pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt sienna; and
+her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful
+beauty he had known--might still know if he chose; for a man who can pay
+for his evening clothes need never deny himself the society he was bred
+to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She certainly did resemble that girl--she had the same bluish violet
+eyes, the same white and deeply fringed lids, the same free grace of
+carriage, a trifle too boyish at times--the same firmly rounded, yet
+slender, figure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, as a matter of fact," he mused aloud, stroking the sleeping
+squirrel on his knee, "I could have fallen in love with either of those
+girls--before Copper blew up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like
+the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints
+portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I
+have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes
+of that waking Aphrodite in the Luxembourg. If she would only just look
+at me once instead of looking through me when we pass one another in the
+hall----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The deadened gallop of a horse on the bridle path caught his ear. The
+horse was coming fast--almost too fast. He laid the sleeping squirrel on
+the bench, listened, then instinctively stood up and walked to the
+thicket's edge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What happened was too quick for him to comprehend; he had a vision of a
+big black horse, mane and tail in the wind, tearing madly, straight at
+him--a glimpse of a white face, desperate and set, a flutter of loosened
+hair; then a storm of wind and sand roared in his ears; he was hurled,
+jerked, and flung forward, dragged, shaken, and left half senseless,
+hanging to nose and bit of a horse whose rider was picking herself out of
+a bush covered with white flowers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Half senseless still, he tightened his grip on the bit, released the
+grasp on the creature's nose, and, laying his hand full on the forelock,
+brought it down twice and twice across the eyes, talking to the horse in
+halting, broken whispers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he had the trembling animal under control he looked around; the girl
+stood on the grass, dusty, dirty, disheveled, bleeding from a cut on the
+cheek bone; the most bewildered and astonished creature he had ever
+looked upon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It will be all right in a few minutes," he said, motioning her to the
+bench on the asphalt walk. She nodded, turned, picked up his hat, and,
+seating herself, began to smooth the furred nap with her sleeve, watching
+him intently all the while. That he already had the confidence of a horse
+that he had never before seen was perfectly apparent. Little by little
+the sweating, quivering limbs were stilled, the tense muscles in the neck
+relaxed, the head sank, dusty velvet lips nibbled at his hand, his
+shoulder; the heaving, sunken flanks filled and grew quiet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bareheaded, his attire in disorder and covered with slaver and sand, the
+young man laid the bridle on the horse's neck, held out his hand, and,
+saying "Come," turned his back and walked down the bridle path. The horse
+stretched a sweating neck, sniffed, pricked forward both small ears, and
+slowly followed, turning as the man turned, up and down, crowding at heel
+like a trained dog, finally stopping on the edge of the walk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man looped the bridle over a low maple limb, and leaving the
+horse standing sauntered over to the bench.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That horse," he said pleasantly, "is all right now; but the question is,
+are you all right?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose, handing him his hat, and began to twist up her bright hair. For
+a few moments' silence they were frankly occupied in restoring order to
+raiment, dusting off gravel and examining rents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm tremendously grateful," she said abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am, too," he said in that attractive manner which sets people of
+similar caste at ease with one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you; it's a generous compliment, considering your hat and
+clothing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked up; she stood twisting her hair and doing her best with the few
+remaining hair pegs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm a sight for little fishes," she said, coloring. "Did that wretched
+beast bruise you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You limped!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did I?" he said vaguely. "How do you feel?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is," she said, "a curious, breathless flutter all over me; if that
+is fright, I suppose I'm frightened, but I don't mind mounting at once--
+if you would put me up----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Better wait a bit," he said; "it would not do to have that horse feel a
+fluttering pulse, telegraphing along the snaffle. Tell me, are you
+spurred?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lifted the hem of her habit; two small spurs glittered on her
+polished boot heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's it, you see," he observed; "you probably have not ridden cross
+saddle very long. When your mount swerved you spurred, and he bolted, bit
+in teeth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's exactly it," she admitted, looking ruefully at her spurs. Then
+she dropped her skirt, glanced interrogatively at him, and, obeying his
+grave gesture, seated herself again upon the bench.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't stand," she said civilly. He took the other end of the seat,
+lifting the still slumbering squirrel to his knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I haven't said very much," she began; "I'm impulsive enough to be
+overgrateful and say too much. I hope you understand me; do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course; you're very good. It was nothing; you could have stopped your
+horse yourself. People do that sort of thing for one another as a matter
+of course."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But not at the risk you took----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No risk at all," he said hastily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thought otherwise, and thought it so fervently that, afraid of
+emotion, she turned her cold, white profile to him and studied her horse,
+haughty lids adroop. The same insolent sweetness was in her eyes when
+they again reverted to him. He knew the look; he had encountered it often
+enough in the hallway and on the stairs. He knew, too, that she must
+recognize him; yet, under the circumstances, it was for her to speak
+first; and she did not, for she was at that age when horror of overdoing
+anything chokes back the scarcely extinguished childish instinct to say
+too much. In other words, she was eighteen and had had her first season
+the winter past--the winter when he had not been visible among the
+gatherings of his own kind.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp012.jpg"><img src="images/illp012_th.jpg" alt="'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly."></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Those squirrels are very tame," she observed calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not always," he said. "Try to hold this one, for example."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her pretty eyebrows, then accepted the lump of fluffy fur from
+his hands. Instantly an electric shock seemed to set the squirrel
+frantic, there was a struggle, a streak of gray and white, and the
+squirrel leaped from her lap and fairly flew down the asphalt path.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Gracious!" she exclaimed faintly; "what was the matter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Some squirrels are very wild," he said innocently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know--but you held him--he was asleep on your knee. Why didn't he stay
+with me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, perhaps because I have a way with animals."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With horses, too," she added gayly. And the smile breaking from her
+violet eyes silenced him in the magic of a beauty he had never dreamed
+of. At first she mistook his silence for modesty; then--because even as
+young a maid as she is quick to divine and fine of instinct--she too fell
+silent and serious, the while the shuttles of her reason flew like
+lightning, weaving the picture of him she had conceived--a gentleman, a
+man of her own sort, rather splendid and wise and bewildering. The
+portrait completed, there was no room for the hint of presumption she had
+half sensed in the brown eyes' glance that had set her alert; and she
+looked up at him again, frankly, a trifle curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am going to thank you once more," she said, "and ask you to put me up.
+There is not a flutter of fear in my pulse now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you quite sure?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perfectly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They arose; he untied the horse and beckoned it to the walk's edge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I forgot," she said, laughing, "that I am riding cross saddle. I can
+mount without troubling you--" She set her toe to the stirrup which he
+held, and swung herself up into the saddle with a breezy "Thanks,
+awfully," and sat there gathering her bridle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had she said enough? How coldly her own thanks rang in her ears--for
+perhaps he had saved her neck--and perhaps not. Busy with curb and
+snaffle reins, head bent, into her oval face a tint of color crept. Did
+he think she treated lightly, flippantly, the courage which became him
+so? Or was he already bored by her acknowledgment of it? Sensitive,
+dreading to expose youth and inexperience to the amused smile of this
+attractive young man of the world, she sat fumbling with her bridle,
+conscious that he stood beside her, hat in hand, looking up at her. She
+could delay no longer; the bridle had been shifted and reshifted to the
+last second of procrastination. She must say something or go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meeting his eyes, she smiled and leaned a little forward in her saddle as
+though to speak, but his brown eyes troubled her, and all she could say
+was "Thank you--good-by," and galloped off down the vista through dim,
+leafy depths heavy with the incense of lilac and syringa.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp015.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp016.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="ii">II</a></h2>
+
+<h3>THE IDLER</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Concerning the Young Man in the Ditch and His Attempts to Get Out of It</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although he was not vindictive, he did not care to owe anything to
+anybody who might be inclined to give him a hearing on account of former
+obligations or his social position. Everybody knew he had gone to smash;
+everybody, he very soon discovered, was naturally afraid of being
+bothered by him. The dread of the overfed that an underfed member of the
+community may request a seat at the table he now understood perfectly. He
+was learning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he solicited aid from nobody whom he had known in former days; neither
+from those who had aided him when he needed no aid, nor those who owed
+their comfortable position to the generosity of his father--a gentleman
+notorious for making fortunes for his friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Therefore he wrote to strangers on a purely business basis--to amazing
+types lately emerged from the submerged, bulging with coal money, steel
+money, copper money, wheat money, stockyard money--types that galloped
+for Fifth Avenue to build town houses; that shook their long cars and
+frisked into the country and built "cottages." And this was how he put
+it:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Madam:</i> In case you desire to entertain guests with the professional
+services of a magician it would give me pleasure to place my very unusual
+accomplishments at your disposal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And signed his name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a dreadful drain on his bank account to send several thousand
+engraved cards about town and fashionable resorts. No replies came. Day
+after day, exhausted with the practice drill of his profession, he walked
+to the Park and took his seat on the bench by the bridle path. Sometimes
+he saw her cantering past; she always acknowledged his salute, but never
+drew bridle. At times, too, he passed her in the hall; her colorless
+"Good morning" never varied except when she said "Good evening." And all
+this time he never inquired her name from the hall servant; he was that
+sort of man--decent through instinct; for even breeding sometimes permits
+sentiment to snoop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a week he had been airily dispensing with more than one meal a day;
+to keep clothing and boots immaculate required a sacrifice of breakfast
+and luncheon--besides, he had various small pensioners to feed, white
+rabbits with foolish pink eyes, canary birds, cats, albino mice,
+goldfish, and other collaborateurs in his profession. He was obliged to
+bribe the janitor, too, because the laws of the house permitted neither
+animals nor babies within its precincts. This extra honorarium deprived
+him of tobacco, and he became a pessimist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides, doubts as to his own ability arose within him; it was all very
+well to practice his magic there alone, but he had not yet tried it on
+anybody except the janitor; and when he had begun by discovering several
+red-eyed rabbits in the janitor's pockets that intemperate functionary
+fled with a despondent yell that brought a policeman to the area gate
+with a threat to pull the place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, however, a letter came engaging him for one evening. He was
+quite incredulous at first, then modestly scared, perplexed, exultant and
+depressed by turns. Here was an opening--the first. And because it was
+the first its success or failure meant future engagements or consignments
+to the street, perhaps as a white-wing. There must be no faltering now,
+no bungling, no mistakes, no amateurish hesitation. It is the
+empty-headed who most strenuously demand intelligence in others. One yawn from
+such an audience meant his professional damnation--he knew that; every
+second must break like froth in a wine glass; an instant's perplexity, a
+slackening of the tension, and those flaccid intellects would relax into
+native inertia. Incapable of self-amusement, depending utterly upon
+superior minds for a respite from ennui, their caprice controlled his
+fate; and he knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sitting there by the sunny window with a pair of magnificent white
+Persian cats purring on either knee, he read and reread the letter
+summoning him on the morrow to Seabright. He knew who his hostess was--a
+large lady lately emerged from a corner in lard, dragging with her some
+assorted relatives of atrophied intellects and a husband whose only
+mental pleasure depended upon the speed attained by his racing car--the
+most exacting audience he could dare to confront.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like the White Knight he had had plenty of practice, but he feared that
+warrior's fate; and as he sat there he picked up a bunch of silver hoops,
+tossed them up separately so that they descended linked in a glittering
+chain, looped them and unlooped them, and, tiring, thoughtfully tossed
+them toward the ceiling again, where they vanished one by one in mid-air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cats purred; he picked up one, molded her carefully in his handsome
+hands; and presently, under the agreeable massage, her purring increased
+while she dwindled and dwindled to the size of a small, fluffy kitten,
+then vanished entirely, leaving in his hand a tiny white mouse. This
+mouse he tossed into the air, where it became no mouse at all but a white
+butterfly that fluttered 'round and 'round, alighting at last on the
+window curtain and hung there, opening and closing its snowy wings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's all very well," he reflected, gloomily, as, at a pass of his
+hand, the air was filled with canary birds; "that's all very well, but
+suppose I should slip up? What I need is to rehearse to somebody before I
+face two or three hundred people."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought he heard a knocking on his door, and listened a moment. But as
+there was an electric bell there he concluded he had been mistaken; and
+picking up the other white cat, he began a gentle massage that stimulated
+her purring, apparently at the expense of her color and size, for in a
+few moments she also dwindled until she became a very small, coal-black
+kitten, changing in a twinkling to a blackbird, when he cast her
+carelessly toward the ceiling. It was well done; in all India no magician
+could have done it more cleverly, more casually.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaning forward in his chair he reproduced the two white cats from behind
+him, put the kittens back in their box, caught the blackbird and caged
+it, and was carefully winding up the hairspring in the white butterfly,
+when again he fancied that somebody was knocking.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp022.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp023.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="iii">III</a></h2>
+
+<h3>THE GREEN MOUSE</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Showing the Value of a Helping Hand When It Is White and Slender</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time he went leisurely to the door and opened it; a girl stood
+there, saying, "I beg your pardon for disturbing you--" It was high time
+she admitted it, for her eyes had been disturbing him day and night since
+the first time he passed her in the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She appeared to be a trifle frightened, too, and, scarcely waiting for
+his invitation, she stepped inside with a hurried glance behind her, and
+walked to the center of the room holding her skirts carefully as though
+stepping through wet grass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I am annoyed," she said in a voice not perfectly under command. "If
+you please, would you tell me whether there is such a thing as a
+pea-green mouse?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he did a mean thing; he could have cleared up that matter with a
+word, a smile, and--he didn't.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A green mouse?" he repeated gently, almost pitifully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded, then paled; he drew a big chair toward her, for her knees
+trembled a little; and she sat down with an appealing glance that ought
+to have made him ashamed of himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What has frightened you?" inquired that meanest of men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was in my studio--and I must first explain to you that for weeks and
+weeks I--I have imagined I heard sounds--" She looked carefully around
+her; nothing animate was visible. "Sounds," she repeated, swallowing a
+little lump in her white throat, "like the faint squealing and squeaking
+and sniffing and scratching of--of live things. I asked the janitor, and
+he said the house was not very well built and that the beams and
+wainscoting were shrinking."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did he say that?" inquired the young man, thinking of the bribes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, and I tried to believe him. And one day I thought I heard about one
+hundred canaries singing, and I know I did, but that idiot janitor said
+they were the sparrows under the eaves. Then one day when your door was
+open, and I was coming up the stairway, and it was dark in the entry,
+something big and soft flopped across the carpet, and--it being
+exceedingly common to scream--I didn't, but managed to get past it, and"--
+her violet eyes widened with horror--"do you know what that soft, floppy
+thing was? It was an owl!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was aware of it; he had managed to secure the escaped bird before her
+electric summons could arouse the janitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I called the janitor," she said, "and he came and we searched the entry;
+but there was no owl."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He appeared to be greatly impressed; she recognized the sympathy in his
+brown eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That wretched janitor declared I had seen a cat," she resumed; "and I
+could not persuade him otherwise. For a week I scarcely dared set foot on
+the stairs, but I had to--you see, I live at home and only come to my
+studio to paint."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought you lived here," he said, surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no. I have my studio--" she hesitated, then smiled. "Everybody makes
+fun of me, and I suppose they'll laugh me out of it, but I detest
+conventions, and I did hope I had talent for something besides
+frivolity."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her gaze wandered around his room; then suddenly the possible
+significance of her unconventional situation brought her to her feet,
+serious but self-possessed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I beg your pardon again," she said, "but I was really driven out of my
+studio--quite frightened, I confess."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What drove you out?" he asked guiltily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something--you can scarcely credit it--and I dare not tell the janitor
+for fear he will think me--queer." She raised her distressed and lovely
+eyes again: "Oh, please believe that I <i>did</i> see a bright green mouse!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do believe it," he said, wincing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you. I--I know perfectly well how it sounds--and I know that
+horrid people see things like that, but"--she spoke piteously--"I had
+only one glass of claret at luncheon, and I am perfectly healthy in body
+and mind. How could I see such a thing if it was not there?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was there," he declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you really think so? A green--bright green mouse?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Haven't a doubt of it," he assured her; "saw one myself the other day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On the floor--" he made a vague gesture. "There's probably a crack
+between your studio and my wall, and the little rascal crept into your
+place."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood looking at him uncertainly: "Are there really such things as
+green mice?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," he explained, "I fancy this one was originally white. Somebody
+probably dyed it green."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But who on earth would be silly enough to do such a thing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His ears grew red--he felt them doing it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a moment she said: "I am glad you told me that you, too, saw this
+unspeakable mouse. I have decided to write to the owners of the house and
+request an immediate investigation. Would--would it be too much to ask
+you to write also?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you--you going to write?" he asked, appalled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly. Either some dreadful creature here keeps a bird store and
+brings home things that escape, or the house is infested. I don't care
+what the janitor says; I did hear squeals and whines and whimpers!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Suppose--suppose we wait," he began lamely; but at that moment her blue
+eyes widened; she caught him convulsively by the arm, pointing, one snowy
+finger outstretched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh-h!" she said hysterically, and the next instant was standing upon a
+chair, pale as a ghost. It was a wonder she had not mounted the dresser,
+too, for there, issuing in creepy single file from the wainscoting, came
+mice--mice of various tints. A red one led the grewsome rank, a black and
+white one came next, then in decorous procession followed the guilty
+green one, a yellow one, a blue one, and finally--horror of horrors!--a
+red-white-and-blue mouse, carrying a tiny American flag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned a miserable face toward her; she, eyes dilated, frozen to a
+statue, saw him advance, hold out a white wand--saw the uncanny
+procession of mice mount the stick and form into a row, tails hanging
+down--saw him carry the creatures to a box and dump them in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was trying to speak now. She heard him stammer something about the
+escape of the mice; she heard him asking her pardon. Dazed, she laid her
+hand in his as he aided her to descend to the floor; nerveless,
+speechless, she sank into the big chair, horror still dilating her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's all up with me," he said slowly, "if you write to the owners. I've
+bribed the janitor to say nothing. I'm dreadfully mortified that these
+things have happened to annoy you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The color came back into her face; amazement dominated her anger. "But
+why--why do you keep such creatures?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why shouldn't I?" he asked. "It is my profession."
+
+"Your--what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My profession," he repeated doggedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh," she said, revolted, "that is not true! You are a gentleman--I know
+who you are perfectly well!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who am I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She called him by name, almost angrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," he said sullenly, "what of it? If you have investigated my record
+you must know I am as poor as these miserable mice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I know it. But you are a gentleman----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am a mountebank," he said; "I mean a mountebank in its original
+interpretation. There's neither sense nor necessity for me to deny it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I don't understand you," she whispered, shocked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, I do monkey tricks to entertain people," he replied, forcing a
+laugh, "or rather, I hope to do a few--and be paid for them. I fancy
+every man finds his own level; I've found mine, apparently."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face was inscrutable; she lay back in the great chair, watching him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have a little money left," he said; "enough to last a day or two. Then
+I am to be paid for entertaining some people at Seabright; and," he added
+with that very attractive smile of his from which all bitterness had
+departed, "and that will be the first money I ever earned in all my
+life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was young enough to be fascinated, child enough to feel the little
+lump in her throat rising. She knew he was poor; her sisters had told her
+that; but she had supposed it to be only comparative poverty--just as her
+cousins, for instance, had scarcely enough to keep more than two horses
+in town and only one motor. But want--actual need--she had never dreamed
+of in his case--she could scarcely understand it even now--he was so well
+groomed, so attractive, fairly radiating good breeding and the easy
+financial atmosphere she was accustomed to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you see," he continued gayly, "if you complain to the owners about
+green mice, why, I shall have to leave, and, as a matter of fact, I
+haven't enough money to go anywhere except--" he laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where?" she managed to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Park. I was joking, of course," he hastened to add, for she had
+turned rather white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," she said, "you were not joking." And as he made no reply: "Of
+course, I shall not write--now. I had rather my studio were overrun with
+multicolored mice--" She stopped with something almost like a sob. He
+smiled, thinking she was laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But oh, the blow for her! In her youthful enthusiasm she had always, from
+the first time they had encountered one another, been sensitively aware
+of this tall, clean-cut, attractive young fellow. And by and by she
+learned his name and asked her sisters about him, and when she heard of
+his recent ruin and withdrawal from the gatherings of his kind her youth
+flushed to its romantic roots, warming all within her toward this
+splendid and radiant young man who lived so nobly, so proudly aloof. And
+then--miracle of Manhattan!--he had proved his courage before her dazed
+eyes--rising suddenly out of the very earth to save her from a fate which
+her eager desire painted blacker every time she embellished the incident.
+And she decorated the memory of it every day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now! Here, beside her, was this prince among men, her champion,
+beaten to his ornamental knees by Fate, and contemplating a miserable,
+uncertain career to keep his godlike body from actual starvation. And
+she--she with more money than even she knew what to do with, powerless to
+aid him, prevented from flinging open her check book and bidding him to
+write and write till he could write no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A memory--a thought crept in. Where had she heard his name connected with
+her father's name? In Ophir Steel? Certainly; and was it not this young
+man's father who had laid the foundation for her father's fortune? She
+had heard some such thing, somewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: "I had no idea of boring anybody--you least of all--with my
+woes. Indeed, I haven't any sorrows now, because to-day I received my
+first encouragement; and no doubt I'll be a huge success. Only--I thought
+it best to make it clear why it would do me considerable damage just now
+if you should write."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell me," she said tremulously, "is there anything--anything I can do
+to--to balance the deep debt of gratitude I owe you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What debt?" he asked, astonished. "Oh! that? Why, that is no debt--
+except that I was happy--perfectly and serenely happy to have had that
+chance to--to hear your voice----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You were brave," she said hastily. "You may make as light of it as you
+please, but I know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So do I," he laughed, enchanted with the rising color in her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you don't; you don't know how I felt--how afraid I was to show how
+deeply--deeply I felt. I felt it so deeply that I did not even tell my
+sisters," she added naively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your sisters?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; you know them." And as he remained silent she said: "Do you not
+know who I am? Do you not even know my name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'd have given all I had to know; but, of course, I could not ask the
+servants!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Surprise, disappointment, hurt pride that he had had no desire to know
+gave quick place to a comprehension that set a little thrill tingling her
+from head to foot. His restraint was the nicest homage ever rendered her;
+she saw that instantly; and the straight look she gave him out of her
+clear eyes took his breath away for a second.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you remember Sacharissa?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do--certainly! I always thought----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?" she said, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He muttered something about eyes and white skin and a trick of the heavy
+lids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was perfectly at ease now; she leaned back in her chair, studying him
+calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Suppose," she said, "people could see me here now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It would end your artistic career," he replied, laughing; "and fancy! I
+took you for the sort that painted for a bare existence!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I--I took you for----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something very different than what I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In one way--not in others."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh! I look the mountebank?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall not explain what I mean," she said with heightened color, and
+rose from her chair. "As there are no more green mice to peep out at me
+from behind my easel," she added, "I can have no excuse from abandoning
+art any longer. Can I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trailing sweetness of the inquiry was scarcely a challenge, yet he
+dared take it up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You asked me," he said, "whether you could do anything for me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can I?" she exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will--I am glad--tell me what to do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, it's only this. I've got to go before an audience of two hundred
+people and do things. I've had practice here by myself, but--but if you
+don't mind I should like to try it before somebody--you. Do you mind?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood there, slim, blue-eyed, reflecting; then innocently: "If I've
+compromised myself the damage was done long ago, wasn't it? They're going
+to take away my studio anyhow, so I might as well have as much pleasure
+as I can."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she sat down, gracefully, linking her white fingers over her knees.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp036.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp037.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="iv">IV</a></h2>
+
+<h3>AN IDEAL IDOL</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>A Chapter Devoted to the Proposition that All Mankind Are Born of Woman</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began by suddenly filling the air with canary birds; they flew and
+chirped and fluttered about her head, until, bewildered, she shrank back,
+almost frightened at the golden hurricane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To reassure her he began doing incredible things with the big silver
+hoops, forming chains and linked figures under her amazed eyes, although
+each hoop seemed solid and without a break in its polished circumference.
+Then, one by one, he tossed the rings up and they vanished in mid-air
+before her very eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How did you do that?" she cried, enchanted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed and produced the big, white Persian cats, changed them into
+kittens, then into birds and butterflies, and finally into a bowl full of
+big, staring goldfish. Then he picked up a ladle, dipped out the fish,
+carefully fried them over an electric lamp, dumped them from the smoking
+frying pan back into the water, where they quietly swam off again,
+goggling their eyes in astonishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That," said the girl, excitedly, "is miraculous!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't it?" he said, delighted as a boy at her praise. "What card will
+you choose?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he handed her a pack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The ace of hearts, if you please."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Draw it from the pack."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any card?" she inquired. "Oh! how on earth did you make me draw the ace
+of hearts?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hold it tightly," he warned her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She clutched it in her pretty fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you sure you hold it?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perfectly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked and found that it was the queen of diamonds she held so
+tightly; but, looking again to reassure herself, she was astonished to
+find that the card was the jack of clubs. "Tear it up," he said. She tore
+it into small pieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Throw them into the air!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She obeyed, and almost cried out to see them take fire in mid-air and
+float away in ashy flakes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Face flushed, eyes brilliant, she turned to him, hanging on his every
+movement, every expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before her rapt eyes the multicolored mice danced jigs on slack wires,
+then were carefully rolled up into little balls of paper which
+immediately began to swell until each was as big as a football. These
+burst open, and out of each football of white paper came kittens,
+turtles, snakes, chickens, ducks, and finally two white rabbits with
+silly pink eyes that began gravely waltzing round and round the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please stand up and shake your skirts," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose hastily and obeyed; a rain of silver coins fell, then gold, then
+banknotes, littering the floor. Then precious stones began to drop about
+her; she shook them from her hair, her collar, her neck; she clenched her
+hands in nervous amazement, but inside each tight little fist she felt
+something, and opening her fingers she fairly showered the floor with
+diamonds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can't you save one for me?" he asked. "I really need it." But when again
+she looked for the glittering heap at her feet, it was gone; and, search
+as she might, not one coin, not one gem remained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Glancing up in dismay she found herself in a perfect storm of white
+butterflies--no, they were red--no, green!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there anything in this world you desire?" he asked her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--a glass of water----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was already holding it in her hands, and she cried out in amazement,
+spilling the brimming glass; but no water fell, only a rain of little
+crimson flames.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't--can't drink this--can I?" she faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With perfect safety," he smiled, and she tasted it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Taste it again," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tried it; it was lemonade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was ginger ale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Once more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stared at the glass, frothing with ice-cream soda; there was a long
+silver spoon in it, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Enchanted, she lay back, savoring her ice, shyly watching him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went on gayly doing uncanny or charming things; her eyes were tired,
+dazzled, but not too weary to watch him, though she scarcely followed the
+marvelous objects that appeared and vanished and glittered and flamed
+under his ceaselessly busy hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did notice with a shudder the appearance of an owl that sat for a
+while on his shoulder and then turned into a big fur muff which was all
+right as long as he held it, but walked away on four legs when he tossed
+it to the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A shower of brilliant things followed like shooting stars; two or three
+rose trees grew, budded, and bloomed before her eyes; and he laid the
+fresh, sweet blossoms in her hands. They turned to violets later, but
+that did not matter; nothing mattered any longer as long as she could lie
+there and gaze at him--the most splendid man her maiden eyes had ever
+unclosed upon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About two thousand yards of brilliant ribbons suddenly fell from the
+ceiling; she looked at him with something perilously close to a sigh. Out
+of an old hat he produced a cage full of parrots; every parrot repeated
+her first name decorously, monotonously, until packed back into the hat
+and stuffed into a box which was then set on fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her heart was pretty full now; for she was only eighteen and she had been
+considering his poverty. So when in due time the box burned out and from
+the black and charred <i>débris</i> the parrots stepped triumphantly forth,
+gravely repeating her name in unison; and when she saw that the
+entertainment was at an end, she rose, setting her ice-cream soda upon a
+table, and, although the glass instantly changed into a teapot, she
+walked straight up to him and held out her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've had a perfectly lovely time," she said. "And I want to say to you
+that I have been thinking of several things, and one is that it is
+perfectly ridiculous for you to be poor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is rather ridiculous," he admitted, surprised. "Isn't it! And no need
+of it at all. Your father made a fortune for my father. All you have to
+do is to let my father make a fortune for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that all?" he asked, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course. Why did you not tell him so? Have you seen him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," he said gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I saw others--I did not care to try--any more--friends."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you--now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please don't," he said quietly. Her hand still lay in his; she looked up
+at him; her eyes were starry bright and a little moist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I simply can't stand this," she said, steadying her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your--your distress--" She choked; her sensitive mouth trembled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good Heavens!" he breathed; "do you care!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Care--care," she stammered. "You saved my life with a laugh! You face
+st-starvation with a laugh! Your father made mine! Care? Yes, I care!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she had bent her head; a bright tear fell, spangling his polished
+shoes; the pulsating seconds passed; he laid his other hand above both of
+hers which he held, and stood silent, stunned, scarcely daring to
+understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor was it here he could understand or even hope--his instinct held him
+stupid and silent. Presently he released her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said "Good-by" calmly enough; he followed her to the door and opened
+it, watching her pass through the hall to her own door. And there she
+paused and looked back; and he found himself beside her again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Only," she began, "only don't do all those beautiful magic things for
+any--anybody else--will you? I wish to have--have them all for myself--to
+share them with no one----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He held her hands imprisoned again. "I will never do one of those things
+for anybody but you," he said unsteadily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Truly?" Her face caught fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, truly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how--how, then, can you--can----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't care what happens to me!" he said. To look at him nobody would
+have thought him young enough to say that sort of thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I care," she said, releasing her hands and stepping back into her
+studio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment her lovely, daring face swam before his eyes; then, in the
+next moment, she was in his arms, crying her eyes out against his
+shoulder, his lips pressed to her bright hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And that was all right in its way, too; madder things have happened in
+our times; but nothing madder ever happened than a large, bald gentleman
+who came up the stairs in a series of bounces and planted his legs apart
+and tightened his pudgy grip upon his malacca walking stick, and
+confronted them with distended eyes and waistband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In vigorous but incoherent English he begged to know whether this scene
+was part of an education in art.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Papah," she said calmly, "you are just in time. Go into the studio and
+I'll come in one moment."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then giving her lover both hands and looking at him with all her soul in
+her young eyes: "I love you; I'll marry you. And if there's trouble"--she
+smiled upon her frantic father--"if there is trouble I will follow you
+about the country exhibiting green mice----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!" thundered her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Green mice," she repeated with an adorable smile at her lover--"unless
+my father finds a necessity for you in his business--with a view to
+partnership. And I'm going to let you arrange that together. Good-by."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she entered her studio, closing the door behind her, leaving the two
+men confronting one another in the entry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For one so young she had much wisdom and excellent taste; and listening,
+she heard her father explode in one lusty Saxon word. He always said it
+when beaten; it was the beginning of the end, and the end of the sweetest
+beginning that ever dawned on earth for a maid since the first sunbeam
+stole into Eden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she sat down on her little camp stool before her easel and picked up a
+hand glass; and, sitting there, carefully removed all traces of tears
+from her wet and lovely eyes with the cambric hem of her painting apron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Damnation!" repeated Mr. Carr, "am I to understand that the only thing
+you can do for a living is to go about with a troupe of trained mice?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've invented a machine," observed the young man, modestly. "It ought to
+be worth millions--if you'd care to finance it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The idea is utterly repugnant to me!" shouted her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man reddened. "If you wouldn't mind examining it--" He drew
+from his pocket a small, delicately contrived bit of clockwork. "This is
+the machine----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want to see it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You <i>have</i> seen it. Do you mind sitting down a moment? Be careful of
+that kitten! Kindly take this chair. Thank you. Now, if you would be good
+enough to listen for ten minutes----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want to be good enough! Do you hear!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I hear," said young Destyn, patiently. "And as I was going to
+explain, the earth is circumscribed by wireless currents of
+electricity----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--dammit, sir----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But those are not the only invisible currents that are ceaselessly
+flowing around our globe!" pursued the young man, calmly. "Do you see
+this machine?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't!" snarled the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--" And, leaning closer, William Augustus Destyn whispered into
+Bushwyck Carr's fat, red ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!!!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can't <i>prove</i> it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Watch me."
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+Ethelinda had dried her eyes. Every few minutes she glanced anxiously at
+the little French clock over her easel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What on earth can they be doing?" she murmured. And when the long hour
+struck she arose with resolution and knocked at the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come in," said her father, irritably, "but don't interrupt. William and
+I are engaged in a very important business transaction."
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp048.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp049.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="v">V</a></h2>
+
+<h3>SACHARISSA</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Treating of Certain Scientific Events Succeeding the Wedding Journey of
+William and Ethelinda</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa took the chair. She knew nothing about parliamentary
+procedure; neither did her younger, married sister, Ethelinda, nor the
+recently acquired family brother-in-law, William Augustus Destyn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The meeting will come to order," said Sacharissa, and her brother-in-law
+reluctantly relinquished his new wife's hand--all but one finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Chairman," he began, rising to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chair recognized him and bit into a chocolate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I move that our society be known as The Green Mouse, Limited."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why limited?" asked Sacharissa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?" replied her sister, warmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, what does your young man mean by limited?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose," said Linda, "that he means it is to be the limit. Don't you,
+William?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly," said Destyn, gravely; and the motion was put and carried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rissa, dear!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chair casually recognized her younger sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I propose that the object of this society be to make its members very,
+very wealthy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The motion was carried; Linda picked up a scrap of paper and began to
+figure up the possibility of a new touring car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Destyn arose; the chair nodded to him and leaned back, playing a
+tattoo with her pencil tip against her snowy teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began in his easy, agreeable voice, looking across at his pretty wife:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know, dearest--and Sacharissa, over there, is also aware--that, in
+the course of my economical experiments in connection with your father's
+Wireless Trust, I have accidentally discovered how to utilize certain
+brand-new currents of an extraordinary character."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa's expression became skeptical; Linda watched her husband in
+unfeigned admiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"These new and hitherto unsuspected currents," continued Destyn modestly,
+"are not electrical but psychical. Yet, like wireless currents, their
+flow eternally encircles the earth. These currents, I believe, have their
+origin in that great unknown force which, for lack of a better name, we
+call fate, or predestination. And I am convinced that by intercepting one
+of these currents it is possible to connect the subconscious
+personalities of two people of opposite sex who, although ultimately
+destined for one another since the beginning of things, have, through
+successive incarnations, hitherto missed the final consummation--
+marriage!--which was the purpose of their creation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bill, dear," sighed Linda, "how exquisitely you explain the infinite."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fudge!" said Sacharissa; "go on, William."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's all," said Destyn. "We agreed to put in a thousand dollars apiece
+for me to experiment with. I've perfected the instrument--here it is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, flat jeweler's case and took
+out a delicate machine resembling the complicated interior of a watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," he said, "with this tiny machine concealed in my waistcoat pocket,
+I walk up to any man and, by turning a screw like the stem of a watch,
+open the microscopical receiver. Into the receiver flow all psychical
+emanations from that unsuspicious citizen. The machine is charged,
+positively. Then I saunter up to some man, place the instrument on a
+table--like that--touch a lever. Do you see that hair wire of Rosium
+uncoil like a tentacle? It is searching, groping for the invisible,
+negative, psychical current which will carry its message."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To whom?" asked Sacharissa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To the subconscious personality of the only woman for whom he was
+created, the only woman on earth whose psychic personality is properly
+attuned to intercept that wireless greeting and respond to it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can you tell whether she responds?" asked Sacharissa, incredulously.
+He pointed to the hair wire of Rosium:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I watch that. The instant that the psychical current reaches and awakens
+her, crack!--a minute point of blue incandescence tips the tentacle. It's
+done; psychical communication is established. And that man and that
+woman, wherever they may be on earth, surely, inexorably, will be drawn
+together, even from the uttermost corners of the world, to fulfill that
+for which they were destined since time began."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a semirespectful silence; Linda looked at the little jewel-like
+machine with a slight shudder; Sacharissa shrugged her young shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How much of this," said she, "is theory and how much is fact?--for,
+William, you always were something of a poet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know. A month ago I tried it on your father's footman, and in a
+week he'd married a perfectly strange parlor maid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, they do such things, anyway," observed Sacharissa, and added,
+unconvinced: "Did that tentacle burn blue?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It certainly did," said Destyn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Linda murmured: "I believe in it. Let's issue stock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To issue stock is one thing," said Destyn, "to get people to buy it is
+another. You and I may believe in Green Mouse, Limited, but the rest of
+the world is always from beyond the Mississippi."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," said Linda, "is to prove your theory by practicing on
+people. They may not like the idea, but they'll be so grateful, when
+happily and unexpectedly married, that they'll buy stock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Or give us testimonials," added Sacharissa, "that their bliss was
+entirely due to a single dose of Green Mouse, Limited."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be flippant," said Linda. "Think what William's invention means to
+the world! Think of the time it will save young men barking up wrong
+trees! Think of the trouble saved--no more doubt, no timidity, no
+hesitation, no speculation, no opposition from parents."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any of our clients," added Destyn, "can be instantly switched on to a
+private psychical current which will clinch the only girl in the world.
+Engagements will be superfluous; those two simply can't get away from
+each other."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If that were true," observed Sacharissa, "it would be most unpleasant.
+There would be no fun in it. However," she added, smiling, "I don't
+believe in your theory or your machine, William. It would take more than
+that combination to make me marry anybody."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then we're not going to issue stock?" asked Linda. "I do need so many
+new and expensive things."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We've got to experiment a little further, first," said Destyn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa laughed: "You blindfold me, give me a pencil and lay the
+Social Register before me. Whatever name I mark you are to experiment
+with."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't mark any of our friends," began Linda.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can I tell whom I may choose. It's fair for everybody. Come; do you
+promise to abide by it--you two?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They promised doubtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So do I, then," said Sacharissa. "Hurry up and blindfold me, somebody.
+The bus will be here in half an hour, and you know how father acts when
+kept waiting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Linda tied her eyes with a handkerchief, gave her a pencil and seated
+herself on an arm of the chair watching the pencil hovering over the
+pages of the Social Register which her sister was turning at hazard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>This</i> page," announced Sacharissa, "and <i>this</i> name!" marking it with a
+quick stroke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Linda gave a stifled cry and attempted to arrest the pencil; but the
+moving finger had written.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whom have I selected?" inquired the girl, whisking the handkerchief from
+her eyes. "What are you having a fit about, Linda?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, looking at the page, she saw that she had marked her own name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We must try it again," said Destyn, hastily. "That doesn't count. Tie
+her up, Linda."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But--that wouldn't be fair," said Sacharissa, hesitating whether to take
+it seriously or laugh. "We all promised, you know. I ought to abide by
+what I've done."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be silly," said Linda, preparing the handkerchief and laying it
+across her sister's forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa pushed it away. "I can't break my word, even to myself," she
+said, laughing. "I'm not afraid of that machine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mean to say you are willing to take silly chances?" asked Linda,
+uneasily. "I believe in William's machine whether you do or not. And I
+don't care to have any of the family experimented with."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I were willing to try it on others it would be cowardly for me to
+back out now," said Sacharissa, forcing a smile; for Destyn's and Linda's
+seriousness was beginning to make her a trifle uncomfortable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unless you want to marry somebody pretty soon you'd better not risk it,"
+said Destyn, gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You--you don't particularly care to marry anybody, just now, do you,
+dear?" asked Linda. "No," replied her sister, scornfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a silence; Sacharissa, uneasy, bit her underlip and sat looking
+at the uncanny machine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was a tall girl, prettily formed, one of those girls with long limbs,
+narrow, delicate feet and ankles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That sort of girl, when she also possesses a mass of chestnut hair, a
+sweet mouth and gray eyes, is calculated to cause trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there she sat, one knee crossed over the other, slim foot swinging,
+perplexed brows bent slightly inward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't see any honorable way out of it," she said resolutely. "I said
+I'd abide by the blindfolded test."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When we promised we weren't thinking of ourselves," insisted Ethelinda.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That doesn't release us," retorted her Puritan sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?" demanded Linda. "Suppose, for example, your pencil had marked
+William's name! That would have been im--immoral!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Would</i> it?" asked Sacharissa, turning her honest, gray eyes on her
+brother-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't believe it would," he said; "I'd only be switched on to Linda's
+current again." And he smiled at his wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa sat thoughtful and serious, swinging her foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," she said, at length, "I might as well face it at once. If there's
+anything in this instrument we'll all know it pretty soon. Turn on your
+receiver, Billy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh," cried Linda, tearfully, "don't you do it, William!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Turn it on," repeated Sacharissa. "I'm not going to be a coward and
+break faith with myself, and you both know it! If I've got to go through
+the silliness of love and marriage I might as well know who the bandarlog
+is to be.... Anyway, I don't really believe in this thing.... I can't
+believe in it.... Besides, I've a mind and a will of my own, and I fancy
+it will require more than amateur psychical experiments to change either.
+Go on, Billy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean it?" he asked, secretly gratified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly," with superb affectation of indifference. And she rose and
+faced the instrument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Destyn looked at his wife. He was dying to try it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will!" she exclaimed, "suppose we are not going to like Rissa's possible
+f--fiance! Suppose father doesn't like him!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll all probably like him as well as I shall," said her sister
+defiantly. "Willy, stop making frightened eyes at your wife and start
+your infernal machine!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a vicious click, a glitter of shifting clockwork, a snap, and
+it was done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you now, <i>theoretically</i>, got my psychical current bottled up?" she
+asked disdainfully. But her lip trembled a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded, looking very seriously at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now you are going to switch me on to this unknown gentleman's
+psychical current?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't let him!" begged Linda. "Billy, dear, how <i>can</i> you when nobody
+has the faintest idea who the creature may turn out to be!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go ahead!" interrupted her sister, masking misgiving under a careless
+smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Click! Up shot the glittering, quivering tentacle of Rosium, vibrating
+for a few moments like a thread of silver. Suddenly it was tipped with a
+blue flash of incandescence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! There he is!" cried Linda, excitedly. "Rissy! Rissy,
+little sister, <i>what</i> have you done?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing," she said, catching her breath. "I don't believe that flash
+means anything. I don't feel a bit different--not the least bit. I feel
+perfectly well and perfectly calm. I don't love anybody and I'm not going
+to love anybody--until I want to, and that will probably never happen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, she permitted her sister to take her in her arms and pet her. It
+was rather curious how exceedingly young and inexperienced she felt. She
+found it agreeable to be fussed over and comforted and cradled, and for a
+few moments she suffered Linda's solicitude and misgivings in silence.
+After a while, however, she became ashamed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing is going to happen, Linda," she said, looking dreamily up at the
+ceiling; "don't worry, dear; I shall escape the bandarlog."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If something doesn't happen," observed Destyn, pocketing his instrument,
+"the Green Mouse, Limited, will go into liquidation with no liabilities
+and no assets, and there'll be no billions for you or for me or for
+anybody."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"William," said his wife, "do you place a low desire for money before
+your own sister-in-law's spiritual happiness?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, darling, of course not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then you and I had better pray for the immediate bankruptcy of the Green
+Mouse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her husband said, "By all means," without enthusiasm, and looked out of
+the window. "Still," he added, "I made a happy marriage. I'm for wedding
+bells every time. Sacharissa will like it, too. I don't know why you and
+I shouldn't be enthusiastic optimists concerning wedded life; I can't see
+why we shouldn't pray for Sacharissa's early marriage."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"William!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, darling."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You <i>are</i> considering money before my sister's happiness!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But in her case I don't see why we can't conscientiously consider both."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Linda cast one tragic glance at her material husband, pushed her sister
+aside, arose and fled. After her sped the contrite Destyn; a distant door
+shut noisily; all the elements had gathered for the happy, first quarrel
+of the newly wedded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fudge," said Sacharissa, walking to the window, slim hands clasped
+loosely behind her back.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp062.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp063.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="vi">VI</a></h2>
+
+<h3>IN WRONG</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Wherein Sacharissa Remains In and a Young Man Can't Get Out</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The snowstorm had ceased; across Fifth Avenue the Park resembled the
+mica-incrusted view on an expensive Christmas card. Every limb, branch,
+and twig was outlined in clinging snow; crystals of it glittered under
+the morning sun; brilliantly dressed children, with sleds, romped and
+played over the dazzling expanse. Overhead the characteristic deep blue
+arch of a New York sky spread untroubled by a cloud. Her family--that is,
+her father, brother-in-law, married sister, three unmarried sisters and
+herself--were expecting to leave for Tuxedo about noon. Why? Nobody knows
+why the wealthy are always going somewhere. However, they do, fortunately
+for story writers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's quite as beautiful here," thought Sacharissa to herself, "as it is
+in the country. I'm sorry I'm going."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Idling there by the sunny window and gazing out into the white expanse,
+she had already dismissed all uneasiness in her mind concerning the
+psychical experiment upon herself. That is to say, she had not exactly
+dismissed it, she used no conscious effort, it had gone of itself--or,
+rather, it had been crowded out, dominated by a sudden and strong
+disinclination to go to Tuxedo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she stood there the feeling grew and persisted, and, presently, she
+found herself repeating aloud: "I don't want to go, I <i>don't</i> want to go.
+It's stupid to go. Why should I go when it's stupid to go and I'd rather
+stay here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Ethelinda and Destyn were having a classical reconciliation in
+a distant section of the house, and the young wife had got as far as:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling, I am <i>so</i> worried about Rissa. I <i>do</i> wish she were not going
+to Tuxedo. There are so many attractive men expected at the Courlands'."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She can't escape men anywhere, can she?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no; but there will be a concentration of particularly good-looking and
+undesirable ones at Tuxedo this week. That idle, horrid, cynical crowd is
+coming from Long Island, and I <i>don't</i> want her to marry any of them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then, make her stay at home."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She wants to go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's the good of an older sister if you can't make her mind you?" he
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She won't. She's set her heart on going. All those boisterous winter
+sports appeal to her. Besides, how can one member of the family be absent
+on New Year's Day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arm in arm they strolled out into the great living room, where a large,
+pompous, vividly colored gentleman was laying down the law to the
+triplets--three very attractive young girls, dressed precisely alike, who
+said, "Yes, pa-<i>pah!</i>" and "No pa-<i>pah!</i>" in a grave and silvery-voiced
+chorus whenever filial obligation required it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And another thing," continued the pudgy and vivid old gentleman, whose
+voice usually ended in a softly mellifluous shout when speaking
+emphatically: "that worthless Westbury--Cedarhurst--Jericho--
+Meadowbrook set are going to be in evidence at this housewarming, and I
+caution you now against paying anything but the slightest, most
+superficial and most frivolous attention to anything that any of those
+young whip-snapping, fox-hunting cubs may say to you. Do you hear?" with
+a mellow shout like a French horn on a touring car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, pa-<i>pah!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old gentleman waved his single eyeglass in token of dismissal, and
+looked at his watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The bus is here," he said fussily. "Come on, Will; come, Linda, and you,
+Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla, get your furs on. Don't take the
+elevator. Go down by the stairs, and hurry! If there's one thing in this
+world I won't do it is to wait for anybody on earth!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flunkies and maids flew distractedly about with fur coats, muffs, and
+stoles. In solemn assemblage the family expedition filed past the
+elevator, descended the stairs to the lower hall, and there drew up for
+final inspection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A mink-infested footman waited outside; valets, butlers, second-men and
+maids came to attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where's Sacharissa?" demanded Mr. Carr, sonorously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here, dad," said his oldest daughter, strolling calmly into the hall,
+hands still linked loosely behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why haven't you got your hat and furs on?" demanded her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because I'm not going, dad," she said sweetly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The family eyed her in amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not going?" shouted her father, in a mellow bellow. "Yes, you are! Not
+<i>going!</i> And why the dickens not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I really don't know, dad," she said listlessly. "I don't want to go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father waved both pudgy arms furiously. "Don't you feel well? You
+look well. You <i>are</i> well. Don't you <i>feel</i> well?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perfectly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you don't! You're pale! You're pallid! You're peaked! Take a tonic
+and lie down. Send your maid for some doctors--all kinds of doctors--and
+have them fix you up. Then come to Tuxedo with your maid to-morrow
+morning. Do you hear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well, dad."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And keep out of that elevator until it's fixed. It's likely to do
+anything. Ferdinand," to the man at the door, "have it fixed at once.
+Sacharissa, send that maid of yours for a doctor!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well, dad!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She presented her cheek to her emphatic parent; he saluted it
+explosively, wheeled, marshaled the family at a glance, started them
+forward, and closed the rear with his own impressive person. The iron
+gates clanged, the door of the opera bus snapped, and Sacharissa strolled
+back into the rococo reception room not quite certain why she had not
+gone, not quite convinced that she was feeling perfectly well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the first few minutes her face had been going hot and cold,
+alternately flushed and pallid. Her heart, too, was acting in an unusual
+manner--making sufficient stir for her to become uneasily aware of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Probably," she thought to herself, "I've eaten too many chocolates." She
+looked into the large gilded box, took another and ate it reflectively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A curious languor possessed her. To combat it she rang for her maid,
+intending to go for a brisk walk, but the weight of the furs seemed to
+distress her. It was absurd. She threw them off and sat down in the
+library.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A little while later her maid found her lying there, feet crossed, arms
+stretched backward to form a cradle for her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you ill, Miss Carr?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Sacharissa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid cast an alarmed glance at her mistress' pallid face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you see Dr. Blimmer, miss?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid hesitated:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Beg pardon, but Mr. Carr said you was to see some doctors."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well," she said indifferently. "And please hand me those
+chocolates. I don't care for any luncheon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No luncheon, miss?" in consternation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa had never been known to shun sustenance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The symptom thoroughly frightened her maid, and in a few minutes she had
+Dr. Blimmer's office on the telephone; but that eminent practitioner was
+out. Then she found in succession the offices of Doctors White, Black,
+and Gray. Two had gone away over New Year's, the other was out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid, who was clever and resourceful, went out to hunt up a doctor.
+There are, in the cross streets, plenty of doctors between the Seventies
+and Eighties. She found one without difficulty--that is, she found the
+sign in the window, but the doctor was out on his visits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made two more attempts with similar results, then, discovering a
+doctor's sign in a window across the street, started for it regardless of
+snowdrifts, and at the same moment the doctor's front door opened and a
+young man, with a black leather case in his hand, hastily descended the
+icy steps and hurried away up the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid ran after him and arrived at his side breathless, excited:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, <i>could</i> you come--just for a moment, if you please, sir! Miss Carr
+won't eat her luncheon!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!" said the young man, surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Carr wishes to see you--just for a----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Carr?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Sacharissa!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sacharissa?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes, sir--she----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't know any Miss Sacharissa!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I understand that, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look here, young woman, do you know my name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, sir, but that doesn't make any difference to Miss Carr."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She wishes to see <i>me!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I'm in a hurry to catch a train." He looked hard at the maid, at his
+watch, at the maid again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you perfectly sure you're not mistaken?" he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, sir, I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A certain Miss Sacharissa Carr desires to see <i>me?</i> Are you certain of
+that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, sir--she----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where does she live?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One thousand eight and a half Fifth Avenue, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've got just three minutes. Can you run?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--yes!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come on, then!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And away they galloped, his overcoat streaming out behind, the maid's
+skirts flapping and her narrow apron flickering in the wind. Wayfarers
+stopped to watch their pace--a pace which brought them to the house in
+something under a minute. Ferdinand, the second man, let them in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, then," panted the young man, "which way? I'm in a hurry, remember!"
+And he started on a run for the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please follow me, sir; the elevator is quicker!" gasped the maid,
+opening the barred doors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man sprang into the lighted car, the maid turned to fling off
+hat and jacket before entering; something went fizz-bang! snap! clink!
+and the lights in the car were extinguished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!" shrieked the maid, "it's running away again! Jump, sir!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ornate, rococo elevator, as a matter of fact, was running away,
+upward, slowly at first. Its astonished occupant turned to jump out--too
+late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"P-push the third button, sir! Quick!" cried the maid, wringing her
+hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-where is it!" stammered the young man, groping nervously in the dark
+car. "I can't see any."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cr-rack!" went something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's stopped! It's going to fall!" screamed the maid. "Run, Ferdinand!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man at the door ran upstairs for a few steps, then distractedly slid
+to the bottom, shouting:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you hurt, sir?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," came a disgusted voice from somewhere up the shaft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every landing was now noisy with servants, maids sped upstairs, flunkeys
+sped down, a butler waddled in a circle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is anybody going to get me out of this?" demanded the voice in the
+shaft. "I've a train to catch."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The perspiring butler poked his head into the shaft from below:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Ow far hup, sir, might you be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How the devil do I know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can't you see nothink, sir?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I can see a landing and a red room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'E's stuck hunder the library!" exclaimed the butler, and there was a
+rush for the upper floors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rush was met and checked by a tall, young girl who came leisurely
+along the landing, nibbling a chocolate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is all this noise about?" she asked. "Has the elevator gone wrong
+again?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Glancing across the landing at the grille which screened the shaft she
+saw the gilded car--part of it--and half of a perfectly strange young man
+looking earnestly out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's the doctor!" wailed her maid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That isn't Dr. Blimmer!" said her mistress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, miss, it's a perfectly strange doctor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am <i>not</i> a doctor," observed the young man, coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa drew nearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If that maid of yours had asked me," he went on, "I'd have told her. She
+saw me coming down the steps of a physician's house--I suppose she
+mistook my camera case for a case of medicines."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did--oh, I did!" moaned the maid, and covered her head with her apron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," said Sacharissa, calmly, "is to send for the nearest
+plumber. Ferdinand, go immediately!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Meanwhile," said the imprisoned young man, "I shall miss my train. Can't
+somebody break that grille? I could climb out that way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sparks," said Miss Carr, "can you break that grille?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sparks tried. A kitchen maid brought a small tackhammer--the only "'ammer
+in the 'ouse," according to Sparks, who pounded at the foliated steel
+grille and broke the hammer off short.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did it 'it you in the 'ead, sir?" he asked, panting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly," replied the young man, grinding his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sparks 'oped as 'ow it didn't 'urt the gentleman. The gentleman stanched
+his wound in terrible silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently Ferdinand came back to report upon the availability of the
+family plumber. It appeared that all plumbers, locksmiths, and similar
+indispensable and free-born artisans had closed shop at noon and would
+not reopen until after New Year's, subject to the Constitution of the
+United States.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But this gentleman cannot remain here until after New Year's," said
+Sacharissa. "He says he is in a hurry. Do you hear, Sparks?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The servants stood in a helpless row.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ferdinand," she said, "Mr. Carr told you to have that elevator fixed
+before it was used again!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ferdinand stared wildly at the grille and ran his thumb over the bars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Clark"--to her maid--"I am astonished that you permitted this
+gentleman to risk the elevator."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He was in a hurry--I thought he was a doctor." The maid dissolved into
+tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is now," broke in the voice from the shaft, "an utter impossibility
+for me to catch any train in the United States."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am dreadfully sorry," said Sacharissa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't there an ax in the house?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The butler mournfully denied it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then get the furnace bar."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was fetched; nerve-racking blows rained on the grille; puffing
+servants applied it as a lever, as a battering-ram, as a club. The house
+rang like a boiler factory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't stand any more of that!" shouted the young man. "Stop it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa looked about her, hands closing both ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Send them away," said the young man, wearily. "If I've got to stay here
+I want a chance to think."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After she had dismissed the servants Sacharissa drew up a chair and
+seated herself a few feet from the grille. She could see half the car and
+half the man--plainer, now that she had come nearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a young and rather attractive looking fellow, cheek tied up in his
+handkerchief, where the head of the hammer had knocked off the skin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me get some witch-hazel," said Sacharissa, rising.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want to write a telegram first," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she brought some blanks, passed them and a pencil down to him through
+the grille, and reseated herself.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp078.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+<h2><a name="vii">VII</a></h2>
+
+<h3>THE INVISIBLE WIRE</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>In Which the Telephone Continues Ringing</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he had finished writing he sorted out some silver, and handed it and
+the yellow paper to Sacharissa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's dark in here. Would you mind reading it aloud to me to see if I've
+made it plain?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly," said Sacharissa; and she read:
+</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+MRS. DELANCY COURLAND,
+
+<p>
+Tuxedo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I'm stuck in an idiotic elevator at 1008-1/2 Fifth Avenue. If I don't
+appear by New Year's you'll know why. Be careful that no reporters get
+hold of this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KILLIAN VAN K. VANDERDYNK.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa flushed deeply. "I can't send this," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?" demanded the young man, irritably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because, Mr. Vanderdynk, my father, brother-in-law, married sister, and
+three younger sisters are expected at the Courlands'. Imagine what effect
+such a telegram would have on them!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then cross out the street and number," he said; "just say I'm stuck in a
+strange elevator."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did so, rang, and a servant took away the telegram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," said the heir apparent to the Prince Regency of Manhattan, "there
+are two things still" possible. First, you might ring up police
+headquarters and ask for aid; next, request assistance from fire
+headquarters."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I do," she said, "wouldn't the newspapers get hold of it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are perfectly right," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had now drawn her chair so close to the gilded grille that, hands
+resting upon it, she could look down into the car where sat the scion of
+the Vanderdynks on a flimsy Louis XV chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't express to you how sorry I am," she said. "Is there anything I
+can do to--to ameliorate your imprisonment?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her in a bewildered way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't expect me to remain here until after New Year's, do you?" he
+inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't see how you can avoid it. Nobody seems to want to work until
+after New Year's."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stay in a cage--two days and a night!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps I had better call up the police."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no! Wait. I'll tell you what to do. Start that man, Ferdinand, on a
+tour of the city. If he hunts hard enough and long enough he'll find some
+plumber or locksmith or somebody who'll come."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rang for Ferdinand; together they instructed him, and he went away,
+promising to bring salvation in some shape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which promise made the young man more cheerful and smoothed out the
+worried pucker between Sacharissa's straight brows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose," she said, "that you will never forgive my maid for this--or
+me either."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed. "After all," he admitted, "it's rather funny."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't believe you think it's funny."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Didn't you want to go to Tuxedo?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I!" He looked up at the pretty countenance of Sacharissa. "I <i>did</i> want
+to--a few minutes ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now that you can't your philosophy teaches you that you <i>don't</i> want
+to?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They laughed at each other in friendly fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps it's my philosophy," he said, "but" I really don't care very
+much.... I'm not sure that I care at all.... In fact, now that I think of
+it, why should I have wished to go to Tuxedo? It's stupid to want to go
+to Tuxedo when New York is so attractive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," she said reflectively, "that I came to the same
+conclusion?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Be-before you--I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes," she said rather hastily, "before you came----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She broke off, pink with consternation. What a ridiculous thing to say!
+What on earth was twisting her tongue to hint at such an absurdity?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said, gravely, with heightened color: "I was standing by the window
+this morning, thinking, and it occurred to me that I didn't care to go to
+Tuxedo.... When did you change <i>your</i> mind?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A few minutes a--that is--well, I never <i>really</i> wanted to go. It's
+jollier in town. Don't you think so? Blue sky, snow--er--and all that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she said, "it is perfectly delightful in town to-day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He assented, then looked discouraged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps you would like to go out?" he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I? Oh, no.... The sun on the snow is bad for one's eyes; don't you think
+so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very.... I'm terribly sorry that I'm giving you so much trouble."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't mind--really. If only I could do something for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; you are being exceedingly nice to me. I am afraid you feel under
+obligations to remain indoors and----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Truly, I don't. I was not going out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She leaned nearer and looked through the bars: "Are you quite sure you
+feel comfortable?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I feel like something in a zoo!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed. "That reminds me," she said, "have you had any luncheon?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not, it appeared, after a little polite protestation, so she rang
+for Sparks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her own appetite, too, had returned when the tray was brought; napkin and
+plate were passed through the grille to him, and, as they lunched, he in
+his cage, she close to the bars, they fell into conversation, exchanging
+information concerning mutual acquaintances whom they had expected to
+meet at the Delancy Courlands'.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you see," she said, "that if I had not changed my mind about going to
+Tuxedo this morning you would not be here now. Nor I.... And we would
+never have--lunched together."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That didn't alter things," he said, smiling. "If you hadn't been ill you
+would have gone to Tuxedo, and I should have seen you there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then, whatever I did made no difference," she assented, thoughtfully,
+"for we were bound to meet, anyway."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He remained standing close to the grille, which, as she was seated,
+brought his head on a level with hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It would seem," he said laughingly, "as though we were doomed to meet
+each other, anyway. It looks like a case of Destiny to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She started slightly: "What did you say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I said that it looks as though Fate intended us to meet, anyhow. Don't
+you think so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She remained silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He added cheerfully: "I never was afraid of Fate."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you care for a--a book--or anything?" she asked, aware of a new
+constraint in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't believe I could see to read in here.... Are you--going?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--ought to." Vexed at the feeble senselessness of her reply she found
+herself walking down the landing, toward nowhere in particular. She
+turned abruptly and came back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you want a book?" she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I forgot that you can't see to read. But perhaps you might care to
+smoke."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you going away?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--don't mind your smoking."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lighted a cigarette; she looked at him irresolutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mustn't think of remaining," he said. Whereupon she seated herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose I ought to try to amuse you--till Ferdinand returns with a
+plumber," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He protested: "I couldn't think of asking so much from you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Anyway, it's my duty," she insisted. "I ought."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because you are under my roof--a guest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please don't think----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I really don't mind! If there is anything I can do to make your
+imprisonment easier----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is easy. I rather like being here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is very amiable of you to say so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I really mean it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can you <i>really</i> mean it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know, but I do." In their earnestness they had come close to the
+bars; she stood with both hands resting on the grille, looking in; he in
+a similar position, looking out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: "I feel like an occupant of the Bronx, and it rather astonishes
+me that you haven't thrown me in a few peanuts."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed, fetched her box of chocolates, then began seriously: "If
+Ferdinand doesn't find anybody I'm afraid you might be obliged to remain
+to dinner."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That prospect," he said, "is not unpleasant. You know when one becomes
+accustomed to one's cage it's rather a bore to be let out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sampled the chocolates, she sitting close to the cage, and as the
+box would not go through the bars she was obliged to hand them to him,
+one by one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder," she mused, "how soon Ferdinand will find a plumber?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bent her adorable head, chose a chocolate and offered it to him.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp086.jpg"><img src="images/illp086_th.jpg" alt="'Are you not terribly impatient?' she inquired"></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you not terribly impatient?" she inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not--terribly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their glances encountered and she said hurriedly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sure you must be perfectly furious with everybody in this house.
+I--I think it is most amiable of you to behave so cheerfully about it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As a matter of fact," he said, "I'm feeling about as cheerful as I ever
+felt in my life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cooped up in a cage?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Which may fall at any--" The idea was a new one to them both. She leaned
+forward in sudden consternation. "I never thought of that!" she
+exclaimed. "You don't think there's any chance of its falling, do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the startled, gray eyes so earnestly fixed on his. The sweet
+mouth quivered a little--just a little--or he thought it did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," he replied, with a slight catch in his voice, "I don't believe it's
+going to fall."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps you had better not move around very much in it. Be careful, I
+beg of you. You will, won't you, Mr. Vanderdynk?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please don't let it bother you," he said, stepping toward her
+impulsively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, don't, don't move!" she exclaimed. "You really must keep perfectly
+still. Won't you promise me you will keep perfectly still?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll promise you anything," he said a little wildly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither seemed to notice that he had overdone it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drew her chair as close as it would go to the grille and leaned
+against it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You <i>will</i> keep up your courage, won't you?" she asked anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly. By the way, how far is it to the b-basement?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned quite white for an instant, then:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think I'd better go and ring up the police."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No! A thousand times no! I couldn't stand that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the car might--drop before----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Better decently dead than publicly paragraphed.... I haven't the least
+idea that this thing is going to drop.... Anyway, it's worth it," he
+added, rather vaguely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Worth--what?" she asked, looking into his rather winning, brown eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Being here," he said, looking into her engaging gray ones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a startling silence she said calmly: "Will you promise me not to
+move or shake the car till I return?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You won't be very long, will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not--very," she replied faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked into the library, halted in the center of the room, hands
+clasped behind her. Her heart was beating like a trip hammer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I might as well face it," she said to herself; "he is--by far--the most
+thoroughly attractive man I have ever seen.... I--I <i>don't</i> know what's
+the matter," she added piteously.... "if it's that machine William made I
+can't help it; I don't care any longer; I wish----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sharp crack from the landing sent her out there in a hurry, pale and
+frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something snapped somewhere," explained the young man with forced
+carelessness, "some unimportant splinter gave way and the thing slid down
+an inch or two."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"D-do you think----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't. But it's perfectly fine of you to care."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"C-care? I'm a little frightened, of course.... Anybody would be.... Oh,
+I wish you were out and p-perfectly safe." "If I thought you could ever
+really care what became of a man like me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Killian Van K. Vanderdynk's aristocratic senses began gyrating; he
+grasped the bars, the back of his hand brushed against hers, and the
+momentary contact sent a shock straight through the scion of that
+celebrated race.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She seated herself abruptly; a delicate color grew, staining her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither spoke. A long, luminous sunbeam fell across the landing, touching
+the edge of her hair till it glimmered like bronze afire. The sensitive
+mouth was quiet, the eyes, very serious, were lifted from time to time,
+then lowered, thoughtfully, to the clasped fingers on her knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Could it be possible? How could it be possible?--with a man she had never
+before chanced to meet--with a man she had seen for the first time in her
+life only an hour or so ago! Such things didn't happen outside of short
+stories. There was neither logic nor common decency in it. Had she or had
+she not any ordinary sense remaining?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her eyes and looked at the heir of the Vanderdynks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course anybody could see he was unusually attractive--that he had that
+indefinable something about him which is seldom, if ever, seen outside of
+fiction or of Mr. Gibson's drawings--perhaps it is entirely confined to
+them--except in this one very rare case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa's eyes fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another unusual circumstance was engaging her attention, namely, that his
+rather remarkable physical perfection appeared to be matched by a
+breeding quite as faultless, and a sublimity of courage in the face of
+destruction itself, which----
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sacharissa lifted her gray eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There he stood, suspended over an abyss, smoking a cigarette, bravely
+forcing himself to an attitude of serene insouciance, while the basement
+yawned for him! Machine or no machine, how could any girl look upon such
+miraculous self-control unmoved? <i>She</i> could not. It was natural that a
+woman should be deeply thrilled by such a spectacle--and William Destyn's
+machine had nothing to do with it--not a thing! Neither had psychology,
+nor demonology, nor anything, with wires or wireless. She liked him,
+frankly. Who wouldn't? She feared for him, desperately. Who wouldn't?
+She----
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"C-r-rack!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh--<i>what</i> is it!" she cried, springing to the grille.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know," he said, somewhat pale. "The old thing seems--to be
+sliding."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Giving way!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--little--I think----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Vanderdynk! I <i>must</i> call the police----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cr-rackle--crack-k-k!" went the car, dropping an inch or two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a stifled cry she caught his hands through the bars, as though to
+hold him by main strength.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you crazy?" he said fiercely, thrusting them away. "Be careful! If
+the thing drops you'll break your arms!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I don't care!" she said breathlessly. "I can't let----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Crack!" But the car stuck again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>will</i> call the police!" she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The papers may make fun of <i>you</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was it for <i>me</i> you were afraid? Oh, Mr. Vanderdynk! What do I care for
+ridicule compared to--to----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The car had sunk so far in the shaft now that she had to kneel and put
+her head close to the floor to see him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will only be a minute at the telephone," she said. "Keep up courage; I
+am thinking of you every moment."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-will you let me say one word?" he stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, what? Be quick, I beg you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's only goodbye--in case the thing drops. May I say it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes--yes! But say it quickly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And if it doesn't drop after all, you won't be angry at what I'm going
+to say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no. Oh, for Heaven's sake, hurry!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--you are the sweetest woman in the world!... Goodbye--Sacharissa--
+dear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sprang up, dazed, and at the same moment a terrific crackling and
+splintering resounded from the shaft, and the car sank out of sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Faint, she swayed for a second against the balustrade, then turned and
+ran downstairs, ears strained for the sickening crash from below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no crash, no thud. As she reached the drawing-room landing, to
+her amazement a normally-lighted elevator slid slowly down, came to a
+stop, and the automatic grilles opened quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Killian Van K. Vanderdynk crept forth from the elevator, Sacharissa's
+nerves gave way; his, also, seemed to disintegrate; and they stood for
+some moments mutually supporting each other, during which interval
+unaccustomed tears fell from the gray eyes, and unaccustomed words,
+breathed brokenly, reassured her; and, altogether unaccustomed to such
+things, they presently found themselves seated in a distant corner of the
+drawing-room, still endeavoring to reassure each other with interclasped
+hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They said nothing so persistently that the wordless minutes throbbed into
+hours; through the windows the red west sent a glowing tentacle into the
+room, searching the gloom for them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It fell, warm, across her upturned throat, in the half light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For her head lay back on his shoulder; his head was bent down, lips
+pressed to the white hands crushed fragrantly between his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A star came out and looked at them with astonishment; in a little while
+the sky was thronged with little stars, all looking through the window at
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her maid knocked, backed out hastily and fled, distracted. Then Ferdinand
+arrived with a plumber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later the butler came. They did not notice him until he ventured to cough
+and announce dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The interruptions were very annoying, particularly when she was summoned
+to the telephone to speak to her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it, dad?" she asked impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you all right?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes," she answered, carelessly; "we are all right, dad. Goodbye."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We? Who the devil is 'We'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Vanderdynk and I. We're taking my maid and coming down to Tuxedo
+this evening together. I'm in a hurry now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!!!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, it's all right, dad. Here, Killian, please explain things to my
+father."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vanderdynk released her hand and picked up the receiver as though it had
+been a live wire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that you, Mr. Carr?" he began--stopped short, and stood listening,
+rigid, bewildered, turning redder and redder as her father's fluency
+increased. Then, without a word, he hooked up the receiver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it all right?" she asked calmly. "Was dad--vivacious?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man said: "I'd rather go back into that elevator than go to
+Tuxedo.... But--I'm going."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So am I," said Bushwyck Carr's daughter, dropping both hands on her
+lover's shoulders.... "Was he really very--vivid?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The telephone again rang furiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bent his head; she lifted her face and he kissed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a while the racket of the telephone annoyed them, and they slowly
+moved away out of hearing.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp097.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+<h2><a name="viii">VIII</a></h2>
+
+<h3>"IN HEAVEN AND EARTH"</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>The Green Mouse Stirs</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've been waiting half an hour for you," observed Smith, dryly, as
+Beekman Brown appeared at the subway station, suitcase in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was a most extraordinary thing that detained me," said Brown,
+laughing, and edging his way into the ticket line behind his friend where
+he could talk to him across his shoulder; "I was just leaving the office,
+Smithy, when Snuyder came in with a card."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, all right--of course, if----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, it was not a client; I must be honest with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then you had a terrible cheek to keep me here waiting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was a girl," said Beekman Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith cast a cold glance back at him over his left shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What kind of a girl?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A most extraordinary girl. She came on--on a matter----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was it business or a touch?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not exactly business."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ornamental girl?" demanded Smith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--exceedingly; but it wasn't that----
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, it was not that which kept you talking to her half an hour while
+I've sat suffocating in this accursed subway!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, Smith; her undeniably attractive features and her--ah--winning
+personality had nothing whatever to do with it. Buy the tickets and I'll
+tell you all about it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith bought two tickets. A north bound train roared into the station.
+The young men stepped aboard, seated themselves, depositing their
+suitcases at their feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now what about that winning-looker who really didn't interest you?"
+suggested Smith in tones made slightly acid by memory of his half hour
+waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Smith, it was a most unusual episode. I was just leaving the office to
+keep my appointment with you when Snuyder came in with a card----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You've said that already."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I didn't tell you what was on that card, did I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can guess."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you can't. Her name was not on the card. She was not an agent; she
+had nothing to sell; she didn't want a position; she didn't ask for a
+subscription to anything. And what do you suppose was on that card?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, what was on the card, for the love of Mike?" snapped Smith. "I'll
+tell you. The card seemed to be an ordinary visiting card; but down in
+one corner was a tiny and beautifully drawn picture of a green mouse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A mouse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"G-green?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pea green.... Come, now, Smith, if you were just leaving your office and
+your clerk should come in, looking rather puzzled and silly, and should
+hand you a card with nothing on it but a little green mouse, wouldn't it
+give you pause?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown removed his straw hat, touched his handsome head with his
+handkerchief, and continued:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I said to Snuyder: 'What the mischief is this?' He said: 'It's for you.
+And there's an exceedingly pretty girl outside who expects you to receive
+her for a few moments.' I said: 'But what has this card with a green
+mouse on it got to do with that girl or with me?' Snuyder said he didn't
+know and that I'd better ask her. So I looked at my watch and I thought
+of you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tell you I did. Then I looked at the card with the green mouse on
+it.... And I want to ask you frankly, Smith, what would <i>you</i> have done?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, what you did, I suppose," replied Smith, wearily. "Go on."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm going. She entered----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She was tall and squeenly; you probably forgot that," observed Smith in
+his most objectionable manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Probably not; she was of medium height, as a detail of external
+interest. But, although rather unusually attractive in a merely
+superficial and physical sense, it was instantly evident from her speech
+and bearing, that, in her, intellect dominated; her mind, Smithy, reigned
+serene, unsullied, triumphant over matter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith looked up in amazement, but Brown, a reminiscent smile lighting his
+face, went on:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She had a very winsome manner--a way of speaking--so prettily in
+earnest, so grave. And she looked squarely at me all the time----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you contributed to the Home for Unemployed Patagonians."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you mind shutting up?" asked Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then try to listen respectfully. She began by explaining the
+significance of that pea-green mouse on the card. It seems, Smith, that
+there is a scientific society called The Green Mouse, composed of a few
+people who have determined to apply, practically, certain theories which
+they believe have commercial value."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was she," inquired Smith with misleading politeness, "what is known as
+an 'astrologist'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She was not. She is the president, I believe, of The Green Mouse
+Society. She explained to me that it has been indisputably proven that
+the earth is not only enveloped by those invisible electric currents
+which are now used instead of wires to carry telegraphic messages, but
+that this world of ours is also belted by countless psychic currents
+which go whirling round the earth----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What</i> kind of currents?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Psychic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Which circle the earth?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly. If you want to send a wireless message you hitch on to a
+current, don't you?--or you tap it--or something. Now, they have
+discovered that each one of these numberless millions of psychic currents
+passes through two, living, human entities of opposite sex; that, for
+example, all you have got to do to communicate with the person who is on
+the same psychical current that you are, is to attune your subconscious
+self to a given intensity and pitch, and it will be like communication by
+telephone, no matter how far apart you are."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brown!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did she go to your office to tell you that sort of--of--information?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Partly. She was perfectly charming about it. She explained to me that
+all nature is divided into predestined pairs, and that somewhere, at some
+time, either here on earth or in some of the various future existences,
+this predestined pair is certain to meet and complete the universal
+scheme as it has been planned. Do you understand, Smithy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith sat silent and reflective for a while, then:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You say that her theory is that everybody owns one of those psychic
+currents?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am on a private psychic current whirling around this globe?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And some--ah--young girl is at the other end?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then if I could only get hold of my end of the wire I could--ah--call
+her up?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe that's the idea."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And--she's for muh?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So they say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is--is there any way to get a look at her first?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'd have to take her anyway, sometime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But suppose I didn't like her?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two young men sat laughing for a few moments, then Brown went on:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see, Smith, my interview with her was such a curious episode that
+about all I did was to listen to what she was saying, so I don't know how
+details are worked out. She explained to me that The Green Mouse Society
+has just been formed, not only for the purpose of psychical research, but
+for applying practically and using commercially the discovery of the
+psychic currents. That's what The Green Mouse is trying to do: form
+itself into a company and issue stocks and bonds----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly. It sounds like a madman's dream at first, but when you come
+to look into it--for instance, think of the millions of clients such a
+company would have. As example, a young man, ready for marriage, goes to
+The Green Mouse and pays a fee. The Green Mouse sorts out, identifies,
+and intercepts the young man's own particular current, hitches his
+subconscious self to it, and zip!--he's at one end of an invisible
+telephone and the only girl on earth is at the other.... What's the
+matter with their making a quick date for an introduction?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith said slowly: "Do you mean to tell me that any sane person came to
+you in your office with a proposition to take stock in such an
+enterprise?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She did not even suggest it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did she want, then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She wanted," said Brown, "a perfectly normal, unimaginative business man
+who would volunteer to permit The Green Mouse Society to sort out his
+psychic current, attach him to it, and see what would happen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She wants to experiment on <i>you?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And--you're not going to let her, are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because it's--it's idiotic!" said Smith, warmly. "I don't believe in
+such things--you don't, either--nobody does--but, all the same, you can't
+be perfectly sure in these days what devilish sort of game you might be
+up against."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown smiled. "I told her, very politely, that I found it quite
+impossible to believe in such things; and she was awfully nice about it,
+and said it didn't matter what I believed. It seems that my name was
+chosen by chance--they opened the Telephone Directory at random and she,
+blindfolded, made a pencil mark on the margin opposite one of the names
+on the page. It happened to be my name. That's all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wouldn't let her do it!" said Smith, seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not, as long as there's absolutely nothing in it? Besides, if it
+pleases her to have a try why shouldn't she? Besides, I haven't the
+slightest intention or desire to woo or wed anybody, and I'd like to see
+anybody make me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mean to say that you told her to go ahead?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly," said Brown serenely. "And she thanked me very prettily.
+She's well bred--exceptionally."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh! Then what did you do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We talked a little while."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"About what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, for instance, I mentioned that curiously-baffling sensation which
+comes over everybody at times--the sudden conviction that everything that
+you say and do has been said and done by you before--somewhere. Do you
+understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And she smiled and said that such sensations were merely echoes from the
+invisible psychic wire, and that repetitions from some previous
+incarnation were not unusual, particularly when the other person through
+whom the psychic current passed, was near by."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean to say that when a fellow has that queer feeling that it has
+all happened before, the--the predestined girl is somewhere in your
+neighborhood?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is what my pretty informant told me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who," asked Smith, "is this pretty informant?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She asked permission to withhold her name."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Didn't she ask you to subscribe?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; she merely asked for the use of my name as reference for future
+clients if The Green Mouse Society was successful in my case."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did you say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown laughed. "I said that if any individual or group of individuals
+could induce me, within a year, to fall in love with and pay court to any
+living specimen of human woman I'd cheerfully admit it from the house-
+tops and take pleasure in recommending The Green Mouse to everybody I
+knew who yet remained unmarried."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They both laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What rot we've been talking," observed Smith, rising and picking up his
+suitcase. "Here's our station, and we'd better hustle or we'll lose the
+boat. I wouldn't miss that week-end party for the world!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither would I," said Beekman Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp108.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp109.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ix">IX</a></h2>
+
+<h3>A CROSS-TOWN CAR</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Concerning the Sudden Madness of One Brown</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the two young fellows, carrying their suitcases, emerged from the
+subway at Times Square into the midsummer glare and racket of Broadway
+and Forty-second Street, Brown suddenly halted, pressed his hand to his
+forehead, gazed earnestly up at the sky as though trying to recollect how
+to fly, then abruptly gripped Smith's left arm just above the elbow and
+squeezed it, causing the latter gentleman exquisite discomfort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here! Stop it!" protested Smith, wriggling with annoyance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown only gazed at him and then at the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stop it!" repeated Smith, astonished. "Why do you pinch me and then look
+at the sky? Is--is a monoplane attempting to alight on me? <i>What</i> is the
+matter with you, anyway?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That peculiar consciousness," said Brown, dreamily, "is creeping over
+me. Don't move--don't speak--don't interrupt me, Smith."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let go of me!" retorted Smith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hush! Wait! It's certainly creeping over me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's creeping over you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know what I mean. I am experiencing that strange feeling that all--
+er--all <i>this</i>--has happened before."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All what?--confound it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All <i>this!</i> My standing, on a hot summer day, in the infernal din of
+some great city; and--and I seem to recall it vividly--after a fashion--
+the blazing sun, the stifling odor of the pavements; I seem to remember
+that very hackman over there sponging the nose of his horse--even that
+pushcart piled up with peaches! Smith! What is this maddeningly elusive
+memory that haunts me--haunts me with the peculiar idea that it has all
+occurred before?... Do you know what I mean?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've just admitted to you that everybody has that sort of fidget
+occasionally, and there's no reason to stand on your hindlegs about it.
+Come on or we'll miss our train."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Beekman Brown remained stock still, his youthful and attractive
+features puckered in a futile effort to seize the evanescent memories
+that came swarming--gnatlike memories that teased and distracted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's as if the entire circumstances were strangely familiar," he said;
+"as though everything that you and I do and say had once before been done
+and said by us under precisely similar conditions--somewhere--sometime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll miss that boat at the foot of Forty-second Street," cut in Smith
+impatiently. "And if we miss the boat we lose our train."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown gazed skyward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I never felt this feeling so strongly in all my life," he muttered;
+"it's--it's astonishing. Why, Smith, I <i>knew</i> you were going to say
+that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say what?" demanded Smith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That we would miss the boat and the train. Isn't it funny?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, very. I'll say it again sometime if it amuses you; but, meanwhile,
+as we're going to that week-end at the Carringtons we'd better get into a
+taxi and hustle for the foot of West Forty-second Street. Is there
+anything very funny in that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew <i>that</i>, too. I knew you'd say we must take a taxi!" insisted
+Brown, astonished at his own "clairvoyance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, look here," retorted Smith, thoroughly vexed; "up to five minutes
+ago you were reasonable. What the devil's the matter with you, Beekman
+Brown?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"James Vanderdynk Smith, I don't know. Good Heavens! I knew you were
+going to say that to me, and that I was going to answer that way!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you coming or are you going to talk foolish on this broiling
+curbstone the rest of the afternoon?" inquired Smith, fiercely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jim, I tell you that everything we've done and said in the last five
+minutes we have done and said before--somewhere--perhaps on some other
+planet; perhaps centuries ago when you and I were Romans and wore
+togas----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Confound it! What do I care," shouted Smith, "whether we were Romans and
+wore togas? We are due this century at a house party on this planet. They
+expect us on this train. Are you coming? If not--kindly relax that
+crablike clutch on my elbow before partial paralysis ensues."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Smith, wait! I tell you this is somehow becoming strangely portentous.
+I've got the funniest sensation that something is going to happen to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It will," said Smith, dangerously, "if you don't let go my elbow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Beekman Brown, a prey to increasing excitement, clung to his friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait just one moment, Jim; something remarkable is likely to occur! I--I
+never before felt this way--so strongly--in all my life. Something
+extraordinary is certainly about to happen to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It has happened," said his friend, coldly; "you've gone dippy. Also,
+we've lost that train. Do you understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew we would. Isn't that curious? I--I believe I can almost tell you
+what else is going to happen to us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I'll</i> tell <i>you</i>," hissed Smith; "it's an ambulance for yours and
+ding-dong to the funny-house! <i>What</i> are you trying to do now?" With real
+misgiving, for Brown, balanced on the edge of the gutter, began waving
+his arms in a birdlike way as though about to launch himself into aerial
+flight across Forty-second Street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The car!" he exclaimed excitedly, "the cherry-colored cross-town car!
+Where is it? Do you see it anywhere, Smith?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What? What do you mean? There's no cross-town car in sight. Brown, don't
+act like that! Don't be foolish! What on earth----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's coming! There's a car coming!" cried Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think you're a racing runabout and I'm a curve?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown waved him away impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tell you that something most astonishing is going to occur--in a
+cherry-colored tram car.... And somehow there'll be some reason for me to
+get into it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Into what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Into that cherry-colored car, because--because--there'll be a wicker
+basket in it--somebody holding a wicker basket--and there'll be--there'll
+be--a--a--white summer gown--and a big white hat----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith stared at his friend in grief and amazement. Brown stood balancing
+himself on the gutter's edge, pale, rapt, uttering incoherent prophecy
+concerning the advent of a car not yet visible anywhere in the immediate
+metropolitan vista.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Old man," began Smith with emotion, "I think you had better come very
+quietly somewhere with me. I--I want to show you something pretty and
+nice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hark!" exclaimed Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure, I'll hark for you," said Smith, soothingly, "or I'll bark for you
+if you like, or anything if you'll just come quietly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The cherry-colored car!" cried Brown, laboring under tremendous emotion.
+"Look, Smithy! That is the car!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure, it is! I see it, old man. They run 'em every five minutes. What
+the devil is there to astonish anybody about a cross-town cruiser with a
+red water line?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look!" insisted Brown, now almost beside himself. "The wicker basket!
+The summer gown! Exactly as I foretold it! The big straw hat!--the--the
+<i>girl!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And shoving Smith violently away he galloped after the cherry-colored
+car, caught it, swung himself aboard, and sank triumphant and breathless
+into the transverse seat behind that occupied by a wicker basket, a filmy
+summer frock, a big, white straw hat, and--a girl--the most amazingly
+pretty girl he had ever laid eyes on. After him, headlong, like a
+distracted chicken, rushed Smith and alighted beside him, panting,
+menacing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wha'--dyeh--board--this--car--for!" he gasped, sliding fiercely up
+beside Brown. "Get off or I'll drag you off!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Brown only shook his head with an infatuated smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it that girl?" said Smith, incensed. "Are you a--a Broadway Don Juan,
+or are you a respectable lawyer with a glimmering sense of common decency
+and an intention to keep a social engagement at the Carringtons' to-day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Smith drew out his timepiece and flourished it furiously under
+Brown's handsome and sun-tanned nose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Brown only slid along the seat away from him, saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't bother me, Jim; this is too momentous a crisis in my life to have
+a well-intentioned but intellectually dwarfed friend butting into me and
+running about under foot."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Intellectually d-d--do you mean <i>me?</i>" asked Smith, unable to believe
+his ears. "<i>Do</i> you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I do! Because a miracle suddenly happens to me on Forty-second
+Street, and you, with your mind of a stockbroker, unable to appreciate
+it, come clattering and clamoring after me about a house party--a
+common-place, every-day, social appointment, when I have a full-blown
+miracle on my hands!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What miracle?" faltered Smith, stupefied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What miracle? Haven't I been telling you that I've been having that
+queer sense that all this has happened before? Didn't I suddenly begin--
+as though compelled by some unseen power--to foretell things? Didn't I
+prophesy the coming of this cross-town car? Didn't I even name its color
+before it came into sight? Didn't I warn you that I'd probably get into
+it? Didn't I reveal to you that a big straw hat and a pretty summer
+gown----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Confound it!" almost shouted Smith, "There are about five thousand
+cherry-colored cross-town cars in this town. There are about five million
+white hats and dresses in this borough. There are five billion girls
+wearing 'em----!" "Yes; but the <i>wicker basket</i>" breathed Brown. "How do
+you account for <i>that?</i>... And, anyway, you annoy me, Smith. Why don't
+you get out of the car and go somewhere?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want to know where you are going before I knock your head off."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know," replied Brown, serenely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you actually attempting to follow that girl?" whispered Smith,
+horrified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.... It sounds low, doesn't it? But it really isn't. It is something
+I can't explain--you couldn't understand even if I tried to enlighten
+you. The sentiment I harbor is too lofty for some to comprehend, too
+vague, too pure, too ethereal for----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm as lofty and ethereal as you are!" retorted Smith, hotly. "And I
+know a--an ethereal Lothario when I see him, too!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not--though it looks like it--and I forgive you, Smithy, for losing
+your temper and using such language."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, you do?" said Smith, grinning with rage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," nodded Brown, kindly. "I forgive you, but don't call me that
+again. You mean well, but I'm going to find out at last what all this
+maddening, tantalizing, unexplained and mysterious feeling that it all
+has occurred before really is. I'm going to trace it to its source; I'm
+going to compare notes with this highly intelligent girl."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're going to <i>speak</i> to her?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am. I must. How else can I compare data."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hope she'll call the police. If she doesn't <i>I</i> will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't worry. She's part of this strange situation. She'll comprehend as
+soon as I begin to explain. She is intelligent; you only have to look at
+her to understand that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith choking with impotent fury, nevertheless ventured a swift glance.
+Her undeniable beauty only exasperated him. "To think--to <i>think</i>," he
+burst out, "that a modest, decent, law-loving business man like me should
+suddenly awake to find his boyhood friend had turned into a godless
+votary of Venus!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not a votary of Venus!" retorted Brown, turning pink. "I'll punch
+you if you say it again. I'm as decent and respectable a business man as
+you are! And my grammar is better. And, thank Heaven! I've intellect
+enough to recognize a miracle when it happens to me.... Do you think I am
+capable of harboring any sentiments that might bring the blush of
+coquetry to the cheek of modesty? Do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well--well, <i>I</i> don't know what you're up to!" Smith raised his voice in
+bewilderment and despair. "I don't know what possesses you to act this
+way. People don't experience miracles in New York cross-town cars. The
+wildest stretch of imagination could only make a coincidence out of this.
+There are trillions of girls in cross-town cars dressed just like this
+one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the basket!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Another coincidence. There are quadrillions of wicker baskets."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not," said Brown, "with the contents of this one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith instinctively turned to look at the basket balanced daintily on the
+girl's knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He strove to penetrate its wicker exterior with concentrated gaze. He
+could see nothing but wicker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," he began angrily, "what <i>is</i> in that basket? And how do <i>you</i>
+know it--you lunatic?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you believe me if I tell you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you can offer any corroborative evidence----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then--there's a cat in that basket."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A cat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know how I know, but there's a big, gray cat in that basket."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why a <i>gray</i> one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't tell, but it <i>is</i> gray, and it has six toes on every foot."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith truly felt that he was now being trifled with.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brown," he said, trying to speak civilly, "if anybody in the five
+boroughs had come to me with affidavits and told me yesterday how you
+were going to behave this morning----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice, rising unconsciously as the realization of his outrageous
+wrongs dawned upon him, rang out above the rattle and grinding of the
+car, and the girl turned abruptly and looked straight at him and then at
+Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pure, fearless beauty of the gaze, the violet eyes widening a little
+in surprise, silenced both young men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She inspected Brown for an instant, then turned serenely to her calm
+contemplation of the crowded street once more. Yet her dainty, close-set
+ears looked as though they were listening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young men gazed at one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That girl is well bred," said Smith in a low, agitated voice. "You--you
+wouldn't think of venturing to speak to her!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm obliged to, I tell you! This all happened before. I recognize
+everything as it occurs.... Even to your making a general nuisance of
+yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith straightened up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm going to push you forcibly from this car. Do you remember <i>that</i>
+incident?"
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp122.jpg"><img src="images/illp122_th.jpg" alt="The lid of the basket tilted a little. Then a plaintive voice said 'Meow-w'."></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Brown with conviction, "that incident did not happen. You only
+threatened to do it. I remember now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of himself Smith felt a slight chill creep up over his neck and
+inconvenience his spine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said, deeply agitated: "What a terrible position for me to be in--with
+a friend suddenly gone mad in the streets of New York and running after a
+basket containing what he believes to be a cat. A <i>Cat!</i> Good----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown gripped his arm. "Watch it!" he breathed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lid of the basket tilted a little, between lid and rim a soft, furry,
+six-toed gray paw was thrust out. Then a plaintive voice said, "Meow-w!"
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp123.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp124.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="x">X</a></h2>
+
+<h3>THE LID OFF</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>An Alliance, Offensive, Defensive, and Back-Fensive</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smith, petrified, looked blankly at the paw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a while he remained stupidly incapable of speech or movement, then,
+as though arousing from a bad dream:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked with an effort. "This car is
+bound to stop sometime, I suppose, and--and then what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know what I'm going to do. Whatever I do will be the thing that
+ought to happen to me, to that cat and to that girl--that is the thing
+which is destined to happen. That's all I know about it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friend passed an unsteady hand across his brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This whole proceeding is becoming a nightmare," he said unsteadily. "Am
+I awake? Is this Forty-second Street? Hold up some fingers, Brown, and
+let me guess how many you hold up, and if I guess wrong I'm home in bed
+asleep and the whole thing is off."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere. And if I don't come go on
+alone to the Carringtons'.... You don't mind going on and fixing things
+up with the Carringtons, do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brown, <i>do</i> you believe that The Green Mouse Society has got hold of
+you? <i>Do</i> you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know and don't care.... Smith, I ask you plainly, did you ever
+before see such a perfectly beautiful girl as that one is?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Beekman, do you believe anything queer is going to result? You don't
+suppose <i>she</i> has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Anything to do with it? How?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I mean," he sank his voice to hoarser depths, "how do you know but that
+this girl, who pretends to pay no attention to us, <i>might</i> be a--a--one
+of those clever, professional mesmerists who force you to follow 'em, and
+get you into their power, and exhibit you, and make you eat raw potatoes
+and tallow candles and tacks before an audience."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He peeped furtively at Brown, who did not appear uneasy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All I'm afraid of," added Smith, sullenly, "is that you'll get yourself
+into vaudeville or the patrol wagon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited, but Brown made no reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, very well," he said, coldly. "I'll take a cab back to the boat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No observation from Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So, <i>good</i>-by, old fellow"--with some emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-by," said Beekman Brown, absently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In fact, he did not even notice when his thoroughly offended partner left
+the car, so intent was he in following the subtly thrilling train of
+thought which tantalized him, mocked him, led him nowhere, yet always
+lured him to fresh endeavor of memory. <i>Where</i> had all this occurred
+before? When? What was going to happen next--happen inexorably, as it had
+once happened, or as it once should have happened, in some dim, bygone
+age when he and that basket and that cat and this same hauntingly lovely
+girl existed together on earth--or perhaps upon some planet, swimming far
+out beyond the ken of men with telescopes?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the girl, strove to consider her impersonally, for her
+youthful beauty began to disturb him. Then cold doubt crept in; something
+of the monstrosity of the proceeding chilled his enthusiasm for occult
+research. Should he speak to her?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly, it was a dreadful thing to do--an offense the enormity of
+which was utterly inexcusable except under the stress of a purely
+impersonal and scientific necessity for investigating a mental phase of
+humanity which had always thrilled him with a curiosity most profound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He folded his arms and began to review in cold blood the circumstances
+which had led to his present situation in a cross-town car. Number one,
+and he held up one finger:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it comes, at times, to every normal human, the odd idea had come to
+him that what he was saying and doing as he emerged from the subway at
+Times Square was what he had, sometime, somewhere, said and done before
+under similar circumstances. That was the beginning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Number two, and he gravely held up a second finger:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Always before when this idea had come to bother him it had faded after a
+moment or two, leaving him merely uneasy and dissatisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time it persisted--intruding, annoying, exasperating him in his
+efforts to remember things which he could not recollect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Number three, and he held up a third finger:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He <i>had</i> begun to remember! As soon as he or Smith said or did anything
+he recollected having said or done it sometime, somewhere, or recollected
+that he <i>ought</i> to have.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Number four--four fingers in air, stiff, determined digits:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not only, by a violent concentration of his memory, succeeded in
+recognizing the things said and done as having been said and done before,
+but suddenly he became aware that he was going to be able to foretell,
+vaguely, certain incidents that were yet to occur--like the prophesied
+advent of the cherry-colored car and the hat, gown, and wicker basket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He now had four fingers in the air; he examined them seriously, and then
+stuck up the fifth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here I am," he thought, "awake, perfectly sane, absolutely respectable.
+Why should a foolish terror of convention prevent me from asking that
+girl whether she knows anything which might throw some light on this most
+interesting mental phenomenon?... I'll do it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl turned her head slightly; speech and the politely perfunctory
+smile froze on his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She held up one finger; Brown's heart leaped. <i>Was</i> that some cabalistic
+sign which he ought to recognize? But she was merely signaling the
+conductor, who promptly pulled the bell and lifted her basket for her
+when she got off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thanked him; Brown heard her, and the crystalline voice began to ring
+in little bell-like echoes all through his ears, stirring endless little
+mysteries of memory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown also got off; his legs struck up a walk of their own volition,
+carrying him across the street, hoisting him into a north-bound Lexington
+Avenue car, and landing him in a seat behind the one where she had
+installed herself and her wicker basket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She seemed to be having some difficulty with the wicker basket;
+beseeching six-toed paws were thrust out persistently; soft meows pleaded
+for the right of liberty and pursuit of feline happiness. Several
+passengers smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Trouble increased as the car whizzed northward; the meows became wilder;
+mad scrambles agitated the basket; the lid bobbed and creaked; the girl
+turned a vivid pink and, bending close over the basket, attempted to
+soothe its enervated inmate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the forties she managed to control the situation; in the fifties a
+frantic rush from within burst a string that fastened the basket lid, but
+the girl held it down with energy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the sixties a tempest broke loose in the basket; harrowing yowls
+pierced the atmosphere; the girl, crimson with embarrassment and
+distress, signaled the conductor at Sixty-fourth Street and descended,
+clinging valiantly to a basket which apparently contained a pack of
+firecrackers in process of explosion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A classical heroine in dire distress invariably exclaims aloud: "Will
+<i>no</i> one aid me?" Brown, whose automatic legs had compelled him to
+follow, instinctively awaited some similar appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It came unexpectedly; the kicking basket escaped from her arms, the lid
+burst open, and an extraordinarily large, healthy and indignant cat flew
+out, tail as big as a duster, and fled east on Sixty-fourth Street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl in the summer gown and white straw hat ran after the cat.
+Brown's legs ran, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was, and is, between the house on the northeast corner of
+Sixty-fourth Street and Lexington Avenue and the next house on
+Sixty-fourth, an open space guarded by an iron railing; through
+this the cat darted, fur on end, and, with a flying leap, took
+to the back fences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!" gasped the girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Brown's legs did an extraordinary thing--they began to scramble and
+kick and shin up the iron railing, hoisting Brown over; and Brown's
+voice, pleasant, calm, reassuring, was busy, too: "If you will look out
+for my suitcase I think I can recover your cat.... It will give me great
+pleasure to recover your cat. I shall be very glad to have, the
+opportunity of recovering--puff--puff--your--puff--puff--c-cat!" And he
+dropped inside the iron railing and paused to recover his breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl came up to the railing and gazed anxiously through at the corner
+of the only back fence she could perceive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What a perfectly dreadful thing to happen!" she said in a voice not very
+steady. "It is exceedingly nice of you to help me catch Clarence. He is
+quite beside himself, poor lamb! You see, he has never before been in the
+city. I--I shall be distressed beyond m-measure if he is lost."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He went over those fences," said Brown, breathing faster. "I think I'd
+better go after him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh--<i>would</i> you mind? I'd be so very grateful. It seems so much to ask
+of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll do it," said Brown, firmly. "Every boy in New York has climbed back
+fences, and I'm only thirty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is most kind of you; but--but I don't know whether you could possibly
+get him to come to you. Clarence is timid with strangers."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown had already clambered on to the wooden fence. He balanced himself
+there, astride. Whitewash liberally decorated coat and trousers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see him," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-what is he doing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Squatting on a trellis three back yards away." And Brown lifted a
+blandishing voice: "Here, Clarence--Clarence--Clarence! Here, kitty--
+kitty--kitty! Good pussy! Nice Clarence!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does he come?" inquired the girl, peering wistfully through the railing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He does not," said Brown. "Perhaps you had better call."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here, puss--puss--puss--puss!" she began gently in that fascinating,
+crystalline voice which seemed to set tiny silvery chimes ringing in
+Brown's ears: "Here, Clarence, darling--Betty's own little kitty-cat!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If he doesn't come to <i>that</i>," thought Brown, "he <i>is</i> a brute." And
+aloud: "If you could only let him see you; he sits there blinking at me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think he'd come if he saw me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who wouldn't?" thought Brown, and answered, calmly: "I think so.... Of
+course, you couldn't get up here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I could.... But I'd better not.... Besides, I live only a few houses
+away--Number 161--and I <i>could</i> go through into the back yard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you'd better not attempt to climb the fence. Have one of the
+servants do it; we'll get the cat between us then and corner him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There are no servants in the house. It's closed for the summer--all
+boarded up!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then how can you get in?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have a key to the basement.... Shall I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And climb up on the fence?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--if I must--if it's necessary to save Clarence.... Shall I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why can't I shoo him into your yard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He doesn't know our yard. He's a country cat; he's never stayed in town.
+I was taking him with me to Oyster Bay.... I came down from a week-end at
+Stockbridge, where some relatives kept Clarence for us while we were
+abroad during the winter.... I meant to stop and get some things in the
+house on my way back to Oyster Bay.... Isn't it a perfectly wretched
+situation?... We--the entire family--adore Clarence--and--I-I'm so
+anxious----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her fascinating underlip trembled, but she controlled it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll get that cat if it takes a month!" said Brown. Then he flushed; he
+had not meant to speak so warmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl flushed too. I am so grateful.... But how----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait," said Brown; and, addressing Clarence in a softly alluring voice,
+he began cautiously to crawl along the fences toward that unresponsive
+animal. Presently he desisted, partly on account of a conspiracy engaged
+in between his trousers and a rusty nail. The girl was now beyond range
+of his vision around the corner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss--ah--Miss--er--er--Betty!" he called.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Clarence has retreated over another back yard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How horrid!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How far down do you live?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She named the number of doors, anxiously adding: "Is Clarence farther
+down the block? Oh, please, be careful. Please, don't drive him past our
+yard. If you will wait I--I'll let myself into the house and--I'll manage
+to get up on the fence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll ruin your gown."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't care about my gown."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"These fences are the limit! Full of spikes and nails.... Will you be
+careful?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, very."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The nails are rusty. I--I am h-horribly afraid of lockjaw."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then don't remain there an instant."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I mean--I'm afraid of it for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a silence; they couldn't see each other. Brown's heart was
+beating fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is very generous of you to--think of me," came her voice, lower but
+very friendly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I ca-can't avoid it," he stammered, and wanted to kick himself for what
+he had blurted out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another pause--longer this time. And then:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am going to enter my house and climb up on the fence.... Would you
+mind waiting a moment?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will wait here," said Beekman Brown, "until I see you." He added to
+himself: "I'm going mad rapidly and I know it and don't care.... <i>What</i>--
+a--girl!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he waited, legs swinging, astride the back fence, he examined his
+injuries--thoughtfully touched the triangular tear in his trousers,
+inspected minor sartorial and corporeal lacerations, set his hat firmly
+upon his head, and gazed across the monotony of the back-yard fences at
+Clarence. The cat eyed him disrespectfully, paws tucked under, tail
+curled up against his well-fed flank--disillusioned, disgusted,
+unapproachable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently, through the palings of a back yard on Sixty-fifth Street,
+Brown saw a small boy, evidently the progeny of some caretaker, regarding
+him intently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say, mister," he began as soon as noticed, "you have tore your pants on
+a nail."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thanks," said Brown, coldly; "will you be good enough to mind your
+business?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought I'd tell you," said the small boy, delightedly aware that the
+information displeased Brown. "They're tore awful, too. That's what you
+get for playin' onto back fences. Y'orter be ashamed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown feigned unconsciousness and folded his arms with dignity; but the
+next moment he straightened up, quivering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You young devil!" he said; "if you pull that slingshot again I'll come
+over there and destroy you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the same moment above the fence line down the block a white straw hat
+appeared; then a youthful face becomingly flushed; then two dainty,
+gloved hands grasping the top of the fence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am here," she called across to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The small boy, who had climbed to the top of his fence, immediately
+joined the conversation:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your girl's a winner, mister," he observed, critically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you going to keep quiet?" demanded Brown, starting across the fence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure," said the small boy, carelessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, settling down on his lofty perch of observation, he began singing:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>"Lum' me an' the woild is mi-on.</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl's cheeks became pinker; she looked at the small boy appealingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Little boy," she said, "if you'll run away somewhere I'll give you ten
+cents."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said the terror, "I want to see him an' you catch that cat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," suggested Brown, inspired. "I'll give you a
+dollar if you'll help us catch the cat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're on!" said the boy, briskly. "What'll I do? Touch her up with this
+bean-shooter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; put that thing into your pocket!" exclaimed Brown, sharply. "Now
+climb across to Sixty-fourth Street and stand by that iron railing so
+that the cat can't bolt out into the street, and," he added, wrapping a
+dollar bill around a rusty nail and tossing it across the fence, "here's
+what's coming to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The small boy scrambled over nimbly, ran squirrel-like across the
+transverse fence, dipped, swarmed over the iron railing and stood on
+guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say, mister," he said, "if the cat starts this way you and your girl
+start a hollerin' like----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right," interrupted Brown, and turned toward the vision of
+loveliness and distress which was now standing on the top of her own back
+fence holding fast to a wistaria trellis and flattering Clarence with low
+and honeyed appeals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cat, however, was either too stupid or too confused to respond; he
+gazed blankly at his mistress, and when Brown began furtively edging his
+way toward him Clarence arose, stood a second in alert indecision, then
+began to back away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We've got him between us!" called out Brown. "If you'll stand ready to
+seize him when I drive him----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a wild scurry, a rush, a leap, frantic clawing for foothold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Miss Betty! Quick!" cried Brown. "Don't let him pass you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spread her skirts, but the shameless Clarence rushed headlong between
+the most delicately ornamental pair of ankles in Manhattan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh-h!" cried the girl in soft despair, and made a futile clutch; but she
+could not arrest the flight of Clarence, she merely upset him, turning
+him for an instant into a furry pinwheel, whirling through mid-air,
+landing in her yard, rebounding like a rubber ball, and disappearing,
+with one flying leap, into a narrow opening in the basement masonry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where is he?" asked Brown, precariously balanced on the next fence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," she said, "this is becoming positively ghastly. He's
+bolted into our cellar."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, that's all right, isn't it?" asked Brown. "All you have to do is to
+go inside, descend to the cellar, and light the gas."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's no gas."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have electric light?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but it's turned off at the main office. The house is closed for the
+summer, you know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown, balancing cautiously, walked the intervening fence like an amateur
+on a tightrope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her pretty hat was a trifle on one side; her cheeks brilliant with
+excitement and anxiety. Utterly oblivious of herself and of appearances
+in her increasing solicitude for the adored Clarence, she sat the fence,
+cross saddle, balancing with one hand and pointing with the other to the
+barred ventilator into which Clarence had darted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wisp of sunny hair blew across her crimson cheek; slender, active,
+excitedly unconscious of self, she seemed like some eager, adorable
+little gamin perched there, intent on mischief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you'll drop into our yard," she said, "and place that soap box
+against the ventilator, Clarence can't get out that way!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was done before she finished the request. She disengaged herself from
+the fencetop, swung over, hung an instant, and dropped into a soft flower
+bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Breathing fast, disheveled, they confronted one another on the grass. His
+blue suit of serge was smeared with whitewash; her gown was a sight. She
+felt for her hat instinctively, repinned it at hazard, looked at her
+gloves, and began to realize what she had done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I couldn't help it," she faltered; "I couldn't leave Clarence in a
+city of five m-million strangers--all alone--terrified out of his senses--
+could I? I had rather--rather be thought--anything than be c-cruel to a
+helpless animal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brown dared not trust himself to answer. She was too beautiful and his
+emotion was too deep. So he bent over and attempted to dust his garments
+with the flat of his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice. "Are your clothes quite
+ruined?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I don't mind," he protested happily, "I really don't mind a bit. If
+you'll only let me help you corner that infern--that unfortunate cat I
+shall be perfectly happy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said, with heightened color: "It is exceedingly nice of you to say
+so.... I--I don't quite know--what do you think we had better do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Suppose," he said, "you go into the basement, unlock the cellar door and
+call. He can't bolt this way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded and entered the house. A few moments later he heard her
+calling, so persuasively that it was all he could do not to run to her,
+and why on earth that cat didn't he never could understand.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp144.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h2><a name="xi">XI</a></h2>
+
+<h3>BETTY</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>In Which the Remorseless and Inexorable Results of Psychical Research
+Are Revealed to the Very Young</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At intervals for the next ten minutes her fresh, sweet, fascinating voice
+came to him where he stood in the yard; then he heard it growing fainter,
+more distant, receding; then silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Listening, he suddenly heard a far, rushing sound from subterranean
+depths--like a load of coal being put in--then a frightened cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sprang into the basement, ran through laundry and kitchen. The cellar
+door swung wide open above the stairs which ran down into darkness; and
+as he halted to listen Clarence dashed up out of the depths, scuttled
+around the stairs and fled upward into the silent regions above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty!" he cried, forgetting in his alarm the lesser conventions, "where
+are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, dear--oh, dear!" she wailed. "I am in such a dreadful plight. Could
+you help me, please?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you hurt?" he asked. Fright made his voice almost inaudible. He
+struck a match with shaking fingers and ran down the cellar stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty! Where are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I am here--in the coal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I can't seem to get out; I stepped into the coal pit in the dark and
+it all--all slid with me and over me and I'm in it up to the shoulders."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another match flamed; he saw a stump of a candle, seized it, lighted it,
+and, holding it aloft, gazed down upon the most heart rending spectacle
+he had ever witnessed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next instant he grasped a shovel and leaped to the rescue. She was
+quite calm about it; the situation was too awful, the future too hopeless
+for mere tears. What had happened contained all the dignified elements of
+a catastrophe. They both realized it, and when, madly shoveling, he at
+last succeeded in releasing her she leaned her full weight on his own,
+breathing rapidly, and suffered him to support and guide her through the
+flame-shot darkness to the culinary regions above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here she sank down on a chair for one moment in utter collapse. Then she
+looked up, resolutely steadying her voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Could anything on earth more awful have happened to a girl?" she asked,
+lips quivering in spite of her. She stretched out what had once been a
+pair of white gloves, she looked down at what had been a delicate summer
+gown of white. "How," she asked with terrible calmness, "am I to get to
+Oyster Bay?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dropped on to a kitchen chair opposite her, clasping his coal-stained
+hands between his knees, utterly incapable of speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at her shoes--once snowy white; with a shudder she stripped
+the soiled gloves from elbow to wrist and flung them aside. Her arms and
+hands formed a starling contrast to the remainder of the ensemble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What," she asked, "am I to do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," he said, "is to telephone to your family at Oyster
+Bay."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The telephone has been disconnected. So has the water--we can't even
+w-wash our hands!" she faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: "I can go out and telephone to your family to send a maid with
+some clothes for you--if you don't mind being left alone in an empty
+house for a little while."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't; but," she gazed uncertainly at the black opening of the
+cellar, "but, please, don't be gone very long, will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He promised fervidly. She gave him the number and her family's name, and
+he left by the basement door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was gone a long time, during which, for a while, she paced the floor,
+unaffectedly wringing her hands and contemplating herself and her
+garments in the laundry looking-glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At intervals she tried to turn on the water, hoping for a few drops at
+least; at intervals she sat down to wait for him; then, the inaction
+becoming unendurable, musing goaded her into motion, and she ascended to
+the floor above, groping through the dimness in futile search for
+Clarence. She heard him somewhere in obscurity, scurrying under furniture
+at her approach, evidently too thoroughly demoralized to recognize her
+voice. So, after a while, she gave it up and wandered down to the pantry,
+instinct leading her, for she was hungry and thirsty; but she knew there
+could be nothing eatable in a house closed for the summer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lifted the pantry window and opened the blinds; noon sunshine flooded
+the place, and she began opening cupboards and refrigerators, growing
+hungrier every moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then her eyes fell upon dozens of bottles of Apollinaris, and with a
+little cry of delight she knelt down, gathered up all she could carry,
+and ran upstairs to the bathroom adjoining her own bedchamber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At least," she said to herself, "I can cleanse myself of this dreadful
+coal!" and in a few moments she was reveling, elbow deep, in a marble
+basin brimming with Apollinaris.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the stain of the coal disappeared she remembered a rose-colored
+morning gown reposing in her bedroom clothespress; and she found more
+than that there--rose stockings and slippers and a fragrant pile of
+exquisitely fine and more intimate garments, so tempting in their
+freshness that she hurried with them into the dressing room; then began
+to make rapid journeys up and downstairs, carrying dozens of quarts of
+Apollinaris to the big porcelain tub, into which she emptied them,
+talking happily to herself all the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If he returns I can talk to him over the banisters!... He's a nice
+boy.... Such a funny boy not to remember me.... And I've thought of him
+quite often.... I wonder if I've time for just one, delicious plunge?"
+She listened; ran to the front windows and looked out through the blinds.
+He was nowhere in sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten minutes later, delightfully refreshed, she stood regarding herself in
+her lovely rose-tinted morning gown, patting her bright hair into
+discipline with slim, deft fingers, a half-smile on her lips, lids
+closing a trifle over the pensive violet eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," she said aloud, "I'll talk to him over the banisters when he
+returns; it's a little ungracious, I suppose, after all he has done, but
+it's more conventional.... And I'll sit here and read until they send
+somebody from Sandcrest with a gown I can travel in.... And then we'll
+catch Clarence and call a cab----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A distant tinkling from the area bell interrupted her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "I quite forgot that I had to let him in!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another tinkle. She cast a hurried and doubtful glance over her attire.
+It was designed for the intimacy of her boudoir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I <i>couldn't</i> talk to him out of the window! I've been shocking enough
+as it is!" she thought; and, finger tips on the banisters, she ran down
+the three stairs and appeared at the basement grille, breathless,
+radiant, forgetting, as usual, her self-consciousness in thinking of him,
+a habit of this somewhat harebrained and headlong girl which had its root
+in perfect health of body and wholesomeness of mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I found some clothes--not the sort I can go out in!" she said, laughing
+at his astonishment, as she unlocked the grille. "So, please, overlook my
+attire; I was <i>so</i> full of coal dust! and I found sufficient Apollinaris
+for my necessities.... <i>What</i> did they say at Sandcrest?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said very soberly: "We've got to discuss this situation. Perhaps I had
+better come in for a few minutes--if you don't mind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't mind.... Shall we sit in the drying room?" leading the way.
+"Now tell me what is the matter? You rather frighten me, you know. Is--is
+anything wrong at Sandcrest?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I suppose not." He touched his flushed face with his handkerchief;
+"I couldn't get Oyster Bay on the 'phone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The wires are out of commission as far as Huntington; there's no use--I
+tried everything! Telegraph and telephone wires were knocked out in this
+morning's electric storm, it seems."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gazed at him, hands folded on her knee, left leg crossed over, foot
+swinging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This," she said calmly, "is becoming serious. Will you tell me what I am
+to do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Haven't you anything to travel in?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not one solitary rag."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--you'll have to stay here to-night and send for some of your
+friends--you surely know somebody who is still in town, don't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I really don't. This is the middle of July. I don't know a woman in
+town."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Besides," she said, "we have no light, no water, nothing to eat in the
+house, no telephone to order anything----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: "I foresaw that you would probably be obliged to remain here, so
+when I left the telephone office I took the liberty of calling a taxi and
+visiting the electric light people, the telephone people and the nearest
+plumber. It seems he is your own plumber--Quinn, I believe his name is;
+and he's coming in half an hour to turn on the water."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you think of doing all that?" she asked, astonished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, that wasn't anything. And I ventured to telephone the Plaza to serve
+luncheon and dinner here for you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You <i>did?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I wired to Dooley's Agency to send you a maid for to-day----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That was perfectly splendid of you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They promised to send one as soon as possible.... And I think that may
+be the plumber now," as a tinkle came from the area bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not the plumber; it was waiters bearing baskets full of silver,
+china, table linen, ice, fruits, confections, cut flowers, and, in
+warmers, a most delectable luncheon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four impressive individuals commanded by a butler formed the
+processional, filing solemnly up the basement stairs to the dining room,
+where they instantly began to lay the table with dexterous celerity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the drying room below Betty and Beekman Brown stood confronting each
+other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose," began Brown with an effort, "that I had better go now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betty said thoughtfully: "I suppose you must."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unless," continued Brown, "you think I had better remain--somewhere on
+the premises--until your maid arrives."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That might be safer," said Betty, more thoughtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your maid will probably be here in a few minutes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Probably," said Betty, head bent, slim, ringless fingers busy with the
+sparkling drop that glimmered pendant from her neckchain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silence--the ironing board between them--she standing, bright head
+lowered, worrying the jewel with childish fingers; he following every
+movement, fascinated, spellbound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a moment, without looking up: "You have been very, very nice to me--
+in the nicest possible way," she said.... "I am not going to forget it
+easily--even if I might wish to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can never forget <i>you!</i>... I d-don't want to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sparkling pendant escaped her fingers; she picked it up again and
+spoke as though gravely addressing it:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Some day somewhere," she said, looking at the jewel, "perhaps chance--
+the hazard of life--may bring us to--togeth--to acquaintance--a more
+formal acquaintance than this.... I hope so. This has been a little--
+irregular, and perhaps you had better not wait for my maid.... I hope we
+may meet--sometime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hope so, too," he managed to say, with so little fervor and so
+successful an imitation of her politely detached interest in convention
+that she raised her eyes. They dropped immediately, because his quiet
+voice and speech scarcely conformed to the uncontrolled protest in his
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment she stood, passing the golden links through her white
+fingers like a young novice with a rosary. Steps on the stairs disturbed
+them; the recessional had begun; four solemn persons filed out the area
+gate. At the same moment, suave and respectful, her butler pro tem.
+presented himself at the doorway:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Luncheon is served, madam."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you." She looked uncertainly at Brown, hesitated, flushed a
+trifle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will stay here and admit the plumber and then--then--I'll g-go," he
+said with a heartbroken smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose you took the opportunity to lunch when you went out?" she
+said. Her inflection made it a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without answering he stepped back to allow her to pass. She moved
+forward, turned, undecided.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Have</i> you lunched?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please don't feel that you ought to ask me," he began, and checked
+himself as the vivid pink deepened in her cheeks. Then she freed herself
+of embarrassment with a little laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Considering," she said, "that we have been chasing cats on the back
+fences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in my
+own cellar, I can't believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheon
+with me.... Is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is ador--it is," he corrected himself firmly, "exceedingly civil of
+you to ask me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--will you?" almost timidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will. I shall not pretend any more. I'd rather lunch with you than be
+President of this Republic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The butler pro tem. seated her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see," she said, "a place had already been laid for you." And with
+the faintest trace of malice in her voice: "Perhaps your butler had his
+orders to lay two covers. Had he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From me?" he protested, reddening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't suspect <i>me</i>, do you?" she asked, adorably mischievous. Then
+glancing over the masses of flowers in the center and at the corners of
+the lace cloth: "This is deliciously pretty. But you are either
+dreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am. Which is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think both are true," he said, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a little while later when he returned from the basement after
+admitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?" she said, greeting
+his return with delightfully fearless eyes. "Such Astrakan caviar! Such
+salad! Everything I care for most. And how on earth you guessed I can't
+imagine.... I'm beginning to think you are rather wonderful."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They lifted the long, slender glasses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded one
+another over the frosty rims--a long, curious glance from her; a straight
+gaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later, when she gave the signal, they rose as though they had often dined
+together, and moved leisurely out through the dim, shrouded drawing-rooms
+where, in the golden dusk, the odor of camphor hung.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had taken a great cluster of dewy Bride's roses from the centerpiece,
+and as she walked forward, sedately youthful, beside him, her fresh,
+young face brooded over the fragrance of the massed petals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sweet--how sweet!" she murmured to herself, and as they reached the end
+of the vista she half turned to face him, dreamily, listless, confident.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They looked at one another, she with chin brushing the roses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The strangest of all," she said, "is that it <i>seems</i> all right--and--and
+we <i>know</i> that it is all quite wrong.... Had you better go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unless I ought to wait and make sure your maid does not fail you....
+Shall I?" he asked evenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not answer. He drew a linen-swathed armchair toward her; she
+absently seated herself and lay back, caressing the roses with delicate
+lips and chin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twice she looked up at him, standing there by the boarded windows.
+Sunshine filtered through the latticework at the top--enough for them to
+see each other as in a dull afterglow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder how soon my maid will come," she mused, dropping the loose
+roses on her knees. "If she is going to be very long about it perhaps--
+perhaps you might care to find a chair--if you have decided to wait."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew one from a corner and seated himself, pulses hammering his
+throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the stillness of the house sounded at intervals the clink of
+glass from the pantry. Other sounds from above indicated the plumber's
+progress from floor to floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you realize," she said impulsively, "how <i>very</i> nice you have been to
+me? What a perfectly horrid position I might have been in, with poor
+Clarence on the back fence! And suppose I had dared follow him alone to
+the cellar? I--I might have been there yet--up to my neck in coal?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gazed into space with considerable emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now," she said, "I am safe here in my own home. I have lunched
+divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe
+indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light
+and the telephone will be in working order before very long--and it is
+<i>all</i> due to you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I did a few things I almost w-wish I hadn't," stammered Brown,
+"b-because I can't, somehow, decently t-tell you how tremendously
+I--I--" He stuck fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It would look as though I were presuming on a t-trifling service
+rendered, and--oh, I can't say it; I want to, but I can't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say what? Please, I don't mind what you are--are going to say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's--it's that I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-es?" in soft encouragement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-want to know you most tremendously now. I don't want to wait several
+years for chance and hazard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O-h!" as though the information conveyed a gentle shock to her. Her
+low-breathed exclamation nearly finished Brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew you'd think it unpardonable for me--at such a time--to venture
+to--to--ask--say--express--convey----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why do you--how can I--where could we--" She recovered herself
+resolutely. "I do not think we ought to take advantage of an accident
+like this.... Do you? Besides, probably, in the natural course of social
+events----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But it may be years! months! weeks!" insisted Brown, losing control of
+himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should hope it would at least be a decently reasonable interval of
+several weeks----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't know what to do if I never see you again for weeks! I c-care
+so much--for--you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shrank back in her chair, and in her altered face he read that he had
+disgraced himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew I was going to," he said in despair. "I couldn't keep it--I
+couldn't stop it. And now that you see what sort of a man I am I'm going
+to tell you more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You need not," she said faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must. Listen! I--I don't even know your full name--all I know is that
+it is Betty, and that your cat's name is Clarence and your plumber's name
+is Quinn. But if I didn't know anything at all concerning you it would
+have been the same. I suppose you will think me insane if I tell you that
+before the car, on which you rode, came into sight I <i>knew</i> you were on
+it. And I--cared--for--you--before I ever saw you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't understand----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know you don't. <i>I</i> don't. All I understand is that what you and I
+have done has been done by us before, sometime, somewhere--part only--
+down to--down to where you changed cars. Up to that moment, before you
+took the Lexington Avenue car, I recognized each incident as it
+occurred.... But when all this happened to us before I must have lost
+courage--for I did not recognize anything after that except that I cared
+for you.... <i>Do</i> you understand one single word of what I have been
+saying?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The burning color in her face had faded slowly while he was speaking; her
+lifted eyes grew softer, serious, as he ended impetuously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him in retrospective silence. There was no mistaking his
+astonishing sincerity, his painfully earnest endeavor to impart to her
+some rather unusual ideas in which he certainly believed. No man who
+looked that way at a woman could mean impertinence; her own intelligence
+satisfied her that he had not meant and could never mean offense to any
+woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell me," she said quietly, "just what you mean. It is not possible for
+you to--care--for--me.... Is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He disclosed to her, beginning briefly with his own name, material and
+social circumstances, a pocket edition of his hitherto uneventful career,
+the advent that morning of the emissary from The Green Mouse, his
+discussion with Smith, the strange sensation which crept over him as he
+emerged from the tunnel at Forty-second Street, his subsequent
+altercation with Smith, and the events that ensued up to the eruption of
+Clarence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke in his most careful attorney's manner, frank, concise,
+convincing, free from any exaggeration of excitement or emotion. And she
+listened, alternately fascinated and appalled as, step by step, his story
+unfolded the links in an apparently inexorable sequence involving this
+young man and herself in a predestined string of episodes not yet ended--
+if she permitted herself to credit this astounding story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sensitively intelligent, there was no escaping the significance of the
+only possible deduction. She drew it and blushed furiously. For a moment,
+as the truth clamored in her brain, the self-evidence of it stunned her.
+But she was young, and the shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous,
+almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lips
+parted in outraged protest--parted and remained so, wordless, silent--the
+soundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had imperceptibly
+begun to tremble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her head sank slowly; she laid her white hands above the roses heaped in
+her lap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a long while she remained so. And he did not speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First the butler went away. Then Mr. Quinn followed. The maid had not yet
+arrived. The house was very still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And after the silence had worn his self-control to the breaking point he
+rose and walked to the dining room and stood looking down into the yard.
+The grass out there was long and unkempt; roses bloomed on the fence;
+wistaria, in its deeper green of midsummer, ran riot over the trellis
+where Clarence had basely dodged his lovely mistress, and, after making a
+furry pin wheel of himself, had fled through the airhole into Stygian
+depths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somewhere above, in the silent house, Clarence was sulkily dissembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose," said Brown, quietly coming back to where the girl was
+sitting in the golden dusk, "that I might as well find Clarence while we
+are waiting for your maid. May I go up and look about?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And taking her silence as assent, he started upstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hunted carefully, thoroughly, opening doors, peeping under furniture,
+investigating clothespresses, listening at intervals, at intervals
+calling with misleading mildness. But, like him who died in malmsey,
+Clarence remained perjured and false to all sentiments of decency so
+often protested purringly to his fair young mistress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mechanically Brown opened doors of closets, knowing, if he had stopped to
+think, that cats don't usually turn knobs and let themselves into tightly
+closed places.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In one big closet on the fifth floor, however, as soon as he opened the
+door there came a rustle, and he sprang forward to intercept the
+perfidious one; but it was only the air stirring the folds of garments
+hanging on the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he turned to step forth again the door gently closed with an ominous
+click, shutting him inside. And after five minutes' frantic fussing he
+realized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strange
+house, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, who might, at
+any moment now that the telephone was in order, call a cab and flee from
+a man who had tried to explain to her that they were irrevocably
+predestined for one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Calling and knocking were dignified and permissible, but they did no
+good. To kick violently at the door was not dignified, but he was obliged
+to do it. Evidently the closet was too remote for the sound to penetrate
+down four flights of stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to break down the door--they do it in all novels. He only
+rebounded painfully, ineffectively, which served him right for reading
+fiction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It irked him to shout; he hesitated for a long while; then sudden
+misgiving lest she might flee the house seized him and he bellowed. It
+was no use.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruising
+himself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes and
+textures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder and
+madder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence of
+which he had never dreamed himself capable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he sat down. He remained perfectly still for a long while, listening
+and delicately feeling his hurts. A curious drowsiness began to irritate
+him; later the irritation subsided and he felt a little sleepy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His heart, however, thumped like an inexpensive clock; the cedar-tainted
+air in the closet grew heavier; he felt stupid, swaying as he rose. No
+wonder, for the closet was as near air-tight as it could be made.
+Fortunately he did not realize it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, meanwhile, downstairs, Betty was preparing for flight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not know where she was going--how far away she could get in a
+rose-silk morning gown. But she had discovered, in a clothespress, an
+automobile duster, cap, and goggles; on the strength of these she tried
+the telephone, found it working, summoned a coupé, and was now awaiting
+its advent. But the maid from Dooley's must first arrive to take charge
+of the house and Clarence until she, Betty, could summon her family to
+her assistance and defy The Green Mouse, Beekman Brown, and Destiny
+behind her mother's skirts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flight was, therefore, imperative--it was absolutely indispensable that
+she put a number of miles between herself and this young man who had just
+informed her that Fate had designed them for one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was no longer considering whether she owed this amazing young man any
+gratitude, or what sort of a man he might be, agreeable, well-bred,
+attractive; all she understood was that this man had suddenly stepped
+into her life, politely expressing his conviction that they could not,
+ultimately, hope to escape from each other. And, beginning to realize the
+awful import of his words, the only thing that restrained her from
+instant flight on foot was the hidden Clarence. She could not abandon her
+cat. She must wait for that maid. She waited. Meanwhile she hunted up
+Dooley's Agency in the telephone book and called them up. They told her
+the maid was on the way--as though Dooley's Agency could thwart Destiny
+with a whole regiment of its employees!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had discarded her roses with a shudder; cap, goggles, duster, lay in
+her lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she'd flee. If Brown came
+back before the maid arrived she'd tell him plainly what she had decided
+on, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering the
+incredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline to
+encourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independent
+affair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series of
+beats which annoyed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is true," she admitted to herself, "that he is a gentleman, and I can
+scarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave him
+without any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I must
+remember that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularly
+as she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and a
+pencil, and wrote rapidly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Dear Mr. Brown:</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can't help it. The maid
+will stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of the
+family. I don't mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you told
+me about our--about what you told me.... I'm sorry you tore your clothes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or your
+conduct, which was perfectly ('charming' scratched out) proper. It is
+only that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to ('marry'
+scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and a
+new line begun).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choice
+in life left her--to be forced, by what you say are occult currents,
+into--friendship--with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So I
+don't think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to present
+us to each other. This doesn't sound right, but you will surely
+understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, and
+childish--but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you are
+perfectly nice--but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifying
+to me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will--won't
+you?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see you
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I am only going to thank you, and say ('with all my heart' crossed
+out) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous and
+considerate--most--most----"
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of Beekman
+Brown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy and
+looked at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mind
+evoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on the
+back of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him for
+many minutes now. Why was he so still?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder,
+listening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? Had
+Clarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can't annihilate
+big, strong young men. But <i>where</i> was he? Had he, pursuing his quest,
+emerged through the scuttle on to the roof--and--and--fallen off?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor,
+listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, opening
+doors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searching
+more quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quite
+steady. There was no reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking up
+her rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet at
+hand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of the
+cedar press and tore it wide open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolled rugs, clothes hangers and
+furs, quite motionless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knew enough to run into the servants' rooms, fling open the windows
+and, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youth
+across the floor and into the fresh air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O-h!" she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she
+took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency,
+performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise
+which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he
+made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became
+articulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. He
+opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that
+were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the
+floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear
+of death, looked back, breathless, trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is a devil of a place, that closet," he said faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed,
+being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips--felt his lips on
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the
+heart, stilling it--silencing pulse and breath--nay, thought itself. She
+heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I cared for you. You give me life--and I adore you.... Let me. It will
+not harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; but
+unless some day you will prove it for me--Betty--the problem of life is
+but a sorry sum--a total of ciphers without end.... No other two people
+in all the world could be what we are and what we have been to each
+other. No other two people could dare to face what we dare face." He
+paused: "Dare we, Betty?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes turned from his. He rose unsteadily, supported on one arm; she
+sprang to her feet, looked at him, and, as he made an awkward effort to
+rise, suddenly bent forward and gave him both hands in aid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait--wait!" she said; "let me try to think, if I can. Don't speak to me
+again--not yet--not now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, at intervals, as they descended the flights of stairs, she turned
+instinctively to watch his progress, for he still moved with difficulty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the drawing-room they halted, he leaning heavily on the back of a
+chair, she, distrait, restless, pacing the polished parquet, treading her
+roses under foot, turning from time to time to look at him--a strange,
+direct, pure-lidded gaze that seemed to freshen his very soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once he stooped and picked up one of the trodden roses bruised by her
+slim foot; once, as she passed him, pacing absently the space between the
+door and him, he spoke her name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But: "Wait!" she breathed. "You have said everything. It is for me to
+reply--if I speak at all. C-can't you wait for--me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have I angered you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She halted, head high, superb in her slim, young beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do I look it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor I. Let me find out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room had become dimmer; the light on her hair and face and hands
+glimmered dully as she passed and re-passed him in her restless progress--
+restless, dismayed, frightened progress toward a goal she already saw
+ahead--close ahead of her--every time she turned to look at him. She
+already knew the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>That</i> man! And she knew that already he must be, for her, something that
+she could never again forget--something she must reckon with forever and
+ever while life endured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She paused and inspected him almost insolently. Suddenly the rush of the
+last revolt overwhelmed her; her eyes blazed, her white hands tightened
+into two small clenched fists--and then tumult died in her ringing ears,
+the brightness of the eyes was quenched, her hands relaxed, her head sank
+low, lower, never again to look on this man undismayed, heart free,
+unafraid--never again to look into this man's eyes with the unthinking,
+unbelieving tranquillity born of the most harmless skepticism in the
+world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood there in silence, heard his step beside her, raised her head
+with an effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Betty!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hands quivered, refusing surrender. He bent and lifted them, pressing
+them to his eyes, his forehead. Then lowered them to the level of his
+lips, holding them suspended, eyes looking into hers, waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly her eyes closed, a convulsive little tremor swept her, she
+pressed both clasped hands against his lips, her own moved, but no words
+came--only a long, sweet, soundless sigh, soft as the breeze that stirs
+the crimson maple buds when the snows of spring at last begin to melt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From a dark corner under the piano Clarence watched them furtively.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp177.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp178.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="xii">XII</a></h2>
+
+<h3>SYBILLA</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Showing What Comes of Disobedience, Rosium, and Flour-Paste</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About noon Bushwyck Carr bounced into the gymnasium, where the triplets
+had just finished their fencing lesson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did any of you three go into the laboratory this morning?" he demanded,
+his voice terminating in a sort of musical bellow, like the blast of a
+mellow French horn on a touring car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The triplets--Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla--all clothed precisely
+alike in knee kilts, plastrons, gauntlets and masks, came to attention,
+saluting their parent with their foils. The Boznovian fencing mistress,
+Madame Tzinglala, gracefully withdrew to the dressing room and departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Which of you three girls went into the laboratory this morning?"
+repeated their father impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The triplets continued to stand in a neat row, the buttons of their foils
+aligned and resting on the hardwood floor. In graceful unison they
+removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded
+the author of their being attentively--more attentively still when that
+round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his
+monocle into an angry left eye and glared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Didn't I warn you to keep out of that laboratory?" he asked wrathfully;
+"didn't I explain to you that it was none of your business? I believe I
+informed you that whatever is locked up in that room is no concern of
+yours. Didn't I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Pa-<i>pah</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, confound it, what did you go in for, then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An anxious silence was his answer. "You didn't all go in, did you?" he
+demanded in a melodious bellow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, Pa-<i>pah!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did two of you go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh-h, n-o, Pa-<i>pah!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, which one did?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The line of beauty wavered for a moment; then Sybilla stepped slowly to
+the front, three paces, and halted with downcast eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I told you not to, didn't I?" said her father, scowling the monocle out
+of his eye and reinserting it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes, Pa-<i>pah</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you <i>did?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That will do! Flavilla! Drusilla! You are excused," dismissing the two
+guiltless triplets with a wave of the terrible eyeglass; and when they
+had faced to the rear and retired in good order, closing the door behind
+them, he regarded his delinquent daughter in wrathy and rubicund dismay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did you see in that laboratory?" he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla began to count on her fingers. "As I walked around the room I
+noticed jars, bottles, tubes, lamps, retorts, blowpipes, batteries----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you notice a small, shiny machine that somewhat resembles the
+interior economy of a watch?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Pa-<i>pah</i>, but I haven't come to that yet----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you go near it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite near----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You didn't touch it, did you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was going to tell you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Did</i> you?" he bellowed musically. "Answer me, Sybilla!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes--I did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did you suppose it to be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought--we all thought--that you kept a wireless telephone instrument
+in there----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why? Just because I happen to be president of the Amalgamated Wireless
+Trust Company?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes. And we were dying to see a wireless telephone work.... I thought
+I'd like to call up Central--just to be sure I could make the thing go--
+<i>What</i> is the matter, Pa-<i>pah?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dropped into a wadded armchair and motioned Sybilla to a seat
+opposite. Then with another frightful facial contortion he reimbedded the
+monocle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you deliberately opened that door and went in to rummage?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said the girl; "we were--skylarking a little, on our way to the
+gymnasium; and I gave Brasilia a little shove toward the laboratory door,
+and then Flavilla pushed me--very gently--and somehow I--the door flew
+open and my mask fell off and rolled inside; and I went in after it. That
+is how it happened--partly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lifted her dark and very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then
+they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the
+polished floor with the point of her foil. "That is partly how," she
+repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is the other part?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The other part was that, having unfortunately disobeyed you, and being
+already in the room, I thought I might as well stay and take a little
+peep around----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father fairly bounced in his padded chair. The velvet-eyed descendant
+of Eve shot a fearful glance at him and continued, still casually tracing
+invisible arabesques with her foil's point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see, don't you," she said, "that being actually <i>in</i>, I thought I
+might as well do something before I came out again, which would make my
+disobedience worth the punishment. So I first picked up my mask, then I
+took a scared peep around. There were only jars and bottles and
+things.... I was dreadfully disappointed. The certainty of being punished
+and then, after all, seeing nothing but bottles, <i>did</i> seem rather
+unfair.... So I--walked around to--to see if I could find something to
+look at which would repay me for the punishment.... There is a proverb,
+isn't there Pa-<i>pah?</i>--something about being executed for a lamb----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go on!" he said sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, all I could find that looked as though I had no business to touch
+it was a little jeweled machine----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>That</i> was it! Did you touch it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, several times. Was it a wireless?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never mind! Yes, it's one kind of a wireless instrument. Go on!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla shook her head:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm sure I don't see why you are so disturbingly emphatic; because I
+haven't an idea how to send or receive a wireless message, and I hadn't
+the vaguest notion how that machine might work. I tried very hard to make
+it go; I turned several screws and pushed all the push-buttons----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr emitted a hollow, despairing sound--a sort of musical groan--and
+feebly plucked at space.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tried every lever, screw, and spring," she went on calmly, "but the
+machine must have been out of order, for I only got one miserable little
+spark----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You got a <i>spark?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--just a tiny, noiseless atom of white fire----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father bounced to his feet and waved both hands at her distractedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know what you've done?" he bellowed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you've prepared yourself to fall in love! And you've probably
+induced some indescribable pup to fall in love with you! And <i>that's</i>
+what you've done!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In--<i>love!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you have!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how can a common wireless telephone----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's another kind of a wireless. Your brother-in-law, William Destyn,
+invented it; I'm backing it and experimenting with it. I told you to keep
+out of that room. I hung up a sign on the door: <i>'Danger! Keep out!'</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-was that thing loaded?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it <i>was</i> loaded!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-what with?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Waves!" shouted her father, furiously. "Psychic waves! You little ninny,
+we've just discovered that the world and everything in it is enveloped in
+psychic waves, as well as invisible electric currents. The minute you got
+near that machine and opened the receiver, waves from your subconscious
+personality flowed into it. And the minute you touched that spring and
+got a spark, your psychic waves had signaled, by wireless, the
+subconscious personality of some young man--some insufferable pup--who'll
+come from wherever he is at present--from the world's end if need be--and
+fall in love with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr jumped ponderously up and down in pure fury; his daughter
+regarded him in calm consternation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am so very, very sorry," she said; "but I am quite certain that I am
+not going to fall in love----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can't help it," roared her father, "if that instrument worked."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is--is that what it's f-for?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's what it's invented for; that's why I'm putting a million into it.
+Anybody on earth desiring to meet the person with whom they're destined,
+some time or other, to fall in love, can come to us, in confidence, buy a
+ticket, and be hitched on to the proper psychic connection which insures
+speedy courtship and marriage--Damnation!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pa-<i>pah!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't help it! Any self-respecting, God-fearing father would swear! Do
+you think I ever expected to have my daughters mixed up with this
+machine? My daughters wooed, engaged and married by <i>machinery!</i> And
+you're only eighteen; do you hear me? I won't have it! I'll certainly not
+have it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, dear, I don't in the least intend to fall in love and marry at
+eighteen. And if--<i>he</i>--really--comes, I'll tell him very frankly that I
+could not think of falling in love. I'll quietly explain that the machine
+went off by mistake and that I am only eighteen; and that Flavilla and
+Drusilla and I are not to come out until next winter. That," she added
+innocently, "ought to hold him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," said her father, gazing fixedly at her, "is to keep
+you in your room until you're twenty!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Pa-<i>pah!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr smote his florid brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll stay in for a week, anyway!" he thundered mellifluously. "No
+motoring party for you! That's your punishment. You'll be safe for today,
+anyhow; and by evening William Destyn will be back from Boston and I'll
+consult him as to the safest way to keep you out of the path of this
+whippersnapper you have managed to wake up--evoke--stir out of space--
+wherever he may be--whoever he may be--whatever he chances to call
+himself----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"George," she murmured involuntarily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What!!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at her father, abashed, confused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How absurd of me," she said. "I don't know why I should have thought of
+that name, George; or why I should have said it out loud--that way--I
+really don't----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who do you know named George?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-nobody in particular that I can think of----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sybilla! Be honest!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Really, I don't; I am always honest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew she was truthful, always; but he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then why the devil did you look--er--so, so moonily at me and call me
+George?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't imagine--I can't understand----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, <i>I</i> can! You don't realize it, but that cub's name must be George!
+I'll look out for the Georges. I'm glad I've been warned. I'll see that
+no two-legged object named George enters this house! You'll never go
+anywhere where there's anybody named George if I can prevent it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I don't want to," she returned, almost ready to cry. "You are very
+cruel to me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish to be. I desire to be a monster!" he retorted fiercely. "You're
+an exceedingly bad, ungrateful, undutiful, disobedient and foolish child.
+Your sisters and I are going to motor to Westchester and lunch there with
+your sister and your latest brother-in-law. And if they ask why you
+didn't come I'll tell them that it's because you're undutiful, and that
+you are not to stir outdoors for a week, or see anybody who comes into
+this house!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I suppose I d-deserve it," she acquiesced tearfully. "I'm quite ready
+to be disciplined, and quite willing not to see anybody named George--
+ever! Besides, you have scared me d-dreadfully! I--I don't want to go out
+of the house."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when her father had retired with a bounce she remained alone in the
+gymnasium, eyes downcast, lips quivering. Later still, sitting in
+precisely the same position, she heard the soft whir of the touring car
+outside; then the click of the closing door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There they go," she said to herself, "and they'll have such a jolly
+time, and all those very agreeable Westchester young men will be there--
+particularly Mr. Montmorency.... I <i>did</i> like him awfully; besides, his
+name is Julian, so it is p-perfectly safe to like him--and I <i>did</i> want
+to see how Sacharissa looks after her bridal trip."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her lower lip trembled; she steadied it between her teeth, gazed
+miserably at the floor, and beat a desolate tattoo on it with the tip of
+her foil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am being well paid for my disobedience," she whimpered. "Now I can't
+go out for a week; and it's April; and when I do go out I'll be so
+anxious all the while, peeping furtively at every man who passes and
+wondering whether his name might be George.... And it is going to be
+horridly awkward, too.... Fancy their bringing up some harmless dancing
+man named George to present to me next winter, and I, terrified, picking
+up my débutante skirts and running.... I'll actually be obliged to flee
+from every man until I know his name isn't George. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
+What an awful outlook for this summer when we open the house at Oyster
+Bay! What a terrible vista for next winter!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She naïvely dabbed a tear from her long lashes with the back of her
+gauntlet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her maid came, announcing luncheon, but she would have none of it, nor
+any other offered office, including a bath and a house gown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You go away somewhere, Bowles," she said, "and please, don't come near
+me, and don't let anybody come anywhere in my distant vicinity, because I
+am v-very unhappy, Bowles, and deserve to be--and I--I desire to be alone
+with c-conscience."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Miss Sybilla----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no, no! I don't even wish to hear your voice--or anybody's. I don't
+wish to hear a single human sound of any description. I--<i>what</i> is that
+scraping noise in the library?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A man, Miss Sybilla----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A <i>man!</i> W-what's his name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know, miss. He's a workman--a paper hanger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you wish me to ask him to stop scraping, miss?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla laughed: "No, thank you." And she continued, amused at herself
+after her maid had withdrawn, strolling about the gymnasium, making
+passes with her foil at ring, bar, and punching bag. Her anxiety, too,
+was subsiding. The young have no very great capacity for continued
+anxiety. Besides, the first healthy hint of incredulity was already
+creeping in. And as she strolled about, swishing her foil, she mused
+aloud at her ease:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What an extraordinary and horrid machine!... <i>How</i> can it do such
+exceedingly common things? And what a perfectly unpleasant way to fall in
+love--by machinery!... I had rather not know who I am some day to--to
+like--very much.... It is far more interesting to meet a man by accident,
+and never suspect you may ever come to care for him, than to buy a
+ticket, walk over to a machine full of psychic waves and ring up some
+strange man somewhere on earth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a shudder of disdain she dropped on to a lounge and took her face
+between both hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was like her sisters, tall, prettily built, and articulated, with the
+same narrow feet and hands--always graceful when lounging, no matter what
+position her slim limbs fell into.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now, in her fencing skirts of black and her black stockings, she was
+exceedingly ornamental, with the severe lines of the plastron accenting
+the white throat and chin, and the scarlet heart blazing over her own
+little heart--unvexed by such details as love and lovers. Yes, unvexed;
+for she had about come to the conclusion that her father had frightened
+her more than was necessary; that the instrument had not really done its
+worst; in fact, that, although she had been very disobedient, she had had
+a rather narrow escape; and nothing more serious than paternal
+displeasure was likely to be visited upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which comforted her to an extent that brought a return of appetite; and
+she rang for luncheon, and ate it with the healthy nonchalance usually so
+characteristic of her and her sisters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," she reflected, "I'll have to wait an hour for my bath"--one of the
+inculcated principles of domestic hygiene. So, rising, she strolled
+across the gymnasium, casting about for something interesting to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked out of the back windows. In New York the view from back
+windows is not imposing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tiring of the inartistic prospect she sauntered out and downstairs to see
+what her maid might be about. Bowles was sewing; Sybilla looked on for a
+while with languid interest, then, realizing that a long day of
+punishment was before her, that she deserved it, and that she ought to
+perform some act of penance, started contritely for the library with
+resolute intentions toward Henry James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she entered she noticed that the bookshelves, reaching part way to the
+ceiling, were shrouded in sheets. Also she encountered a pair of
+sawhorses overlaid with boards, upon which were rolls of green flock
+paper, several pairs of shears, a bucket of paste, a large, flat brush, a
+knife and a T-square.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The paper hanger man," she said. "He's gone to lunch. I'll have time to
+seize on Henry James and flee."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Henry James, like some other sacred conventions, was, in that
+library, a movable feast. Sometimes he stood neatly arranged on one
+shelf, sometimes on another. There was no counting on Henry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla lifted the sheets from the face of one case and peered closer.
+Henry was not visible. She lifted the sheets from another case; no Henry;
+only G.P.R., in six dozen rakish volumes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla peeped into a third case. Then a very unedifying thing occurred.
+Surely, surely, this was Sybilla's disobedient day. She saw a forbidden
+book glimmering in old, gilded leather--she saw its classic back turned
+mockingly toward her--the whole allure of the volume was impudent,
+dog-eared, devil-may-care-who-reads-me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took it out, replaced it, looked hard, hard for Henry, found him not,
+glanced sideways at the dog-eared one, took a step sideways.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll just see where it was printed," she said to herself, drawing out
+the book and backing off hastily--so hastily that she came into collision
+with the sawhorse table, and the paste splashed out of the bucket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Sybilla paid no heed; she was examining the title page of old
+Dog-ear: a rather wonderful title page, printed in fascinating red and black
+with flourishes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll just see whether--" And the smooth, white fingers hesitated; but
+she had caught a glimpse of an ancient engraving on the next page--a very
+quaint one, that held her fascinated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned the next page. The first paragraph of the famous classic began
+deliciously. After a few moments she laughed, adding to herself: "I can't
+see what harm----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no harm. Her father had meant another book; but Sybilla did not
+know that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll just glance through it to--to--be sure that I mustn't read it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laid one hand on the paper hanger's table, vaulted up sideways, and,
+seated on the top, legs swinging, buried herself in the book, unconscious
+that the overturned paste was slowly fastening her to the spattered table
+top.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An hour later, hearing steps on the landing, she sprang--that is, she
+went through all the graceful motions of springing lightly to the floor.
+But she had not budged an inch. No Gorgon's head could have consigned her
+to immovability more hopeless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Restrained from freedom by she knew not what, she made one frantic and
+demoralized effort--and sank back in terror at the ominous tearing sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was glued irrevocably to the table.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp196.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp197.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="xiii">XIII</a></h2>
+
+<h3>THE CROWN PRINCE</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Wherein the Green Mouse Squeaks</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few minutes later the paper hanging young man entered, swinging an
+empty dinner pail and halted in polite surprise before a flushed young
+girl in full fencing costume, who sat on his operating table, feet
+crossed, convulsively hugging a book to the scarlet heart embroidered on
+her plastron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--hope you don't mind my sitting here," she managed to say. "I wanted
+to watch the work."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By all means," he said pleasantly. "Let me get you a chair----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, thank you. I had rather sit th-this way. Please begin and don't mind
+if I watch you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man appeared to be perplexed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm afraid," he ventured, "that I may require that table for cutting
+and----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please--if you don't mind--begin to paste. I am in-intensely interested
+in p-pasting--I like to w-watch p-paper p-pasted on a w-wall."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her small teeth chattered in spite of her; she strove to control her
+voice--strove to collect her wits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood irresolute, rather astonished, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm sorry," he said, "but----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Please</i> paste; won't you?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, I've got to have that table to paste on----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then d-don't think of pasting. D-do anything else; cut out some strips.
+I am so interested in watching p-paper hangers cut out things--"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I need the table for that, too----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you don't. You can't be a--a very skillful w-workman if you've got
+to use your table for everything----"
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp198.jpg"><img src="images/illp198_th.jpg" alt="'I'm afraid', he ventured 'that I may require that table for cutting.'"></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed. "You are quite right; I'm not a skillful paper hanger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then," she said, "I am surprised that you came here to paper our
+library, and I think you had better go back to your shop and send a
+competent man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed again. The paper hanger's youthful face was curiously
+attractive when he laughed--and otherwise, more or less.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: "I came to paper this library because Mr. Carr was in a hurry,
+and I was the only man in the shop. I didn't want to come. But they made
+me.... I think they're rather afraid of Mr. Carr in the shop.... And this
+work <i>must</i> be finished today."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not know what to say; anything to keep him away from the table
+until she could think clearly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-why didn't you want to come?" she asked, fighting for time. "You said
+you didn't want to come, didn't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because," he said, smiling, "I don't like to hang wall paper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But if you are a paper hanger by trade----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose you think me a real paper hanger?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was cautiously endeavoring to free one edge of her skirt; she nodded
+absently, then subsided, crimsoning, as a faint tearing of cloth sounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go on," she said hurriedly; "the story of your career is <i>so</i>
+interesting. You say you adore paper hanging----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't," he returned, chagrined. "I say I hate it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why do you do it, then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because my father thinks that every son of his who finishes college
+ought to be disciplined by learning a trade before he enters a
+profession. My oldest brother, De Courcy, learned to be a blacksmith; my
+next brother, Algernon, ran a bakery; and since I left Harvard I've been
+slapping sheets of paper on people's walls----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Harvard?" she repeated, bewildered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; I was 1907."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>You!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked down at his white overalls, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does that astonish you, Miss Carr?--you are Miss Carr, I suppose----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sybilla--yes--we're--we're triplets," she stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The beauti--the--the Carr triplets! And you are one of them?" he
+exclaimed, delighted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes." Still bewildered, she sat there, looking at him. How
+extraordinary! How strange to find a Harvard man pasting paper! Dire
+misgivings flashed up within her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who are you?" she asked tremulously. "Would you mind telling me your
+name. It--it isn't--<i>George!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked up in pleased surprise:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you know who I am?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no. But--it isn't George--is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, yes----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O-h!" she breathed. A sense of swimming faintness enveloped her: she
+swayed; but an unmistakable ripping noise brought her suddenly to
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid you are tearing your skirt somehow," he said anxiously. "Let
+me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The desperation of the negative approached violence, and he involuntarily
+stepped back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment they faced one another; the flush died out on her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If," she said, "your name actually is George, this--this is the most--
+the most terrible punishment--" She closed her eyes with her fingers as
+though to shut out some monstrous vision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What," asked the amazed young man, "has my name to do with----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hands dropped from her eyes; with horror she surveyed him, his
+paste-spattered overalls, his dingy white cap, his dinner pail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I <i>won't</i> marry you!" she stammered in white desperation. "I <i>won't!</i>
+If you're not a paper hanger you look like one! I don't care whether
+you're a Harvard man or not--whether you're playing at paper hanging or
+not--whether your name is George or not--I won't marry you--I won't! I
+<i>won't!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the feeling that his senses were rapidly evaporating the young man
+sat down dizzily, and passed a paste-spattered but well-shaped hand
+across his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sybilla set her lips and looked at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't suppose," she said, "that you understand what I am talking
+about, but I've got to tell you at once; I can't stand this sort of
+thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-what sort of thing?" asked the young man, feebly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your being here in this house--with me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll be very glad to go----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait! <i>That</i> won't do any good! You'll come back!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no, I won't----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you will. Or I--I'll f-follow you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One or the other! We can't help it, I tell you. <i>You</i> don't understand,
+but I do. And the moment I knew your name was George----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What the deuce has that got to do with anything?" he demanded, turning
+red in spite of his amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Waves!" she said passionately, "psychic waves! I--somehow--knew that
+he'd be named George----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who'd be named George?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>He!</i> The--man... And if I ever--if you ever expect me to--to c-care for
+a man all over overalls----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't--Good Heavens!--I don't expect you to care for--for
+overalls----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then why do you wear them?" she asked in tremulous indignation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man, galvanized, sprang from his chair and began running about,
+taking little, short, distracted steps. "Either," he said, "I need mental
+treatment immediately, or I'll wake up toward morning.... I--don't know
+what you're trying to say to me. I came here to--to p-paste----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That machine sent you!" she said. "The minute I got a spark you
+started----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think I'm a motor? Spark! Do you think I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I do. You couldn't help it; I know it was my own fault, and this--
+<i>this</i> is the dreadful punishment--g-glued to a t-table top--with a man
+named George----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!!!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she said passionately, "everything disobedient I have done has
+brought lightning retribution. I was forbidden to go into the laboratory;
+I disobeyed and--you came to hang wall paper! I--I took a b-book--which I
+had no business to take, and F-fate glues me to your horrid table and
+holds me fast till a man named George comes in...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flushed, trembling, excited, she made a quick and dramatic gesture of
+despair; and a ripping sound rent the silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Are you pasted to that table?</i>" faltered the young man, aghast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I am. And it's utterly impossible for you to aid me in the
+slightest, except by pretending to ignore it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you--you can't remain there!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't help remaining here," she said hotly, "until you go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I'd better----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No! You shall <i>not</i> go! I--I won't have you go away--disappear somewhere
+in the city. Certainty is dreadful enough, but it's better than the awful
+suspense of knowing you are somewhere in the world, and are sure to come
+back sometime----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't want to come back!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Why should I
+wish to come back? Have I said--acted--done--looked--<i>Why</i> should you
+imagine that I have the slightest interest in anything or in--in--anybody
+in this house?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Haven't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No!... And I cannot ignore your--your amazing--and intensely
+f-flattering fear that I have d-designs--that I desire--in other words,
+that I--er--have dared to cherish impossible aspirations in connection
+with a futile and absurd hope that one day you might possibly be induced
+to listen to any tentative suggestion of mine concerning a matrimonial
+alliance----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He choked and turned a dull red.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She reddened, too, but said calmly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you for putting it so nicely. But it is no use. Sooner or later
+you and I will be obliged to consider a situation too hopeless to admit
+of discussion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What situation?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ours."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't see any situation--except your being glued--I <i>beg</i> your
+pardon!--but I must speak truthfully."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So must I. Our case is too desperate for anything but plain and terrible
+truths. And the truths are these: <i>I</i> touched the forbidden machine and
+got a spark; your name is George; <i>I'm</i> glued here, unable to escape;
+<i>you</i> are not rude enough to go when I ask you not to.... And now--here--
+in this room, you and I must face these facts and make up our minds....
+For I simply <i>must</i> know what I am to expect; I can't endure--I couldn't
+live with this hanging over me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What</i> hanging over you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sprang to his feet, waving his dinner pail around in frantic circles:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it, in Heaven's name, that is hanging over you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Over <i>you</i>, too!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Over me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly. Over us both. We are headed straight for m-marriage."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"T-to <i>each other?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course," she said faintly. "Do you think I'd care whom you are going
+to marry if it wasn't I? Do you think I'd discuss my own marital
+intentions with you if you did not happen to be vitally concerned?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do <i>you</i> expect to marry <i>me?</i>" he gasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I don't <i>want</i> to: but I've got to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood petrified for an instant, then with a wild look began to gather
+up his tools.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She watched him with the sickening certainty that if he got away she
+could never survive the years of suspense until his inevitable return. A
+mad longing to get the worst over seized her. She knew the worst, knew
+what Fate held for her. And she desired to get it over--have the worst
+happen--and be left to live out the shattered remains of her life in
+solitude and peace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If--if we've got to marry," she began unsteadily, "why not g-get it over
+quickly--and then I don't mind if you go away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was quite mad: that was certain. He hastily flung some brushes into
+his tool kit, then straightened up and gazed at her with deep compassion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you mind," she asked timidly, "getting somebody to come in and
+marry us, and then the worst will be over, you see, and we need never,
+never see each other again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He muttered something soothing and began tying up some rolls of wall
+paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Won't you do what I ask?" she said pitifully. "I-I am almost afraid
+that--if you go away without marrying me I could not live and endure
+the--the certainty of your return."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He raised his head and surveyed her with deepest pity. Mad--quite mad!
+And so young--so exquisite... so perfectly charming in body! And the mind
+darkened forever.... How terrible! How strange, too; for in the
+pure-lidded eyes he seemed to see the soft light of reason not entirely
+quenched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their eyes encountered, lingered; and the beauty of her gaze seemed to
+stir him to the very wellspring of compassion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would it make you any happier to believe--to know," he added hastily,
+"that you and I were married?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes, I think so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you be quite happy to believe it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--if you call that happiness."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you would not be unhappy if I never returned?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, no! I--that would make me--comparatively--happy!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be married to me, and to know you would never again see me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes. Will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he said soothingly. And yet a curious little throb of pain
+flickered in his heart for a moment, that, mad as she undoubtedly was,
+she should be so happy to be rid of him forever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came slowly across the room to the table on which she was sitting. She
+drew back instinctively, but an ominous ripping held her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you going for a license and a--a clergyman?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no," he said gently, "that is not necessary. All we have to do is to
+take each other's hands--so----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shrank back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You will have to let me take your hand," he explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated, looked at him fearfully, then, crimson, laid her slim
+fingers in his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The contact sent a quiver straight through him; he squared his shoulders
+and looked at her.... Very, very far away it seemed as though he heard
+his heart awaking heavily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What an uncanny situation! Strange--strange--his standing here to humor
+the mad whim of this stricken maid--this wonderfully sweet young
+stranger, looking out of eyes so lovely that he almost believed the dead
+intelligence behind them was quickening into life again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What must we do to be married?" she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say so; that is all," he answered gently. "Do you take me for your
+husband?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.... Do you t-take me for your--wife?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, dear----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't say <i>that</i>!... Is it--over?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All over," he said, forcing a gayety that rang hollow in the pathos of
+the mockery and farce.... But he smiled to be kind to her; and, to make
+the poor, clouded mind a little happier still, he took her hand again and
+said very gently:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will it surprise you to know that you are now a princess?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--<i>what?</i>" she asked sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A princess." He smiled benignly on her, and, still beaming, struck a not
+ungraceful attitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I," he said, "am the Crown Prince of Rumtifoo."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stared at him without a word; gradually he lost countenance; a vague
+misgiving stirred within him that he had rather overdone the thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course," he began cheerfully, "I am an exile in disguise--er--
+disinherited and all that, you know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She continued to stare at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Matters of state--er--revolution--and that sort of thing," he mumbled,
+eying her; "but I thought it might gratify you to know that I am Prince
+George of Rumtifoo----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The silence was deadly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," she said deliberately, "that I believe you think I am
+mentally unsound. <i>Do</i> you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--you--" he began to stutter fearfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Do</i> you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-well, either you or I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nonsense! I <i>thought</i> that marriage ceremony was a miserably inadequate
+affair!... And I am hurt--grieved--amazed that you should do such a--a
+cowardly----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!" he exclaimed, stung to the quick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it is cowardly to deceive a woman."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I meant it kindly--supposing----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That I am mentally unsound? Why do you suppose that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because--Good Heavens--because in this century, and in this city, people
+who never before saw one another don't begin to talk of marrying----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I explained to you"--she was half crying now, and her voice broke
+deliciously--"I told you what I'd done, didn't I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You said you had got a spark," he admitted, utterly bewildered by her
+tears. "Don't cry--please don't. Something is all wrong here--there is
+some terrible misunderstanding. If you will only explain it to me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She dried her eyes mechanically: "Come here," she said. "I don't believe
+I did explain it clearly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, very carefully, very minutely, she began to tell him about the
+psychic waves, and the instrument, and the new company formed to exploit
+it on a commercial basis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told him what had happened that morning to her; how her disobedience
+had cost her so much misery. She informed him about her father, and that
+florid and rotund gentleman's choleric character.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you are here when I tell him I'm married," she said, "he will
+probably frighten you to death; and that's one of the reasons why I wish
+to get it over and get you safely away before he returns. As for me, now
+that I know the worst, I want to get the worst over and--and live out my
+life quietly somewhere.... So now you see why I am in such a hurry, don't
+you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded as though stunned, leaning there on the table, hands folded,
+head bent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am so very sorry--for you," she said. "I know how you must feel about
+it. But if we are obliged to marry some time had we not better get it
+over and then--never--see--one another----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted his head, then stood upright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her soft lips were mute, but the question still remained in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, for a long while, they looked at each other; and the color under his
+cheekbones deepened, and the pink in her cheeks slowly became pinker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Suppose," he said, under his breath, "that I--wish--to return--to you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I</i> do not wish it----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try to--to wish for----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For my return. Try to wish that you also desire it. Will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you are going to--to talk that way--" she stammered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--then----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there any reason why I should not, if we are engaged?" he asked. "We
+<i>are</i>--engaged, are we not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Engaged?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes. Are we?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--yes--if you call it----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do.... And we are to be--married?" He could scarcely now speak the
+word which but a few moments since he pronounced so easily; for a totally
+new significance attached itself to every word he uttered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are we?" he repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then--if I--if I find that I----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't say it," she whispered. She had turned quite white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you listen----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No. It--it isn't true--it cannot be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is coming truer every moment.... It is very, very true--even now....
+It is almost true.... And now it has come true. Sybilla!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+White, dismayed, she gazed at him, her hands instinctively closing her
+ears. But she dropped them as he stepped forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I love you, Sybilla. I wish to marry you.... Will you try to care for
+me--a little----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I couldn't--I can't even try----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had her hands now; she twisted them free; he caught them again. Over
+their interlocked hands she bowed her head, breathless, cheeks aflame,
+seeking to cover her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you love me, Sybilla?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She struggled silently, desperately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Will</i> you?"
+
+"No.... Let me go----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't cry--please, dear--" His head, bowed beside hers over their
+clasped hands, was more than she could endure; but her upflung face,
+seeking escape, encountered his. There was a deep, indrawn breath, a sob,
+and she lay, crying her heart out, in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+"Darling!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is curious how quickly one recognizes unfamiliar forms of address.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You won't cry any more, will you?" he whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-n-o," sighed Sybilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because we <i>do</i> love each other, don't we?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes, George." Then, radiant, yet sweetly shamed, confident, yet
+fearful, she lifted her adorable head from his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"George," she said, "I am beginning to think that I'd like to get off
+this table."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You poor darling!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And," she continued, "if you will go home and change your overalls for
+something more conventional, you shall come and dine with us this
+evening, and I will be waiting for you in the drawing-room.... And,
+George, although some of your troubles are now over----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All of them, dearest!" he cried with enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," she said tenderly, "you are yet to meet Pa-<i>pah</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp217.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp218.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<h2><a name="xiv">XIV</a></h2>
+
+<h3>GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>A Chapter Concerning Drusilla, Pa-pah and a Minion</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Capital had now been furnished for The Green Mouse, Limited; a great
+central station of white marble was being built, facing Madison Avenue
+and occupying the entire block front between Eighty-second and
+Eighty-third streets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The building promised to be magnificent; the plans provided for a
+thousand private operating rooms, each beautifully furnished in Louis XVI
+style, a restaurant, a tea room, a marriage licence bureau, and an
+emergency chapel where first aid clergymen were to be always in
+attendance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In each of the thousand Louis XVI operating rooms a Destyn-Carr wireless
+instrument was to stand upon a rococo table. A maid to every two rooms, a
+physician to every ten, and smelling salts to each room, were provided
+for in this gigantic enterprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Millions of circulars were being prepared to send broadcast over the
+United States. They read as follows:
+</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>
+ARE YOU IN LOVE? IF NOT, WHY NOT?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wedlock by Wireless. Marriage by Machinery. A Wondrous Wooer Without
+Words! No more doubt; no more hesitation; no more uncertainty. The
+Destyn-Carr Wireless Apparatus does it all for you. Happy Marriage
+Guaranteed or money eagerly refunded!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Psychical Science says that for every man and woman on earth there is a
+predestined mate!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That mate can be discovered for you by The Green Mouse, Limited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why waste time with costly courtship? Why frivol? Why fuss?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is only ONE mate created for YOU. You pay us; We find that ONE,
+thereby preventing mistakes, lawsuits, elopements, regrets, grouches,
+alimony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Divorce Absolutely Eliminated
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By Our Infallible Wireless Method
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Success Certain
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is now known the world over that Professor William Augustus Destyn has
+discovered that the earth we live on is enveloped in Psychical Currents.
+By the Destyn-Carr instrument these currents may be tapped, controlled
+and used to communicate between two people of opposite sex whose
+subconscious and psychic personalities are predestined to affinity and
+amorous accord. In other words, when psychic waves from any individual
+are collected or telegraphed along these wireless psychical currents,
+only that one affinity attuned to receive them can properly respond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>We catch your psychic waves for you. We send them out into the world.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WATCH THAT SPARK!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When you see a tiny bluish-white spark tip the tentacle of the
+Destyn-Carr transmitter,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+THE WORLD IS YOURS!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+for $25.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our method is quick, painless, merciful and certain. Fee, twenty-five
+dollars in advance. Certified checks accepted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+THE GREEN MOUSE, Limited.
+</p>
+
+<pre>
+President              PROF. WM. AUGUSTUS DESTYN.
+Vice-Presidents        THE HON. KILLIAN VAN K. VANDERDYNK.
+                       THE HON. GEORGE GRAY, 3D.
+Treasurer              THE HON. BUSHWYCK CARR.
+</pre>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>
+These circulars were composed, illuminated and printed upon vellum by
+what was known as an "Art" community in West Borealis, N.J. Several tons
+were expected for delivery early in June.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, the Carr family and its affiliations had invested every cent
+they possessed in Green Mouse, Limited; and those who controlled the
+stock were Bushwyck Carr; William Augustus Destyn and Mrs. Destyn, née
+Ethelinda Carr; Mr. Killian Van K. Vanderdynk and Mrs. Vanderdynk, née
+Sacharissa Carr; George Gray and Mrs. Gray, very lately Sybilla Carr; and
+the unmarried triplets, Flavilla and Drusilla Carr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Remembering with a shudder how Bell Telephone and Standard Oil might once
+have been bought for a song, Bushwyck Carr determined that in this case
+his pudgy fingers should not miss the forelock of Time and the divided
+skirts of Chance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Squinting at the viewless ether through his monocle he beheld millions in
+it; so did William Augustus Destyn and the other sons-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only the unmarried triplets, Flavilla and Drusilla, remained amiably
+indifferent in the midst of all these family financial scurryings and
+preparations to secure world patents in a monopoly which promised the
+social regeneration of the globe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The considerable independent fortunes that their mother had left them
+they invested in Green Mouse, at their father's suggestion; but further
+than that they took no part in the affair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a while the hurry and bustle and secret family conferences mildly
+interested them. Very soon, however, the talk of psychic waves and
+millions bored them; and as soon as the villa at Oyster Bay was opened
+they were glad enough to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, at Oyster Bay, there was some chance of escaping their money-mad
+and wave-intoxicated family; they could entertain and be entertained by
+both of the younger sets in that dignified summer resort; they could
+wander about their own vast estate alone; they could play tennis, sail,
+swim, ride, and drive their tandem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But best of all--for they were rather seriously inclined at the age of
+eighteen, or, rather, on the verge of nineteen--they adored sketching, in
+water colors, out of doors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scrubby forelands set with cedars, shadow-flecked paths under the scrub
+oak, meadows where water glimmered, white sails off Center Island and
+Cooper's Bluff--Cooper's Bluff from the north, northeast, east,
+southeast, south--this they painted with never-tiring, Pecksniffian
+patience, boxing the compass around it as enthusiastically as that
+immortal architect circumnavigated Salisbury Cathedral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And one delicious morning in early June, when the dew sparkled on the
+poison ivy and the air was vibrant with the soft monotone of mosquitoes
+and the public road exhaled a delicate aroma of crude oil, Drusilla and
+Flavilla, laden with sketching-blocks, color-boxes, camp-stools, white
+umbrellas and bonbons, descended to the great hall, on sketching bent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr also stood there, just outside on the porch, red, explosive,
+determined legs planted wide apart, defying several courtly reporters,
+who for a month had patiently and politely appeared every hour to learn
+whether Mr. Carr had anything to say about the new invention, rumors of
+which were flying thick about Park Row.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I haven't!" he shouted in his mellow and sonorously musical bellow.
+"I have told you one hundred times that when I have anything to say I'll
+send for you. Now, permit me to inform you, for the hundred and first
+consecutive time, that I have nothing to say--which won't prevent you
+from coming back in an hour and standing in exactly the same ridiculous
+position you now occupy, and asking me exactly the same unmannerly
+questions, and taking the same impertinent snapshots at my house and my
+person!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He executed a ferocious facial contortion, clapped the monocle into his
+left eye, and squinted fiercely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm getting tired of this!" he continued. "When I wake in the morning
+and look out of my window there are always anywhere from one to twenty
+reporters decorating my lawn! That young man over there is the worst and
+most persistent offender!"--scowling at a good-looking youth in white
+flannels, who immediately blushed distressingly. "Yes, you are, young
+man! I'm amazed that you have the decency to blush! Your insolent sheet,
+the Evening Star, refers to my Trust Company as a Green Mouse Trap and a
+<i>Mouse</i>leum. It also publishes preposterous pictures of myself and
+family. Dammit, sir, they even produce a photograph of Orlando, the
+family cat! You did it, I am told. Did you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am trying to do what I can for my paper, Mr. Carr," said the young
+man. "The public is interested."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr regarded him with peculiar hatred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come here," he said; "I <i>have</i> got something to say to <i>you</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man cautiously left the ranks of his fellows and came up on the
+porch. Behind Mr. Carr, in the doorway, stood Drusilla and Flavilla. The
+young man tried not to see them; he pretended not to. But he flushed
+deeply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want to know," demanded Mr. Carr, "why the devil you are always around
+here blushing. You've been around here blushing for a month, and I want
+to know why you do it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The youth stood speechless, features afire to the tips of his glowing
+ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At first," continued Mr. Carr, mercilessly, "I had a vague hope that you
+might perhaps be blushing for shame at your profession; I heard that you
+were young at it, and I was inclined to be sorry for you. But I'm not
+sorry any more!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man remained crimson and dumb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Confound it," resumed Mr. Carr, "I want to know why the deuce you come
+and blush all over my lawn. I won't stand it! I'll not allow anybody to
+come blushing around me----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indignation choked him; he turned on his heel to enter the house and
+beheld Flavilla and Drusilla regarding him, wide-eyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went in, waving them away before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've taught that young pup a lesson," he said with savage satisfaction.
+"I'll teach him to blush at me! I'll----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But why," asked Drusilla, "are you so cruel to Mr. Yates? We like him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr.--Mr. <i>Yates!</i>" repeated her father, astonished. "Is that his name?
+And who told <i>you?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He did," said Drusilla, innocently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He--that infernal newspaper bantam----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pa-<i>pah!</i> Please don't say that about Mr. Yates. He is really
+exceedingly kind and civil to us. Every time you go to town on business
+he comes and sketches with us at----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh," said Mr. Carr, with the calm of deadly fury, "so he goes to
+Cooper's Bluff with you when I'm away, does he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flavilla said: "He doesn't exactly go with us; but he usually comes there
+to sketch. He makes sketches for his newspaper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does he?" asked her father, grinding his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Drusilla; "and he sketches so beautifully. He made such
+perfectly charming drawings of Flavilla and of me, and he drew pictures
+of the house and gardens, and of all the servants, and"--she laughed--"I
+once caught a glimpse in his sketch-book of the funniest caricature of
+you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The expression on her father's face was so misleading in its terrible
+calm that she laughed again, innocently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was not at all an offensive caricature, you know--really it was not a
+caricature at all--it was <i>you</i>--just the way you stand and look at
+people when you are--slightly--annoyed----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, he is so clever," chimed in Flavilla, "and is so perfectly well-bred
+and so delightful to us--to Drusilla particularly. He wrote the prettiest
+set of verses--To Drusilla in June--just dashed them off while he was
+watching her sketch Cooper's Bluff from the southwest----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is really quite wonderful," added Drusilla, sincerely, "and so
+generous and helpful when my drawing becomes weak and wobbly----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Yates shows Drusilla how to hold her pencil," said Flavilla,
+becoming warmly earnest in her appreciation of this self-sacrificing
+young man. "He often lays aside his own sketching and guides Drusilla's
+hand while she holds the pencil----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And when I'm tired," said Drusilla, "and the water colors get into a
+dreadful mess, Mr. Yates will drop his own work and come and talk to me
+about art--and other things----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is <i>so</i> kind!" cried Flavilla in generous enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And <i>so</i> vitally interesting," said Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And so talented!" echoed Flavilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And so--" Drusilla glanced up, beheld something in the fixed stare of
+her parent that frightened her, and rose in confusion. "Have I said--
+done--anything?" she faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With an awful spasm Mr. Carr jerked his congested features into the
+ghastly semblance of a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not at all," he managed to say. "This is very interesting--what you tell
+me about this p-pu--this talented young man. Does he--does he seem--
+attracted toward you--unusually attracted?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said Drusilla, smiling reminiscently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because he once said so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"S-said--w-what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, he said quite frankly that he thought me the most delightful girl
+he had ever met."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What--else?" Mr. Carr's voice was scarcely audible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing," said Drusilla; "except that he said he cared for me very much
+and wished to know whether I ever could care very much for him.... I told
+him I thought I could. Flavilla told him so, too.... And we all felt
+rather happy, I think; at least I did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her parent emitted a low, melodious sort of sound, a kind of mellifluous
+howl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pa-pah!" they exclaimed in gentle consternation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He beat at the empty air for a moment like a rotund fowl about to seek
+its roost. Suddenly he ran distractedly at an armchair and kicked it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They watched him in sorrowful amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If we are going to sketch Cooper's Bluff this morning," observed
+Drusilla to Flavilla, "I think we had better go--quietly--by way of the
+kitchen garden. Evidently Pa-pah does not care for Mr. Yates."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Orlando, the family cat, strolled in, conciliatory tail hoisted. Mr. Carr
+hurled a cushion at Orlando, then beat madly upon his own head with both
+hands. Servants respectfully gave him room; some furniture was
+overturned--a chair or two--as he bounced upward and locked and bolted
+himself in his room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What transports of fury he lived through there nobody else can know; what
+terrible visions of vengeance lit up his outraged intellect, what cold
+intervals of quivering hate, what stealthy schemes of reprisal, what
+awful retribution for young Mr. Yates were hatched in those dreadful
+moments, he alone could tell. And as he never did tell, how can I know?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, in about half an hour his expression of stony malignity changed
+to a smile so cunningly devilish that, as he caught sight of himself in
+the mirror, his corrugated countenance really startled him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must smooth out--smooth out!" he muttered. "Smoothness does it!" And
+he rang for a servant and bade him seek out a certain Mr. Yates among the
+throng of young men who had been taking snapshots.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp231.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp232.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="xv">XV</a></h2>
+
+<h3>DRUSILLA</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>During Which Chapter Mr. Carr Sings and One of His Daughters Takes her
+Postgraduate</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Yates came presently, ushered by Ferdinand, and looking extremely
+worried. Mr. Carr received him in his private office with ominous
+urbanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Yates," he said, forcing a distorted smile, "I have rather abruptly
+decided to show you exactly how one of the Destyn-Carr instruments is
+supposed to work. Would you kindly stand here--close by this table?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Yates, astounded, obeyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," said Mr. Carr, with a deeply creased smile, "here is the famous
+Destyn-Carr apparatus. That's quite right--take a snapshot at it without
+my permission----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I thought----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite right, my boy; I intend you shall know all about it. You see it
+resembles the works of a watch.... Now, when I touch this spring the
+receiver opens and gathers in certain psychic waves which emanate from
+the subconscious personality of--well, let us say you, for example!...
+And now I touch this button. You see that slender hairspring of Rosium
+uncurl and rise, trembling and waving about like a tentacle?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Yates, notebook in hand, recovered himself sufficiently to nod. Mr.
+Carr leered at him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That tentacle," he explained, "is now seeking some invisible, wireless,
+psychic current along which it is to transmit the accumulated psychic
+waves. As soon as the wireless current finds the subconscious personality
+of the woman you are destined to love and marry some day----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I?" exclaimed young Yates, horrified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you. Why not? Do you mind my trying it on you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I am already in love," protested the young man, turning, as usual, a
+ready red. "I don't care to have you try it on me. Suppose that machine
+should connect me with--some other--girl----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It has!" cried Carr with a hideous laugh as a point of bluish-white fire
+tipped the tentacle for an instant. "You're tied fast to something
+feminine! Probably a flossy typewriter--or a burlesque actress--somebody
+you're fitted for, anyway!" He clapped on his monocle, and glared
+gleefully at the stupefied young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That will teach you to enter my premises and hold my daughter's hand
+when she is drawing innocent pictures of Cooper's Bluff!" he shouted.
+"That will teach you to write poems to my eighteen-year-old daughter,
+Drusilla; that will teach you to tell her you are in love with her--you
+young pup!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am in love with her!" said Yates, undaunted; but he was very white
+when he said it. "I do love her; and if you had behaved halfway decently
+I'd have told you so two weeks ago!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr turned a delicate purple, then, recovering, laughed horribly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whether or not you were once in love with my daughter is of no
+consequence now. That machine has nullified your nonsense! That
+instrument has found you your proper affinity--doubtless below stairs----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>am</i> still in love with Drusilla," repeated Yates, firmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tell you, you're not!" retorted Carr. "Didn't I turn that machine on
+you? It has never missed yet! The Green Mouse has got <i>you</i> in the
+Mouseleum!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are mistaken," insisted Yates, still more firmly. "I was in love
+with your daughter Drusilla before you started the machine; and I love
+her yet! Now! At the present time! This very instant I am loving her!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can't!" shouted Carr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I can. And I do!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you don't! I tell you it's a scientific and psychical impossibility
+for you to continue to love her! Your subconscious personality is now in
+eternal and irrevocable accord and communication with the subconscious
+personality of some chit of a girl who is destined to love and marry you!
+And she's probably a ballet-girl, at that!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall marry Drusilla!" retorted the young man, very pale; "because I
+am quite confident that she loves me, though very probably she doesn't
+know it yet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You talk foolishness!" hissed Carr. "This machine has settled the whole
+matter! Didn't you see that spark?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I saw a spark--yes!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And do you mean to tell me you are not beginning to feel queer?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not in the slightest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look me squarely in the eye, young man, and tell me whether you do not
+have a sensation as though your heart were cutting capers?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not in the least," said Yates, calmly. "If that machine worked at all it
+wouldn't surprise me if you yourself had become entangled in it--caught
+in your own machine!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"W-what!" exclaimed Carr, faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It wouldn't astonish me in the slightest," repeated Yates, delighted to
+discover the dawning alarm in the older man's features. "<i>You</i> opened the
+receiver; <i>you</i> have psychic waves as well as I. <i>I</i> was in love at the
+time; <i>you</i> were not. What was there to prevent your waves from being
+hitched to a wireless current and, finally, signaling the subconscious
+personality of--of some pretty actress, for example?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr sank nervously onto a chair; his eyes, already wild, became
+wilder as he began to realize the risk he had unthinkingly taken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps <i>you</i> feel a little--queer. You look it," suggested the young
+man, in a voice made anxious by an ever-ready sympathy. "Can I do
+anything? I am really very sorry to have spoken so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A damp chill gathered on the brow of Bushwyck Carr. He <i>did</i> feel a
+trifle queer. A curious lightness--a perfectly inexplicable buoyancy
+seemed to possess him. He was beginning to feel strangely youthful; the
+sound of his own heart suddenly became apparent. To his alarm it was
+beating playfully, skittishly. No--it was not even beating; it was
+skipping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-Yates," he stammered, "you don't think that I could p-possibly have
+become inadvertently mixed up with that horrible machine--do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Yates was a generous youth; resentment at the treatment meted out to
+him by this florid, bad-tempered and pompous gentleman changed to
+instinctive sympathy when he suddenly realized the plight his future
+father-in-law might now be in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yates," repeated Mr. Carr in an agitated voice, "tell me honestly: <i>do</i>
+you think there is anything unusual the matter with me? I--I seem to
+f-feel unusually--young. Do I look it? Have I changed? W-watch me while
+I walk across the room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr arose with a frightened glance at Yates, put on his hat, and
+fairly pranced across the room. "Great Heavens!" he faltered; "my hat's
+on one side and my walk is distinctly jaunty! Do you notice it, Yates?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm afraid I do, Mr. Carr."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This--this is infamous!" gasped Mr. Carr. "This is--is outrageous! I'm
+forty-five! I'm a widower! I detest a jaunty widower! I don't want to be
+one; I don't want to----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yates gazed at him with deep concern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can't you help lifting your legs that way when you walk--as though a
+band were playing? Wait, I'll straighten your hat. Now try it again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr pranced back across the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>know</i> I'm doing it again," he groaned, "but I can't help it! I--I
+feel so gay--dammit!--so frivolous--it's--it's that infernal machine.
+W-what am I to do, Yates," he added piteously, "when the world looks
+so good to me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Think of your family!" urged Yates. "Think of--of Drusilla."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," observed Carr, twirling his eyeglass and twisting his
+mustache, "that I'm beginning not to care what my family think!... Isn't
+it amazing, Yates? I--I seem to be somebody else, several years younger.
+Somewhere," he added, with a flourish of his monocle--"somewhere on earth
+there is a little birdie waiting for me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't talk that way!" exclaimed Yates, horrified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I will, young man. I repeat, with optimism and emphasis, that
+<i>somewhere</i> there is a birdie----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Carr!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, merry old Top!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I use your telephone?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't care what you do!" said Carr, gayly. "Use my telephone if you
+like; pull it out by the roots and throw it over Cooper's Bluff, for all
+I care! But"--and a sudden glimmer of reason seemed to come over him--"if
+you have one grain of human decency left in you, you won't drag me and my
+terrible plight into that scurrilous New York paper of yours."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said Yates, "I won't. And that ends my career on Park Row. I'm
+going to telephone my resignation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr gazed calmly around and twisted his mustache with a satisfied
+and retrospective smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's very decent of you, Yates; you must pardon me; I was naturally
+half scared to death at first; but I realize you are acting very
+handsomely in this horrible dilemma----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Naturally," interrupted Yates. "I must stand by the family into which I
+am, as you know, destined to marry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be sure," nodded Carr, absently; "it really looks that way, doesn't
+it! And, Yates, you have no idea how I hated you an hour ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I have," said Yates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you really have not, if you will permit me to contradict you, merry
+old Top. I--but never mind now. You have behaved in an unusually
+considerate manner. Who the devil are you, anyway?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yates informed him modestly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, why didn't you say so, instead of letting me bully you! I've known
+your father for twenty years. Why didn't you tell me you wanted to marry
+Drusilla, instead of coming and blushing all over the premises? I'd have
+told you she was too young; and she is! I'd have told you to wait; and
+you'd have waited. You'd have been civil enough to wait when I explained
+to you that I've already lost, by marriage, two daughters through that
+accursed machine. You wouldn't entirely denude me of daughters, would
+you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I only want one," said John Yates, simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, all right; I'm a decent father-in-law when I've got to be. I'm
+really a good sport. You may ask all my sons-in-law; they'll admit it."
+He scrutinized the young man and found him decidedly agreeable to look
+at, and at the same time a vague realization of his own predicament
+returned for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yates," he said unsteadily, "all I ask of you is to keep this terrible
+n-news from my innocent d-daughters until I can f-find out what sort of a
+person is f-fated to lead me to the altar!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yates took the offered hand with genuine emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Surely," he said, "your unknown intended must be some charming leader in
+the social activities of the great metropolis."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who knows! She may be m-my own l-laundress for all I know. She may be
+anything, Yates! She--she might even be b-black!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Black!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr nodded, shuddered, dashed the unmanly moisture from his
+eyeglass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think I'd better go to town and tell my son-in-law, William Destyn,
+exactly what has happened to me," he said. "And I think I'll go through
+the kitchen garden and take my power boat so that those devilish
+reporters can't follow me. Ferdinand!" to the man at the door, "ring up
+the garage and order the blue motor, and tell those newspaper men I'm
+going to town. That, I think, will glue them to the lawn for a while."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"About--Drusilla, sir?" ventured Yates; but Mr. Carr was already gone,
+speeding noiselessly out the back way, through the kitchen garden, and
+across the great tree-shaded lawn which led down to the boat landing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Across the distant hedge, from the beautiful grounds of his next-door
+neighbor, floated sounds of mirth and music. Gay flags fluttered among
+the trees. The Magnelius Grandcourts were evidently preparing for the
+brilliant charity bazaar to be held there that afternoon and evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To think," muttered Carr, "that only an hour ago I was agreeably and
+comfortably prepared to pass the entire afternoon there with my
+daughters, amid innocent revelry. And now I'm in flight--pursued by
+furies of my own invoking--threatened with love in its most hideous form--
+matrimony! Any woman I now look upon may be my intended bride for all I
+know," he continued, turning into the semiprivate driveway, bordered
+heavily by lilacs; "and the curious thing about it is that I really don't
+care; in fact, the excitement is mildly pleasing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He halted; in the driveway, blocking it, stood a red motor car--a little
+runabout affair; and at the steering-wheel sat a woman--a lady's maid by
+her cap and narrow apron, and an exceedingly pretty one, at that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she saw Mr. Carr she looked up, showing an edge of white teeth in
+the most unembarrassed of smiles. She certainly was an unusually
+agreeable-looking girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Has something gone wrong with your motor?" inquired Mr. Carr,
+pleasantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid so." She didn't say "sir"; probably because she was too
+pretty to bother about such incidentals. And she looked at Carr and
+smiled, as though he were particularly ornamental.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me see," began Mr. Carr, laying his hand on the steering-wheel;
+"perhaps I can make it go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It won't go," she said, a trifle despondently and shaking her charming
+head. "I've been here nearly half an hour waiting for it to do something;
+but it won't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr peered wisely into the acetylenes, looked carefully under the
+hood, examined the upholstery. He didn't know anything about motors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm afraid," he said sadly, "that there's something wrong with the
+magne-e-to!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think it is as bad as that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I fear so," he said gravely. "If I were you I'd get out--and keep well
+away from that machine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?" she asked nervously, stepping to the grass beside him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It <i>might</i> blow up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They backed away rather hastily, side by side. After a while they backed
+farther away, hand in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I hate to leave it there all alone," said the maid, when they had
+backed completely out of sight of the car. "If there was only some safe
+place where I could watch and see if it is going to explode."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They ventured back a little way and peeped at the motor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You could take a rowboat and watch it from the water," said Mr. Carr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't know how to row."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Carr looked at her. Certainly she was the most prepossessing specimen
+of wholesome, rose-cheeked and ivory-skinned womanhood that he had ever
+beheld; a trifle nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, he thought, but so
+sweet and fresh and with such charming eyes and manners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have," said Mr. Carr, "several hours at my disposal before I go to
+town on important business. If you like I will row you out in one of my
+boats, and then, from a safe distance, we can sit and watch your motor
+blow up. Shall we?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is most kind of you----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not at all. It would be most kind of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked sideways at the motor, sideways at the water, sideways at Mr.
+Carr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a very lovely morning in early June.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Mr. Carr handed her into the rowboat with ceremony she swept him a
+courtesy. Her apron and manners were charmingly incongruous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she was gracefully seated in the stern Mr. Carr turned for a moment,
+stared all Oyster Bay calmly in the face through his monocle, then,
+untying the painter, fairly skipped into the boat with a step distinctly
+frolicsome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's curious how I feel about this," he observed, digging both oars into
+the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>How</i> do you feel, Mr. Carr?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Like a bird," he said softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the boat moved off gently through the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gently
+caressing the classic contours of Cooper's Bluff, and upon that
+monumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla and
+Drusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates,
+in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod and
+looked at Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, brooded
+over Cooper's Bluff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's no use," said Drusilla at last; "one can draw a landscape from
+every point of view except looking <i>down</i> hill. Mr. Yates, how on earth
+am I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps," he said, "I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think that would help?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think it helps--somehow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed over
+it. She looked at the pad on her knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a while she said: "I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don't
+you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers,
+and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is very pleasant to have you here," she said dreamily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is very heavenly to be here," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How generous you are to give us so much of your time!" murmured
+Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think so, too," said Flavilla, washing a badger brush. "And I am
+becoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't you like him as well as I do?" asked Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not quite as well," she said frankly. "You know, Drusilla, you are very
+nearly in love with him." And she resumed her sketching.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarrassed. "Am I?" she said
+absently.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<a href="images/illp248.jpg"><img src="images/illp248_th.jpg" alt="'Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil again'"></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you?" he repeated, close to her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it--to love? Is it"--she looked at him undisturbed--"is it to be
+quite happy and lazy with a man like you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought," she continued, "that there would be some hesitation, some
+shyness about it--some embarrassment. But there, has been none between
+you and me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went on absently:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You said, the other day, very simply, that you cared a great deal for
+me; and I was not very much surprised. And I said that I cared very much
+for you.... And, by the way, I meant to ask you yesterday; are we
+engaged?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are we?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--if you wish.... Is <i>that</i> all there is to an engagement?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's a ring," observed Flavilla, dabbing on too much ultramarine and
+using a sponge. "You've got to get her one, Mr. Yates."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drusilla looked at the man beside her and smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How simple it is, after all!" she said. "I have read in the books Pa-pah
+permits us to read such odd things about love and lovers.... Are we
+lovers, Mr. Yates? But, of course, we must be, I fancy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Some time or other, when it is convenient," observed Flavilla, "you
+ought to kiss each other occasionally."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That doesn't come until I'm a bride, does it?" asked Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe it's a matter of taste," said Flavilla, rising and naively
+stretching her long, pretty limbs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood a moment on the edge of the bluff, looking down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How curious!" she said after a moment. "There is Pa-pah on the water
+rowing somebody's maid about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!" exclaimed Yates, springing to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How extraordinary," said Drusilla, following him to the edge of the
+bluff; "and they're singing, too, as they row!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From far below, wafted across the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Mr.
+Carr's rich and mellifluous voice was wafted shoreward:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I der-reamt that I dwelt in ma-arble h-a-l-ls.</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sunlight fell on the maid's coquettish cap and apron, and sparkled
+upon the buckle of one dainty shoe. It also glittered across the monocle
+of Mr. Carr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pa-<i>pah!</i>" cried Flavilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Far away her parent waved a careless greeting to his offspring, then
+resumed his oars and his song.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How extraordinary!" said Flavilla. "Why do you suppose that Pa-<i>pah</i> is
+rowing somebody's maid around the bay, and singing that way to her?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps it's one of our maids," said Drusilla; "but that would be rather
+odd, too, wouldn't it, Mr. Yates?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A--little," he admitted. And his heart sank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm going to see whose maid it is," she called back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried grass and watched her sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yates stood beside her in bitter dejection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So <i>this</i> was the result! His unfortunate future father-in-law was done
+for. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answer
+had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by
+mistake, summoned his own affinity! And <i>what</i> an affinity! A saucy
+soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the <i>coulisse</i> of a
+Parisian theater!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yates looked at Drusilla. What an awful blow was impending! She never
+could have suspected it, but there, in that boat, sat her future
+stepmother in cap and apron!--his own future stepmother-in-law!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in the misery of that moment's realization John Chillingham Yates
+showed the material of which he was constructed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear," he said gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mean me?" asked Drusilla, looking up in frank surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at the same time she saw on his face a look which she had never
+before encountered there. It was the shadow of trouble; and it drew her
+to her feet instinctively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it, Jack?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had never before called him anything but Mr. Yates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it?" she repeated, turning away beside him along the leafy path;
+and with every word another year seemed, somehow, to be added to her
+youth. "Has anything happened, Jack? Are you unhappy--or ill?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not speak; she walked beside him, regarding him with wistful eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So there was more of love than happiness, after all; she began to half
+understand it in a vague way as she watched his somber face. There
+certainly was more of love than a mere lazy happiness; there was
+solicitude and warm concern, and desire to comfort, to protect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jack," she said tremulously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned and took her unresisting hands. A quick thrill shot through
+her. Yes, there <i>was</i> more to love than she had expected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you unhappy?" she asked. "Tell me. I can't bear to see you this way.
+I--I never did--before."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you love me; Drusilla?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--yes, I will, Jack."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dearly?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do--dearly." The first blush that ever tinted her cheek spread and
+deepened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you marry me, Drusilla?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.... You frighten me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She trembled, suddenly, in his arms. Surely there were more things to
+love than she had dreamed of in her philosophy. She looked up as he bent
+nearer, understanding that she was to be kissed, awaiting the event which
+suddenly loomed up freighted with terrific significance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a silence, a sob.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jack--darling--I--I love you so!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flavilla was sketching on her camp-stool when they returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm horridly hungry," she said. "It's luncheon time, isn't it? And, by
+the way, it's all right about that maid. She was on her way to serve in
+the tea pavilion at Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's bazaar, and her runabout
+broke down and nearly blew up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What on earth are you talking about?" exclaimed Drusilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm talking about Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's younger sister from
+Philadelphia, who looks perfectly sweet as a lady's maid. Tea," she
+added, "is to be a dollar a cup, and three if you take sugar. And," she
+continued, "if you and I are to sell flowers there this afternoon we'd
+better go home and dress.... <i>What</i> are you smiling at, Mr. Yates?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drusilla naturally supposed she could answer that question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dearest little sister," she said shyly and tenderly, "we have something
+very wonderful to tell you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it?" asked Flavilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We--we are--engaged," whispered Drusilla, radiant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, I knew that already!" said Flavilla.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you?" sighed her sister, turning to look at her tall, young lover.
+"I didn't.... Being in love is a much more complicated matter than you
+and I imagined, Flavilla. Is it not, Jack?"
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp255.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp256.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="xvi">XVI</a></h2>
+
+<h3>FLAVILLA</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>Containing a Parable Told with Such Metaphorical Skill that the Author
+Is Totally Unable to Understand It</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Green Mouse now dominated the country; the entire United States was
+occupied in getting married. In the great main office on Madison Avenue,
+and in a thousand branch offices all over the Union, Destyn-Carr machines
+were working furiously; a love-mad nation was illuminated by their
+sparks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marriage-license bureaus had been almost put out of business by the
+sudden matrimonial rush; clergymen became exhausted, wedding bells in the
+churches were worn thin, California and Florida reported no orange crops,
+as all the blossoms had been required for brides; there was a shortage of
+solitaires, traveling clocks, asparagus tongs; and the corner in rice
+perpetrated by some conscienceless captain of industry produced a panic
+equaled only by a more terrible <i>coup</i> in slightly worn shoes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All America was rushing to get married; from Seattle to Key West the
+railroads were blocked with bridal parties; a vast hum of merrymaking
+resounded from the Golden Gate to Governor's Island, from Niagara to the
+Gulf of Mexico. In New York City the din was persistent; all day long
+church bells pealed, all day long the rattle of smart carriages and hired
+hacks echoed over the asphalt. A reporter of the <i>Tribune</i> stood on top
+of the New York Life tower for an entire week, devouring cold-slaw
+sandwiches and Marie Corelli, and during that period, as his affidavit
+runs, "never for one consecutive second were his ample ears free from the
+near or distant strains of the Wedding March."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And over all, in approving benediction, brooded the wide smile of the
+greatest of statesmen and the great smile of the widest of statesmen--
+these two, metaphorically, hand in hand, floated high above their people,
+scattering encouraging blessings on every bride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tremendous rise in values set in; the newly married required homes;
+architects were rushed to death; builders, real-estate operators,
+brokers, could not handle the business hurled at them by impatient
+bridegrooms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, seizing time by the fetlock, some indescribable monster secured the
+next ten years' output of go-carts. The sins of Standard Oil were
+forgotten in the menace of such a national catastrophe; mothers' meetings
+were held; the excitement became stupendous; a hundred thousand brides
+invaded the Attorney-General's office, but all he could think of to say
+was: "Thirty centuries look down upon you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These vague sentiments perplexed the country. People understood that the
+Government meant well, but they also realized that the time was not far
+off when millions of go-carts would be required in the United States. And
+they no longer hesitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All over the Union fairs and bazaars were held to collect funds for a
+great national factory to turn out carts. Alarmed, the Trust tried to
+unload; militant womanhood, thoroughly aroused, scorned compromise. In
+every city, town, and hamlet of the nation entertainments were given,
+money collected for the great popular go-cart factory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The affair planned for Oyster Bay was to be particularly brilliant--a
+water carnival at Center Island with tableaux, fireworks, and
+illuminations of all sorts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reassured by the magnificent attitude of America's womanhood, business
+discounted the collapse of the go-cart trust and began to recover from
+the check very quickly. Stocks advanced, fluctuated, and suddenly whizzed
+upward like skyrockets; and the long-expected wave of prosperity
+inundated the country. On the crest of it rode Cupid, bow and arrows
+discarded, holding aloft in his right hand a Destyn-Carr machine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the old order of things had passed away; the old-fashioned doubts and
+fears of courtship were now practically superfluous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anybody on earth could now buy a ticket and be perfectly certain that
+whoever he or she might chance to marry would be the right one--the one
+intended by destiny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, strange as it may appear, there still remained, here and there, a
+few young people in the United States who had no desire to be safely
+provided for by a Destyn-Carr machine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether there was in them some sporting instinct, making hazard
+attractive, or, perhaps, a conviction that Fate is kind, need not be
+discussed. The fact remains that there were a very few youthful and
+marriageable folk who had no desire to know beforehand what their fate
+might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of these unregenerate reactionists was Flavilla. To see her entire
+family married by machinery was enough for her; to witness such
+consummate and collective happiness became slightly cloying. Perfection
+can be overdone; a rift in a lute relieves melodious monotony, and when
+discords cease to amuse, one can always have the instrument mended or buy
+a banjo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What I desire," she said, ignoring the remonstrances of the family, "is
+a chance to make mistakes. Three or four nice men have thought they were
+in love with me, and I wouldn't take anything for the--experience. Or,"
+she added innocently, "for the chances that some day three or four more
+agreeable young men may think they are in love with me. One learns by
+making mistakes--very pleasantly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her family sat in an affectionately earnest row and adjured her--four
+married sisters, four blissful brothers-in-law, her attractive
+stepmother, her father. She shook her pretty head and continued sewing on
+the costume she was to wear at the Oyster Bay Venetian Fête and Go-cart
+Fair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," she said, threading her needle and deftly sewing a shining, silvery
+scale onto the mermaid's dress lying across her knees, "I'll take my
+chances with men. It's better fun to love a man not intended for me, and
+make him love me, and live happily and defiantly ever after, than to have
+a horrid old machine settle you for life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you are wasting time, dear," explained her stepmother gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, I'm not. I've been engaged three times and I've enjoyed it
+immensely. That isn't wasting time, is it? And it's <i>such</i> fun!
+He thinks he's in love and you think you're in love, and you have such an
+agreeable time together until you find out that you're spoons on somebody
+else. And then you find out you're mistaken and you say you always want
+him for a friend, and you presently begin all over again with a perfectly
+new man----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Flavilla!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Pa-<i>pah</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you utterly demoralized!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Demoralized? Why? Everybody behaved as I do before you and William
+invented your horrid machine. Everybody in the world married at hazard,
+after being engaged to various interesting young men. And I'm not
+demoralized; I'm only old-fashioned enough to take chances. Please let
+me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The family regarded her sadly. In their amalgamated happiness they
+deplored her reluctance to enter where perfect bliss was guaranteed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her choice of rôle and costume for the Seawanhaka Club water tableaux
+they also disapproved of; for she had chosen to represent a character now
+superfluous and out of date--the Lorelei who lured Teutonic yachtsmen to
+destruction with her singing some centuries ago. And that, in these
+times, was ridiculous, because, fortified by a visit to the nearest
+Destyn-Carr machine, no weak-minded young sailorman would care what a
+Lorelei might do; and she could sing her pretty head off and comb herself
+bald before any Destyn-Carr inoculated mariner would be lured overboard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Flavilla obstinately insisted on her scaled and fish-tailed costume.
+When her turn came, a spot-light on the clubhouse was to illuminate the
+float and reveal her, combing her golden hair with a golden comb and
+singing away like the Musical Arts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And," she thought secretly, "if there remains upon this machine-made
+earth one young man worth my kind consideration, it wouldn't surprise me
+very much if he took a header off the Yacht Club wharf and requested me
+to be his. And I'd be very likely to listen to his suggestion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So in secret hopes of this pleasing episode--but not giving any such
+reason to her protesting family--she vigorously resisted all attempts to
+deprive her of her fish scales, golden comb, and rôle in the coming water
+fête. And now the programmes were printed and it was too late for them to
+intervene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose, holding out the glittering, finny garment, which flashed like a
+collapsed fish in the sunshine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's finished," she said. "Now I'm going off somewhere by myself to
+rehearse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the water?" asked her father uneasily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Flavilla was a superb swimmer nobody could object. Later, a maid went
+down to the landing, stowed away luncheon, water-bottles and costume in
+the canoe. Later, Flavilla herself came down to the water's edge,
+hatless, sleeves rolled up, balancing a paddle across her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the paddle flashed and the canoe danced away over the sparkling waters
+of Oyster Bay, Flavilla hummed the threadbare German song which she was
+to sing in her rôle of Lorelei, and headed toward Northport.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," she thought to herself, "is to find some nice, little,
+wooded inlet where I can safely change my costume and rehearse. I must
+know whether I can swim in this thing--and whether I can sing while
+swimming about. It would be more effective, I think, than merely sitting
+on the float, and singing and combing my hair through all those verses."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The canoe danced across the water, the paddle glittered, dipped, swept
+astern, and flashed again. Flavilla was very, very happy for no
+particular reason, which is the best sort of happiness on earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is a sandy neck of land which obstructs direct navigation between
+the sacred waters of Oyster Bay and the profane floods which wash the
+gravelly shores of Northport.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll make a carry," thought Flavilla, beaching her canoe. Then, looking
+around her at the lonely stretch of sand flanked by woods, she realized
+at once that she need seek no farther for seclusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First of all, she dragged the canoe into the woods, then rapidly
+undressed and drew on the mermaid's scaly suit, which fitted her to the
+throat as beautifully as her own skin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was rather difficult for her to navigate on land, as her legs were
+incased in a fish's tail, but, seizing her comb and mirror, she managed
+to wriggle down to the water's edge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few sun-warmed rocks jutted up some little distance from shore; with a
+final and vigorous wriggle Flavilla launched herself and struck out for
+the rocks, holding comb and mirror in either hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fishtail and accessories impeded her, but she was the sort of swimmer who
+took no account of such trifles; and after a while she drew herself up
+from the sea, and, breathless, glittering, iridescent, flopped down upon
+a flat rock in the sunshine. From which she took a careful survey of the
+surroundings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly nobody could see her here. Nobody would interrupt her either,
+because the route of navigation lay far outside, to the north. All around
+were woods; the place was almost landlocked, save where, far away through
+the estuary, a blue and hazy horizon glimmered in the general direction
+of New England.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, when she had recovered sufficient breath she let down the flashing,
+golden-brown hair, sat up on the rock, lifted her pretty nose skyward,
+and poured forth melody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she sang the tiresome old Teutonic ballad she combed away vigorously,
+and every now and then surveyed her features in the mirror.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ind">
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Dass ich so traurig bin----</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+she sang happily, studying her gestures with care and cheerfully flopping
+her tail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had a very lovely voice which had been expensively cultivated. One or
+two small birds listened attentively for a while, then started in to help
+her out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the veranda of his bungalow, not very far from Northport, stood a
+young man of pleasing aspect, knickerbockers, and unusually symmetrical
+legs. His hands reposed in his pockets, his eyes behind their eyeglasses
+were fixed dreamily upon the skies. Somebody over beyond that screen of
+woods was singing very beautifully, and he liked it--at first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, when the unseen singer had been singing the Lorelei for an hour,
+steadily, without intermission, an expression of surprise gradually
+developed into uneasy astonishment upon his clean-cut and unusually
+attractive features.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That girl, whoever she is, can sing, all right," he reflected, "but why
+on earth does she dope out the same old thing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the strip of woods, but could see nothing of the singer. He
+listened; she continued to sing the Lorelei.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It can't be a phonograph," he reasoned. "No sane person could endure an
+hour of that fool song. No sane person would sing it for an hour,
+either."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Disturbed, he picked up the marine glasses, slung them over his shoulder,
+walked up on the hill back of the bungalow, selected a promising tree,
+and climbed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Astride a lofty limb the lord of Northport gazed earnestly across the
+fringe of woods. Something sparkled out there, something moved,
+glittering on a half-submerged rock. He adjusted the marine glasses and
+squinted through them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Great James!" he faltered, dropping them; and almost followed the
+glasses to destruction on the ground below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How he managed to get safely to earth he never knew. "Either I'm crazy,"
+he shouted aloud, "or there's a--a mermaid out there, and I'm going to
+find out before they chase me to the funny house!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a fat tub of a boat at his landing; he reached the shore in a
+series of long, distracted leaps, sprang aboard, cast off, thrust both
+oars deep into the water, and fairly hurled the boat forward, so that it
+alternately skipped, wallowed, scuttered, and scrambled, like a hen
+overboard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is terrible," he groaned. "If I <i>didn't</i> see what I think I saw,
+I'll eat my hat; if I did see what I'm sure I saw, I'm madder than the
+hatter who made it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nearer and nearer, heard by him distinctly above the frantic splashing of
+his oars, her Lorelei song sounded perilously sweet and clear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, bunch!" he moaned; "it's horribly like the real thing; and here I
+come headlong, as they do in the story books----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He caught a crab that landed him in a graceful parabola in the bow, where
+he lay biting at the air to recover his breath. Then his boat's nose
+plowed into the sandy neck of land; he clambered to his feet, jumped out,
+and ran headlong into the belt of trees which screened the singer. Speed
+and gait recalled the effortless grace of the kangaroo; when he
+encountered logs and gullies he rose grandly, sailing into space, landing
+with a series of soft bounces, which presently brought him to the other
+side of the woods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there, what he beheld, what he heard, almost paralyzed him. Weak-
+kneed, he passed a trembling hand over his incredulous eyes; with the
+courage of despair, he feebly pinched himself. Then for sixty sickening
+seconds he closed his eyes and pressed both hands over his ears. But when
+he took his hands away and opened his terrified eyes, the exquisitely
+seductive melody, wind blown from the water, thrilled him in every fiber;
+his wild gaze fell upon a distant, glittering shape--white-armed, golden-
+haired, fish-tailed, slender body glittering with silvery scales.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The low rippling wash of the tide across the pebbly shore was in his
+ears; the salt wind was in his throat. He saw the sun flash on golden
+comb and mirror, as her snowy fingers caressed the splendid masses of her
+hair; her song stole sweetly seaward as the wind veered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A terrible calm descended upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is interesting," he said aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sickening wave of terror swept him, but he straightened up, squaring
+his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I may as well face the fact," he said, "that I, Henry Kingsbury, of
+Pebble Point, Northport, L.I., and recently in my right mind, am now,
+this very moment, looking at a--a mermaid in Long Island Sound!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shuddered; but he was sheer pluck all through. Teeth might chatter,
+knees smite together, marrow turn cold; nothing on earth or Long Island
+could entirely stampede Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His clutch on his self-control in any real crisis never slipped; his
+mental steering-gear never gave way. Again his pallid lips moved in
+speech:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The--thing--to--do," he said very slowly and deliberately, "is to swim
+out and--and touch it. If it dissolves into nothing I'll probably feel
+better----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to remove coat, collar, and shoes, forcing himself to talk
+calmly all the while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The thing to do," he went on dully, "is to swim over there and get a
+look at it. Of course, it isn't really there. As for drowning--it really
+doesn't matter.... In the midst of life we are in Long Island.... And, if
+it <i>is</i> there--I c-c-can c-capture it for the B-B-Bronx----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reason tottered; it revived, however, as he plunged into the s. w.[<a href="#*">*</a>] of
+Oyster Bay and struck out, silent as a sea otter for the shimmering shape
+on the ruddy rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<a name="*">* Sparkling Waters or Sacred Waters.</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flavilla was rehearsing with all her might; her white throat swelled with
+the music she poured forth to the sky and sea; her pretty fingers played
+with the folds of burnished hair; her gilded hand-mirror flashed, she
+gently beat time with her tail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So thoroughly, so earnestly, did she enter into the spirit of the siren
+she was representing that, at moments, she almost wished some fisherman
+might come into view--just to see whether he'd really go overboard after
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, audacious as her vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely
+unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the
+floating weeds almost at her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Goodness," she said faintly, and attempted to rise. But her fish tail
+fettered her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you real!" gasped Kingsbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Y-yes.... Are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Great James!" he half shouted, half sobbed, "are you <i>human?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"V-very. Are <i>you?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He clutched at the weedy rock and dragged himself up. For a moment he lay
+breathing fast, water dripping from his soaked clothing. Once he feebly
+touched the glittering fish tail that lay on the rock beside him. It
+quivered, but needle and thread had been at work there; he drew a deep
+breath and closed his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he opened them again she was looking about for a likely place to
+launch herself into the bay; in fact, she had already started to glide
+toward the water; the scraping of the scales aroused him, and he sat up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I heard singing," he said dreamily, "and I climbed a tree and saw--you!
+Do you blame me for trying to corroborate a thing like <i>you?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You thought I was a <i>real</i> one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought that I thought I saw a real one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him hopefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell me, <i>did</i> my singing compel you to swim out here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know what compelled me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But--you <i>were</i> compelled?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--it seems so----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O-h!" Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin
+and gazed at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To think," she said softly, "that you believed me to be a real siren,
+and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock! Isn't
+it exciting?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her, then turned red:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it is," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she
+surveyed him with intense interest. He was at a disadvantage; the sleek,
+half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not
+exhibit him at his best.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had
+actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human
+being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please fix your hair," she said, handing him her comb and mirror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My hair?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly. I want to look at you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought her request rather extraordinary, but he sat up and with the
+aid of the mirror, scraped away at his wet hair, parting it in the middle
+and combing it deftly into two gay little Mercury wings. Then, fishing in
+the soaked pockets of his knickerbockers, he produced a pair of smart
+pince-nez, which he put on, and then gazed up at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!" she said, with a quick, indrawn breath, "you <i>are</i> attractive!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that he turned becomingly scarlet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaning on one lovely, bare arm, burnished hair clustering against her
+cheeks, she continued to survey him in delighted approval which sometimes
+made him squirm inwardly, sometimes almost intoxicated him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To think," she murmured, "that <i>I</i> lured <i>you</i> out here!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>am</i> thinking about it," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laid her head on one side, inspecting him with frankest approval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder," she said, "what your name is. I am Flavilla Carr."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not one of the Carr triplets!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--but," she added quickly, "I'm not married. Are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, no, no!" he said hastily. "I'm Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point,
+Northport----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Master and owner of the beautiful but uncertain <i>Sappho?</i> Oh, tell me,
+<i>are</i> you the man who has tipped over so many times in Long Island Sound?
+Because I--I adore a man who has the pluck to continue to capsize every
+day or two."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then," he said, "you can safely adore me, for I am that yachtsman who
+has fallen off the <i>Sappho</i> more times than the White Knight fell off his
+horse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--I <i>do</i> adore you!" she exclaimed impulsively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, you d-d-don't mean that," he stammered, striving to smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes--almost. Tell me, you--I know you are not like other men! <i>You</i>
+never have had anything to do with a Destyn-Carr machine, have you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither have I.... And so you are not in love--are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither am I. Oh, I am so glad that you and I have waited, and not
+become engaged to somebody by machinery.... I wonder whom you are
+destined for."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nobody--by machinery."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She clapped her hands. "Neither am I. It is too stupid, isn't it? I
+<i>don't</i> want to marry the man I ought to marry. I'd rather take chances
+with a man who attracts me and who is attracted by me.... There was, in
+the old days--before everybody married by machinery--something not
+altogether unworthy in being a siren, wasn't there?... It's perfectly
+delightful to think of your seeing me out here on the rocks, and then
+instantly plunging into the waves and tearing a foaming right of way to
+what might have been destruction!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her flushed, excited face between its clustering curls looked straight
+into his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It <i>was</i> destruction," he said. His own voice sounded odd to him. "Utter
+destruction to my peace of mind," he said again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You--don't think that you love me, do you?" she asked. "That would be
+too--too perfect a climax.... <i>Do</i> you?" she asked curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--think so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do--do you <i>know</i> it?" He gazed bravely at her: "Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She flung up both arms joyously, then laughed aloud:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, the wonder of it! It is too perfect, too beautiful! You really love
+me? Do you? Are you <i>sure</i>?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.... Will you try to love me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you know that sirens don't care for people.... I've already been
+engaged two or three times.... I don't mind being engaged to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Couldn't you care for me, Flavilla?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, yes. I do.... Please don't touch me; I'd rather not. Of course, you
+know, I couldn't really love you so quickly unless I'd been subjected to
+one of those Destyn-Carr machines. You know that, don't you? But," she
+added frankly, "I wouldn't like to have you get away from me. I--I feel
+like a tender-hearted person in the street who is followed by a lost
+cat----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I <i>didn't</i> mean anything unpleasant--truly I didn't. You know how
+tenderly one feels when a poor stray cat comes trotting after one----"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got up, mad all through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Are</i> you offended?" she asked sorrowfully. "When I didn't mean anything
+except that my heart--which is rather impressionable--feels very warmly
+and tenderly toward the man who swam after me.... Won't you understand,
+please? Listen, we have been engaged only a minute, and here already is
+our first quarrel. You can see for yourself what would happen if we ever
+married."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It wouldn't be machine-made bliss, anyway," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That seemed to interest her; she inspected him earnestly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Also," he added, "I thought you desired to take a sportsman's chances?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I thought you didn't want to marry the man you ought to marry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is--true."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then you certainly ought not to marry me--but, will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can I when I don't--love you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't love me because you ought not to on such brief
+acquaintance.... But <i>will</i> you love me, Flavilla?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him in silence, sitting very still, the bright hair veiling
+her cheeks, the fish's tail curled up against her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Will</i> you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know," she said faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I--am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall I help you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Evidently she had gazed at him long enough; her eyes fell; her white
+fingers picked at the seaweed pods. His arm closed around her; nothing
+stirred but her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall I help you to love me?" he breathed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No--I am--past help." She raised her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is all so--so wrong," she faltered, "that I think it must be
+right.... Do you truly love me?... Don't kiss me if you do.... Now I
+believe you.... Lift me; I can't walk in this fish's tail.... Now set me
+afloat, please."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted her, walked to the water's edge, bent and placed her in the
+sea. In an instant she had darted from his arms out into the waves,
+flashing, turning like a silvery salmon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you coming?" she called back to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not stir. She swam in a circle and came up beside the rock. After
+a long, long silence, she lifted up both arms; he bent over. Then, very
+slowly, she drew him down into the water.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>
+"I am quite sure," she said, as they sat together at luncheon on the
+sandspit which divides Northport Bay from the s.w. of Oyster Bay, "that
+you and I are destined for much trouble when we marry; but I love you so
+dearly that I don't care."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither do I," he said; "will you have another sandwich?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, being young and healthy, she took it, and biting into it, smiled
+adorably at her lover.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/decp281.png" alt="">
+</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h2>OTHER BOOKS BY</h2>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<b>ROBERT W. CHAMBERS</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Mr. Chambers himself who wrote of the caprices of the Mystic
+Three--Fate, Chance, and Destiny--and how it frequently happened that a
+young man "tripped over the maliciously extended foot of Fate and fell
+plump into the open arms of Destiny." Perhaps it was due to one of the
+pranks of the mystic sisters that Mr. Chambers himself should lay down
+his brush and palette and take up the pen. Mr. Chambers studied art in
+Paris for seven years. At twenty-four his paintings were accepted at the
+Salon; at twenty-eight he had returned to New York and was busy as an
+illustrator for <i>Life, Truth</i>, and other periodicals. But already the
+desire to write was coursing through him. The Latin Quarter of Paris,
+where he had studied so long, seemed to haunt him; he wanted to tell its
+story. So he did write the story and, in 1893, published it under the
+title of "In the Quarter." The same year he published another book, "The
+King in Yellow," a grewsome tale, but remarkably successful. The easel
+was pushed aside; the painter had become writer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Writing of Mr. Chambers's novel of last fall
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>THE DANGER MARK</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+in <i>The Bookman</i>, Dr. Frederic Taber Cooper said, "In this last field
+(the society novel) it would seem as though Mr. Chambers had, at length,
+found himself; and the fact that the last of the four books is the best
+and most sustained and most honest piece of work he has yet done affords
+solid ground for the belief that he has still better and maturer volumes
+yet to come. There is no valid reason why Mr. Chambers should not
+ultimately be remembered as the novelist who left behind him a
+comprehensive human comedy of New York."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is another novel of society life like "The Fighting Chance" and "The
+Firing Line." The chief characters in the story are a boy and a girl,
+inheritors of a vast fortune, whose parents are dead, and who have been
+left in the guardianship of a large Trust Company. They are brought up
+with no companions of their own age and are a unique pair when turned
+out, on coming of age, into New York society--two children educated by a
+great machine, possessors of fabulous wealth, with every inherited
+instinct for good and evil set free for the first time. The fact that the
+girl has acquired the habit of dropping a little cologne on a lump of
+sugar and nibbling it when tired or depressed gives an indication of the
+struggle that the children have before them, a struggle of their own, in
+the midst of their luxurious surroundings, more vital, more real,
+perhaps, than any that Mr. Chambers has yet depicted. It is a tense,
+powerful, highly dramatic story, handling a delicate subject without
+offense to the taste or the judgment of the most critical reader.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Chambers's third novel of society life is
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>THE FIRING LINE</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Its scenes are laid principally at Palm Beach, and no more distinct yet
+delicately tinted picture of an American fashionable resort, in the full
+blossom of its brief, recurrent glory, has ever been drawn. In this book,
+Mr. Chambers's purpose is to show that the salvation of society lies in
+the constant injection of new blood into its veins. His heroine, the
+captivating Shiela Cardross, of unknown parentage, yet reared in luxury,
+suddenly finds herself on life's firing line, battling with one of the
+most portentous problems a young girl ever had to face. Only a master
+writer could handle her story; Mr. Chambers does it most successfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>THE YOUNGER SET</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+is the second of Mr. Chambers's society novels. It takes the reader into
+the swirling society life of fashionable New York, there to wrestle with
+that ever-increasing evil, the divorce question. As a student of life,
+Mr. Chambers is thorough; he knows society; his pictures are so accurate
+that he enables the reader to imbibe the same atmosphere as if he had
+been born and brought up in it. Moreover, no matter how intricate the
+plot may be or how great the lesson to be taught, the romance in the
+story is always foremost. For "The Younger Set," Mr. Chambers has
+provided a hero with a rigid code of honor and the grit to stick to it,
+even though it be unfashionable and out of date. He is a man whom
+everyone would seek to emulate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The earliest of Mr. Chambers's society novels is
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>THE FIGHTING CHANCE</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is the story of a young man who has inherited with his wealth a
+craving for liquor, and a girl who has inherited a certain rebelliousness
+and a tendency toward dangerous caprice. The two, meeting on the brink of
+ruin, fight out their battles--two weaknesses joined with love to make a
+strength.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is sufficient to say of this novel that more than five million people
+have read it. It has taken a permanent place among the best fiction of
+the period.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>SPECIAL MESSENGER</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+is the title of Mr. Chambers's novel just preceding "The Danger Mark." It
+is the romance of a young woman spy and scout in the Civil War. As a
+special messenger in the Union service, she is led into a maze of
+critical situations, but her coolness and bravery and winsome personality
+always carry her on to victory. The story is crowded with dramatic
+incident, the roar of battle, the grim realities of war; and, at times,
+in sharp contrast, comes the tenderest of romance. It is written with an
+understanding and sympathy for the viewpoint of the partisans on both
+sides of the conflict.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>THE RECKONING</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+is a novel of the Revolutionary War. It is the fourth, chronologically,
+of a series of which "Cardigan" and "The Maid-at-Arms" were the first
+two. The third has not yet been written. These novels of New York in the
+Revolutionary days are another striking example of the enthusiasm which
+Mr. Chambers puts into his work. To write an accurate and successful
+historical novel, one must be a historian as well as a romancer. Mr.
+Chambers is an authority on New York State history during the Colonial
+period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up
+old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The
+facts are not obtrusive, but they are there, interwoven in the gauzy woof
+of the artist's imagination. That is why these romances carry conviction
+always, why we breathe the very air of the period as we read them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>IOLE</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another splendid example of the author's versatility is this farcical,
+humorous satire on the <i>art nouveau</i> of to-day, Mr. Chambers, with all
+his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a
+pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the
+Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and eat nuts and fruit, and
+listen to him while he lectures them and everybody else on art. It is
+easy to imagine what happens when several rich and practical young New
+Yorkers stumble upon this group. Everybody is happy in the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One might run on for twenty books more, but there is not space enough
+more than to mention "The Tracer of Lost Persons," "The Tree of Heaven,"
+"Some Ladies in Haste," and Mr. Chambers's delightful nature books for
+children, telling how <i>Geraldine</i> and <i>Peter</i> go wandering through
+"Outdoor-Land," "Mountain-Land," "Orchard-Land," "River-Land," "Forest-
+Land," and "Garden-Land." They, in turn, are as different from his novels
+in fancy and conception as each of his novels from the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Chambers is a born optimist. The labor of writing is a natural
+enjoyment to him. In reading anything he has written, one is at once
+impressed with the ease with which it moves along. There is no straining
+after effects, no affectations, no hysteria; but always there is a
+personality, an individuality that appeals to the best side of the
+reader's nature and somehow builds up a personal relation between him and
+the author. Perhaps it is this consummate skill, this remarkable ability
+to win the reader that has enabled Mr. Chambers to increase his audience
+year after year, until it now numbers millions; and it is only just that
+critics should, as they frequently do, proclaim him "the most popular
+writer in the country."
+</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN MOUSE***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Green Mouse, by Robert W. Chambers,
+Illustrated by Edmund Frederick
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Green Mouse
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Release Date: December 12, 2003  [eBook #10441]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN MOUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Richard Prairie, Tonya Allen, and
+Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: "She almost wished some fisherman might come into view."]
+
+
+
+                              THE GREEN MOUSE
+
+                                    By
+
+                            ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+                          ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY
+
+                             EDMUND FREDERICK
+
+                                   1910
+
+                                    TO
+
+                                 MY FRIEND
+
+                                JOHN CORBIN
+
+Folly and Wisdom, Heavenly twins,
+  Sons of the god Imagination,
+Heirs of the Virtues--which were Sins
+  Till Transcendental Contemplation
+Transmogrified their outer skins--
+  Friend, do you follow me? For I
+  Have lost myself, I don't know why.
+
+Resuming, then, this erudite
+  And decorative Dedication,--
+Accept it, John, with all your might
+  In Cinquecentic resignation.
+You may not understand it, quite,
+  But if you've followed me all through,
+  You've done far more than I could do.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+To the literary, literal, and scientific mind purposeless fiction is
+abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined;
+the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to
+believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works
+suitable for man, woman, child, and suffragette, are to adorn the
+lingerie-laden counters in our great department shops.
+
+It is, then, with animation and confidence that the author politely
+offers to a regenerated nation this modern, moral, literary, and highly
+scientific work, thinly but ineffectually disguised as fiction, in
+deference to the prejudices of a few old-fashioned story-readers who
+still survive among us.
+
+R. W. C.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I.    An Idyl of the Idle
+II.   The Idler
+III.  The Green Mouse
+IV.   An Ideal Idol
+V.    Sacharissa
+VI.   In Wrong
+VII.  The Invisible Wire
+VIII. "In Heaven and Earth"
+IX.   A Cross-town Car
+X.    The Lid Off
+XI.   Betty
+XII.  Sybilla
+XIII. The Crown Prince
+XIV.  Gentlemen of the Press
+XV.   Drusilla
+XVI.  Flavilla
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"She almost wished some fisherman might come into view"
+
+"'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly"
+
+"'Are you not terribly impatient?' she inquired"
+
+"The lid of the basket tilted a little.... Then a plaintive voice said
+'Meow-w!'"
+
+"'I'm afraid,' he ventured, 'that I may require that table for cutting'"
+
+"'Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil again'"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+AN IDYL OF THE IDYL
+
+
+_In Which a Young Man Arrives at His Last Ditch and a Young Girl Jumps
+Over It_
+
+Utterly unequipped for anything except to ornament his environment, the
+crash in Steel stunned him. Dazed but polite, he remained a passive
+observer of the sale which followed and which apparently realized
+sufficient to satisfy every creditor, but not enough for an income to
+continue a harmlessly idle career which he had supposed was to continue
+indefinitely.
+
+He had never earned a penny; he had not the vaguest idea of how people
+made money. To do something, however, was absolutely necessary.
+
+He wasted some time in finding out just how much aid he might expect from
+his late father's friends, but when he understood the attitude of society
+toward a knocked-out gentleman he wisely ceased to annoy society, and
+turned to the business world.
+
+Here he wasted some more time. Perhaps the time was not absolutely
+wasted, for during that period he learned that he could use nobody who
+could not use him; and as he appeared to be perfectly useless, except for
+ornament, and as a business house is not a kindergarten, and furthermore,
+as he had neither time nor money to attend any school where anybody could
+teach him anything, it occurred to him to take a day off for minute and
+thorough self-examination concerning his qualifications and even his
+right to occupy a few feet of space upon the earth's surface.
+
+Four years at Harvard, two more in postgraduate courses, two more in
+Europe to perfect himself in electrical engineering, and a year at home
+attempting to invent a wireless apparatus for intercepting and
+transmitting psychical waves had left him pitifully unfit for wage
+earning.
+
+There remained his accomplishments; but the market was overstocked with
+assorted time-killers.
+
+His last asset was a trivial though unusual talent--a natural manual
+dexterity cultivated since childhood to amuse himself--something he never
+took seriously. This, and a curious control over animals, had, as the
+pleasant years flowed by, become an astonishing skill which was much more
+than sleight of hand; and he, always as good-humored as well-bred, had
+never refused to amuse the frivolous, of which he was also one, by
+picking silver dollars out of space and causing the proper card to fall
+fluttering from the ceiling.
+
+Day by day, as the little money left him melted away, he continued his
+vigorous mental examination, until the alarming shrinkage in his funds
+left him staring fixedly at his last asset. Could he use it? Was it an
+asset, after all? How clever was he? Could he face an audience and
+perform the usual magician tricks without bungling? A slip by a careless,
+laughing, fashionable young amateur amusing his social equals at a house
+party is excusable; a bungle by a hired professional meant an end to hope
+in that direction.
+
+So he rented a suite of two rooms on Central Park West, furnished them
+with what remained from better days, bought the necessary paraphernalia
+of his profession, and immured himself for practice before entering upon
+his contemplated invasion of Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbor. And one very
+lovely afternoon in May, when the Park from his windows looked like a
+green forest, and puff on puff of perfumed air fluttered the curtains at
+his opened windows, he picked up his gloves and stick, put on his hat,
+and went out to walk in the Park; and when he had walked sufficiently he
+sat down on a bench in a flowery, bushy nook on the edge of a bridle
+path.
+
+Few people disturbed the leafy privacy; a policeman sauntering southward
+noted him, perhaps for future identification. The spectacle of a well-
+built, well-groomed, and fashionable young man sitting moodily upon a
+park bench was certainly to be noted. It is not the fashion for
+fashionable people to sit on park benches unless they contemplate self,
+as well as social, destruction.
+
+So the policeman lingered for a while in the vicinity, but not hearing
+any revolver shot, presently sauntered on, buck-skinned fist clasped
+behind his broad back, squinting at a distant social gathering composed
+entirely of the most exclusive nursemaids.
+
+The young man looked up into the pleasant blue above, then his
+preoccupied gaze wandered from woodland to thicket, where the scarlet
+glow of Japanese quince mocked the colors of the fluttering scarlet
+tanagers; where orange-tinted orioles flashed amid tangles of golden
+Forsythia; and past the shrubbery to an azure corner of water, shimmering
+under the wooded slope below.
+
+That sense of languor and unrest, of despondency threaded by hope which
+fair skies and sunshine and new leaves bring with the young year to the
+young, he felt. Yet there was no bitterness in his brooding, for he was a
+singularly generous young man, and there was no vindictiveness mixed with
+the memories of his failures among those whose cordial respect for his
+father had been balanced between that blameless gentleman's wealth and
+position.
+
+A gray squirrel came crawling and nosing through the fresh grass; he
+caught its eyes, and, though the little animal was plainly bound
+elsewhere on important business, the young man soon had it curled up on
+his knee, asleep.
+
+For a while he amused himself by using his curious power, alternately
+waking the squirrel and allowing it to bound off, tail twitching, and
+then calling it back, slowly but inexorably to climb his trousers and
+curl up on his knee and sleep an uncanny and deep sleep which might end
+only at the young man's pleasure.
+
+He, too, began to feel the subtle stillness of the drowsing woodland;
+musing there, caressing his short, crisp mustache, he watched the purple
+grackle walking about in iridescent solitude, the sun spots waning and
+glowing on the grass; he heard the soft, garrulous whimper of waterfowl
+along the water's edge, the stir of leaves above.
+
+He thought of various personal matters: his poverty, the low ebb of his
+balance at the bank, his present profession, his approaching debut as an
+entertainer, the chances of his failure. He thought, too, of the
+astounding change in his life, the future, vacant of promise, devoid of
+meaning, a future so utterly new and blank that he could find in it
+nothing to speculate upon. He thought also, and perfectly impersonally,
+of a girl whom he had met now and then upon the stairs of the apartment
+house which he now inhabited.
+
+Evidently there had been an ebb in her prosperity; the tumble of a New
+Yorker's fortune leads from the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence
+through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she painted
+pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt sienna; and
+her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.
+
+He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful
+beauty he had known--might still know if he chose; for a man who can pay
+for his evening clothes need never deny himself the society he was bred
+to.
+
+She certainly did resemble that girl--she had the same bluish violet
+eyes, the same white and deeply fringed lids, the same free grace of
+carriage, a trifle too boyish at times--the same firmly rounded, yet
+slender, figure.
+
+"Now, as a matter of fact," he mused aloud, stroking the sleeping
+squirrel on his knee, "I could have fallen in love with either of those
+girls--before Copper blew up."
+
+Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like
+the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints
+portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I
+have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes
+of that waking Aphrodite in the Luxembourg. If she would only just look
+at me once instead of looking through me when we pass one another in the
+hall----"
+
+The deadened gallop of a horse on the bridle path caught his ear. The
+horse was coming fast--almost too fast. He laid the sleeping squirrel on
+the bench, listened, then instinctively stood up and walked to the
+thicket's edge.
+
+What happened was too quick for him to comprehend; he had a vision of a
+big black horse, mane and tail in the wind, tearing madly, straight at
+him--a glimpse of a white face, desperate and set, a flutter of loosened
+hair; then a storm of wind and sand roared in his ears; he was hurled,
+jerked, and flung forward, dragged, shaken, and left half senseless,
+hanging to nose and bit of a horse whose rider was picking herself out of
+a bush covered with white flowers.
+
+Half senseless still, he tightened his grip on the bit, released the
+grasp on the creature's nose, and, laying his hand full on the forelock,
+brought it down twice and twice across the eyes, talking to the horse in
+halting, broken whispers.
+
+When he had the trembling animal under control he looked around; the girl
+stood on the grass, dusty, dirty, disheveled, bleeding from a cut on the
+cheek bone; the most bewildered and astonished creature he had ever
+looked upon.
+
+"It will be all right in a few minutes," he said, motioning her to the
+bench on the asphalt walk. She nodded, turned, picked up his hat, and,
+seating herself, began to smooth the furred nap with her sleeve, watching
+him intently all the while. That he already had the confidence of a horse
+that he had never before seen was perfectly apparent. Little by little
+the sweating, quivering limbs were stilled, the tense muscles in the neck
+relaxed, the head sank, dusty velvet lips nibbled at his hand, his
+shoulder; the heaving, sunken flanks filled and grew quiet.
+
+Bareheaded, his attire in disorder and covered with slaver and sand, the
+young man laid the bridle on the horse's neck, held out his hand, and,
+saying "Come," turned his back and walked down the bridle path. The horse
+stretched a sweating neck, sniffed, pricked forward both small ears, and
+slowly followed, turning as the man turned, up and down, crowding at heel
+like a trained dog, finally stopping on the edge of the walk.
+
+The young man looped the bridle over a low maple limb, and leaving the
+horse standing sauntered over to the bench.
+
+"That horse," he said pleasantly, "is all right now; but the question is,
+are you all right?"
+
+She rose, handing him his hat, and began to twist up her bright hair. For
+a few moments' silence they were frankly occupied in restoring order to
+raiment, dusting off gravel and examining rents.
+
+"I'm tremendously grateful," she said abruptly.
+
+"I am, too," he said in that attractive manner which sets people of
+similar caste at ease with one another.
+
+"Thank you; it's a generous compliment, considering your hat and
+clothing."
+
+He looked up; she stood twisting her hair and doing her best with the few
+remaining hair pegs.
+
+"I'm a sight for little fishes," she said, coloring. "Did that wretched
+beast bruise you?"
+
+"Oh, no----"
+
+"You limped!"
+
+"Did I?" he said vaguely. "How do you feel?"
+
+"There is," she said, "a curious, breathless flutter all over me; if that
+is fright, I suppose I'm frightened, but I don't mind mounting at once--
+if you would put me up----"
+
+"Better wait a bit," he said; "it would not do to have that horse feel a
+fluttering pulse, telegraphing along the snaffle. Tell me, are you
+spurred?"
+
+She lifted the hem of her habit; two small spurs glittered on her
+polished boot heels.
+
+"That's it, you see," he observed; "you probably have not ridden cross
+saddle very long. When your mount swerved you spurred, and he bolted, bit
+in teeth."
+
+"That's exactly it," she admitted, looking ruefully at her spurs. Then
+she dropped her skirt, glanced interrogatively at him, and, obeying his
+grave gesture, seated herself again upon the bench.
+
+"Don't stand," she said civilly. He took the other end of the seat,
+lifting the still slumbering squirrel to his knee.
+
+"I--I haven't said very much," she began; "I'm impulsive enough to be
+overgrateful and say too much. I hope you understand me; do you?"
+
+"Of course; you're very good. It was nothing; you could have stopped your
+horse yourself. People do that sort of thing for one another as a matter
+of course."
+
+"But not at the risk you took----"
+
+"No risk at all," he said hastily.
+
+She thought otherwise, and thought it so fervently that, afraid of
+emotion, she turned her cold, white profile to him and studied her horse,
+haughty lids adroop. The same insolent sweetness was in her eyes when
+they again reverted to him. He knew the look; he had encountered it often
+enough in the hallway and on the stairs. He knew, too, that she must
+recognize him; yet, under the circumstances, it was for her to speak
+first; and she did not, for she was at that age when horror of overdoing
+anything chokes back the scarcely extinguished childish instinct to say
+too much. In other words, she was eighteen and had had her first season
+the winter past--the winter when he had not been visible among the
+gatherings of his own kind.
+
+[Illustration: "'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly."]
+
+"Those squirrels are very tame," she observed calmly.
+
+"Not always," he said. "Try to hold this one, for example."
+
+She raised her pretty eyebrows, then accepted the lump of fluffy fur from
+his hands. Instantly an electric shock seemed to set the squirrel
+frantic, there was a struggle, a streak of gray and white, and the
+squirrel leaped from her lap and fairly flew down the asphalt path.
+
+"Gracious!" she exclaimed faintly; "what was the matter?"
+
+"Some squirrels are very wild," he said innocently.
+
+"I know--but you held him--he was asleep on your knee. Why didn't he stay
+with me?"
+
+"Oh, perhaps because I have a way with animals."
+
+"With horses, too," she added gayly. And the smile breaking from her
+violet eyes silenced him in the magic of a beauty he had never dreamed
+of. At first she mistook his silence for modesty; then--because even as
+young a maid as she is quick to divine and fine of instinct--she too fell
+silent and serious, the while the shuttles of her reason flew like
+lightning, weaving the picture of him she had conceived--a gentleman, a
+man of her own sort, rather splendid and wise and bewildering. The
+portrait completed, there was no room for the hint of presumption she had
+half sensed in the brown eyes' glance that had set her alert; and she
+looked up at him again, frankly, a trifle curiously.
+
+"I am going to thank you once more," she said, "and ask you to put me up.
+There is not a flutter of fear in my pulse now."
+
+"Are you quite sure?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+They arose; he untied the horse and beckoned it to the walk's edge.
+
+"I forgot," she said, laughing, "that I am riding cross saddle. I can
+mount without troubling you--" She set her toe to the stirrup which he
+held, and swung herself up into the saddle with a breezy "Thanks,
+awfully," and sat there gathering her bridle.
+
+Had she said enough? How coldly her own thanks rang in her ears--for
+perhaps he had saved her neck--and perhaps not. Busy with curb and
+snaffle reins, head bent, into her oval face a tint of color crept. Did
+he think she treated lightly, flippantly, the courage which became him
+so? Or was he already bored by her acknowledgment of it? Sensitive,
+dreading to expose youth and inexperience to the amused smile of this
+attractive young man of the world, she sat fumbling with her bridle,
+conscious that he stood beside her, hat in hand, looking up at her. She
+could delay no longer; the bridle had been shifted and reshifted to the
+last second of procrastination. She must say something or go.
+
+Meeting his eyes, she smiled and leaned a little forward in her saddle as
+though to speak, but his brown eyes troubled her, and all she could say
+was "Thank you--good-by," and galloped off down the vista through dim,
+leafy depths heavy with the incense of lilac and syringa.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+THE IDLER
+
+
+_Concerning the Young Man in the Ditch and His Attempts to Get Out of It_
+
+Although he was not vindictive, he did not care to owe anything to
+anybody who might be inclined to give him a hearing on account of former
+obligations or his social position. Everybody knew he had gone to smash;
+everybody, he very soon discovered, was naturally afraid of being
+bothered by him. The dread of the overfed that an underfed member of the
+community may request a seat at the table he now understood perfectly. He
+was learning.
+
+So he solicited aid from nobody whom he had known in former days; neither
+from those who had aided him when he needed no aid, nor those who owed
+their comfortable position to the generosity of his father--a gentleman
+notorious for making fortunes for his friends.
+
+Therefore he wrote to strangers on a purely business basis--to amazing
+types lately emerged from the submerged, bulging with coal money, steel
+money, copper money, wheat money, stockyard money--types that galloped
+for Fifth Avenue to build town houses; that shook their long cars and
+frisked into the country and built "cottages." And this was how he put
+it:
+
+"_Madam:_ In case you desire to entertain guests with the professional
+services of a magician it would give me pleasure to place my very unusual
+accomplishments at your disposal."
+
+And signed his name.
+
+It was a dreadful drain on his bank account to send several thousand
+engraved cards about town and fashionable resorts. No replies came. Day
+after day, exhausted with the practice drill of his profession, he walked
+to the Park and took his seat on the bench by the bridle path. Sometimes
+he saw her cantering past; she always acknowledged his salute, but never
+drew bridle. At times, too, he passed her in the hall; her colorless
+"Good morning" never varied except when she said "Good evening." And all
+this time he never inquired her name from the hall servant; he was that
+sort of man--decent through instinct; for even breeding sometimes permits
+sentiment to snoop.
+
+For a week he had been airily dispensing with more than one meal a day;
+to keep clothing and boots immaculate required a sacrifice of breakfast
+and luncheon--besides, he had various small pensioners to feed, white
+rabbits with foolish pink eyes, canary birds, cats, albino mice,
+goldfish, and other collaborateurs in his profession. He was obliged to
+bribe the janitor, too, because the laws of the house permitted neither
+animals nor babies within its precincts. This extra honorarium deprived
+him of tobacco, and he became a pessimist.
+
+Besides, doubts as to his own ability arose within him; it was all very
+well to practice his magic there alone, but he had not yet tried it on
+anybody except the janitor; and when he had begun by discovering several
+red-eyed rabbits in the janitor's pockets that intemperate functionary
+fled with a despondent yell that brought a policeman to the area gate
+with a threat to pull the place.
+
+At length, however, a letter came engaging him for one evening. He was
+quite incredulous at first, then modestly scared, perplexed, exultant and
+depressed by turns. Here was an opening--the first. And because it was
+the first its success or failure meant future engagements or consignments
+to the street, perhaps as a white-wing. There must be no faltering now,
+no bungling, no mistakes, no amateurish hesitation. It is the empty-
+headed who most strenuously demand intelligence in others. One yawn from
+such an audience meant his professional damnation--he knew that; every
+second must break like froth in a wine glass; an instant's perplexity, a
+slackening of the tension, and those flaccid intellects would relax into
+native inertia. Incapable of self-amusement, depending utterly upon
+superior minds for a respite from ennui, their caprice controlled his
+fate; and he knew it.
+
+Sitting there by the sunny window with a pair of magnificent white
+Persian cats purring on either knee, he read and reread the letter
+summoning him on the morrow to Seabright. He knew who his hostess was--a
+large lady lately emerged from a corner in lard, dragging with her some
+assorted relatives of atrophied intellects and a husband whose only
+mental pleasure depended upon the speed attained by his racing car--the
+most exacting audience he could dare to confront.
+
+Like the White Knight he had had plenty of practice, but he feared that
+warrior's fate; and as he sat there he picked up a bunch of silver hoops,
+tossed them up separately so that they descended linked in a glittering
+chain, looped them and unlooped them, and, tiring, thoughtfully tossed
+them toward the ceiling again, where they vanished one by one in mid-air.
+
+The cats purred; he picked up one, molded her carefully in his handsome
+hands; and presently, under the agreeable massage, her purring increased
+while she dwindled and dwindled to the size of a small, fluffy kitten,
+then vanished entirely, leaving in his hand a tiny white mouse. This
+mouse he tossed into the air, where it became no mouse at all but a white
+butterfly that fluttered 'round and 'round, alighting at last on the
+window curtain and hung there, opening and closing its snowy wings.
+
+"That's all very well," he reflected, gloomily, as, at a pass of his
+hand, the air was filled with canary birds; "that's all very well, but
+suppose I should slip up? What I need is to rehearse to somebody before I
+face two or three hundred people."
+
+He thought he heard a knocking on his door, and listened a moment. But as
+there was an electric bell there he concluded he had been mistaken; and
+picking up the other white cat, he began a gentle massage that stimulated
+her purring, apparently at the expense of her color and size, for in a
+few moments she also dwindled until she became a very small, coal-black
+kitten, changing in a twinkling to a blackbird, when he cast her
+carelessly toward the ceiling. It was well done; in all India no magician
+could have done it more cleverly, more casually.
+
+Leaning forward in his chair he reproduced the two white cats from behind
+him, put the kittens back in their box, caught the blackbird and caged
+it, and was carefully winding up the hairspring in the white butterfly,
+when again he fancied that somebody was knocking.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+THE GREEN MOUSE
+
+
+_Showing the Value of a Helping Hand When It Is White and Slender_
+
+This time he went leisurely to the door and opened it; a girl stood
+there, saying, "I beg your pardon for disturbing you--" It was high time
+she admitted it, for her eyes had been disturbing him day and night since
+the first time he passed her in the hall.
+
+She appeared to be a trifle frightened, too, and, scarcely waiting for
+his invitation, she stepped inside with a hurried glance behind her, and
+walked to the center of the room holding her skirts carefully as though
+stepping through wet grass.
+
+"I--I am annoyed," she said in a voice not perfectly under command. "If
+you please, would you tell me whether there is such a thing as a pea-
+green mouse?"
+
+Then he did a mean thing; he could have cleared up that matter with a
+word, a smile, and--he didn't.
+
+"A green mouse?" he repeated gently, almost pitifully.
+
+She nodded, then paled; he drew a big chair toward her, for her knees
+trembled a little; and she sat down with an appealing glance that ought
+to have made him ashamed of himself.
+
+"What has frightened you?" inquired that meanest of men.
+
+"I was in my studio--and I must first explain to you that for weeks and
+weeks I--I have imagined I heard sounds--" She looked carefully around
+her; nothing animate was visible. "Sounds," she repeated, swallowing a
+little lump in her white throat, "like the faint squealing and squeaking
+and sniffing and scratching of--of live things. I asked the janitor, and
+he said the house was not very well built and that the beams and
+wainscoting were shrinking."
+
+"Did he say that?" inquired the young man, thinking of the bribes.
+
+"Yes, and I tried to believe him. And one day I thought I heard about one
+hundred canaries singing, and I know I did, but that idiot janitor said
+they were the sparrows under the eaves. Then one day when your door was
+open, and I was coming up the stairway, and it was dark in the entry,
+something big and soft flopped across the carpet, and--it being
+exceedingly common to scream--I didn't, but managed to get past it, and"--
+her violet eyes widened with horror--"do you know what that soft, floppy
+thing was? It was an owl!"
+
+He was aware of it; he had managed to secure the escaped bird before her
+electric summons could arouse the janitor.
+
+"I called the janitor," she said, "and he came and we searched the entry;
+but there was no owl."
+
+He appeared to be greatly impressed; she recognized the sympathy in his
+brown eyes.
+
+"That wretched janitor declared I had seen a cat," she resumed; "and I
+could not persuade him otherwise. For a week I scarcely dared set foot on
+the stairs, but I had to--you see, I live at home and only come to my
+studio to paint."
+
+"I thought you lived here," he said, surprised.
+
+"Oh, no. I have my studio--" she hesitated, then smiled. "Everybody makes
+fun of me, and I suppose they'll laugh me out of it, but I detest
+conventions, and I did hope I had talent for something besides
+frivolity."
+
+Her gaze wandered around his room; then suddenly the possible
+significance of her unconventional situation brought her to her feet,
+serious but self-possessed.
+
+"I beg your pardon again," she said, "but I was really driven out of my
+studio--quite frightened, I confess."
+
+"What drove you out?" he asked guiltily.
+
+"Something--you can scarcely credit it--and I dare not tell the janitor
+for fear he will think me--queer." She raised her distressed and lovely
+eyes again: "Oh, please believe that I _did_ see a bright green mouse!"
+
+"I do believe it," he said, wincing.
+
+"Thank you. I--I know perfectly well how it sounds--and I know that
+horrid people see things like that, but"--she spoke piteously--"I had
+only one glass of claret at luncheon, and I am perfectly healthy in body
+and mind. How could I see such a thing if it was not there?"
+
+"It was there," he declared.
+
+"Do you really think so? A green--bright green mouse?"
+
+"Haven't a doubt of it," he assured her; "saw one myself the other day."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"On the floor--" he made a vague gesture. "There's probably a crack
+between your studio and my wall, and the little rascal crept into your
+place."
+
+She stood looking at him uncertainly: "Are there really such things as
+green mice?"
+
+"Well," he explained, "I fancy this one was originally white. Somebody
+probably dyed it green."
+
+"But who on earth would be silly enough to do such a thing?"
+
+His ears grew red--he felt them doing it.
+
+After a moment she said: "I am glad you told me that you, too, saw this
+unspeakable mouse. I have decided to write to the owners of the house and
+request an immediate investigation. Would--would it be too much to ask
+you to write also?"
+
+"Are you--you going to write?" he asked, appalled.
+
+"Certainly. Either some dreadful creature here keeps a bird store and
+brings home things that escape, or the house is infested. I don't care
+what the janitor says; I did hear squeals and whines and whimpers!"
+
+"Suppose--suppose we wait," he began lamely; but at that moment her blue
+eyes widened; she caught him convulsively by the arm, pointing, one snowy
+finger outstretched.
+
+"Oh-h!" she said hysterically, and the next instant was standing upon a
+chair, pale as a ghost. It was a wonder she had not mounted the dresser,
+too, for there, issuing in creepy single file from the wainscoting, came
+mice--mice of various tints. A red one led the grewsome rank, a black and
+white one came next, then in decorous procession followed the guilty
+green one, a yellow one, a blue one, and finally--horror of horrors!--a
+red-white-and-blue mouse, carrying a tiny American flag.
+
+He turned a miserable face toward her; she, eyes dilated, frozen to a
+statue, saw him advance, hold out a white wand--saw the uncanny
+procession of mice mount the stick and form into a row, tails hanging
+down--saw him carry the creatures to a box and dump them in.
+
+He was trying to speak now. She heard him stammer something about the
+escape of the mice; she heard him asking her pardon. Dazed, she laid her
+hand in his as he aided her to descend to the floor; nerveless,
+speechless, she sank into the big chair, horror still dilating her eyes.
+
+"It's all up with me," he said slowly, "if you write to the owners. I've
+bribed the janitor to say nothing. I'm dreadfully mortified that these
+things have happened to annoy you."
+
+The color came back into her face; amazement dominated her anger. "But
+why--why do you keep such creatures?"
+
+"Why shouldn't I?" he asked. "It is my profession."
+
+"Your--what?"
+
+"My profession," he repeated doggedly.
+
+"Oh," she said, revolted, "that is not true! You are a gentleman--I know
+who you are perfectly well!"
+
+"Who am I?"
+
+She called him by name, almost angrily.
+
+"Well," he said sullenly, "what of it? If you have investigated my record
+you must know I am as poor as these miserable mice."
+
+"I--I know it. But you are a gentleman----"
+
+"I am a mountebank," he said; "I mean a mountebank in its original
+interpretation. There's neither sense nor necessity for me to deny it."
+
+"I--I don't understand you," she whispered, shocked.
+
+"Why, I do monkey tricks to entertain people," he replied, forcing a
+laugh, "or rather, I hope to do a few--and be paid for them. I fancy
+every man finds his own level; I've found mine, apparently."
+
+Her face was inscrutable; she lay back in the great chair, watching him.
+
+"I have a little money left," he said; "enough to last a day or two. Then
+I am to be paid for entertaining some people at Seabright; and," he added
+with that very attractive smile of his from which all bitterness had
+departed, "and that will be the first money I ever earned in all my
+life."
+
+She was young enough to be fascinated, child enough to feel the little
+lump in her throat rising. She knew he was poor; her sisters had told her
+that; but she had supposed it to be only comparative poverty--just as her
+cousins, for instance, had scarcely enough to keep more than two horses
+in town and only one motor. But want--actual need--she had never dreamed
+of in his case--she could scarcely understand it even now--he was so well
+groomed, so attractive, fairly radiating good breeding and the easy
+financial atmosphere she was accustomed to.
+
+"So you see," he continued gayly, "if you complain to the owners about
+green mice, why, I shall have to leave, and, as a matter of fact, I
+haven't enough money to go anywhere except--" he laughed.
+
+"Where?" she managed to say.
+
+"The Park. I was joking, of course," he hastened to add, for she had
+turned rather white.
+
+"No," she said, "you were not joking." And as he made no reply: "Of
+course, I shall not write--now. I had rather my studio were overrun with
+multicolored mice--" She stopped with something almost like a sob. He
+smiled, thinking she was laughing.
+
+But oh, the blow for her! In her youthful enthusiasm she had always, from
+the first time they had encountered one another, been sensitively aware
+of this tall, clean-cut, attractive young fellow. And by and by she
+learned his name and asked her sisters about him, and when she heard of
+his recent ruin and withdrawal from the gatherings of his kind her youth
+flushed to its romantic roots, warming all within her toward this
+splendid and radiant young man who lived so nobly, so proudly aloof. And
+then--miracle of Manhattan!--he had proved his courage before her dazed
+eyes--rising suddenly out of the very earth to save her from a fate which
+her eager desire painted blacker every time she embellished the incident.
+And she decorated the memory of it every day.
+
+And now! Here, beside her, was this prince among men, her champion,
+beaten to his ornamental knees by Fate, and contemplating a miserable,
+uncertain career to keep his godlike body from actual starvation. And
+she--she with more money than even she knew what to do with, powerless to
+aid him, prevented from flinging open her check book and bidding him to
+write and write till he could write no more.
+
+A memory--a thought crept in. Where had she heard his name connected with
+her father's name? In Ophir Steel? Certainly; and was it not this young
+man's father who had laid the foundation for her father's fortune? She
+had heard some such thing, somewhere.
+
+He said: "I had no idea of boring anybody--you least of all--with my
+woes. Indeed, I haven't any sorrows now, because to-day I received my
+first encouragement; and no doubt I'll be a huge success. Only--I thought
+it best to make it clear why it would do me considerable damage just now
+if you should write."
+
+"Tell me," she said tremulously, "is there anything--anything I can do
+to--to balance the deep debt of gratitude I owe you----"
+
+"What debt?" he asked, astonished. "Oh! that? Why, that is no debt--
+except that I was happy--perfectly and serenely happy to have had that
+chance to--to hear your voice----"
+
+"You were brave," she said hastily. "You may make as light of it as you
+please, but I know."
+
+"So do I," he laughed, enchanted with the rising color in her cheeks.
+
+"No, you don't; you don't know how I felt--how afraid I was to show how
+deeply--deeply I felt. I felt it so deeply that I did not even tell my
+sisters," she added naively.
+
+"Your sisters?"
+
+"Yes; you know them." And as he remained silent she said: "Do you not
+know who I am? Do you not even know my name?"
+
+He shook his head, laughing.
+
+"I'd have given all I had to know; but, of course, I could not ask the
+servants!"
+
+Surprise, disappointment, hurt pride that he had had no desire to know
+gave quick place to a comprehension that set a little thrill tingling her
+from head to foot. His restraint was the nicest homage ever rendered her;
+she saw that instantly; and the straight look she gave him out of her
+clear eyes took his breath away for a second.
+
+"Do you remember Sacharissa?" she asked.
+
+"I do--certainly! I always thought----"
+
+"What?" she said, smiling.
+
+He muttered something about eyes and white skin and a trick of the heavy
+lids.
+
+She was perfectly at ease now; she leaned back in her chair, studying him
+calmly.
+
+"Suppose," she said, "people could see me here now."
+
+"It would end your artistic career," he replied, laughing; "and fancy! I
+took you for the sort that painted for a bare existence!"
+
+"And I--I took you for----"
+
+"Something very different than what I am."
+
+"In one way--not in others."
+
+"Oh! I look the mountebank?"
+
+"I shall not explain what I mean," she said with heightened color, and
+rose from her chair. "As there are no more green mice to peep out at me
+from behind my easel," she added, "I can have no excuse from abandoning
+art any longer. Can I?"
+
+The trailing sweetness of the inquiry was scarcely a challenge, yet he
+dared take it up.
+
+"You asked me," he said, "whether you could do anything for me."
+
+"Can I?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I will--I am glad--tell me what to do?"
+
+"Why, it's only this. I've got to go before an audience of two hundred
+people and do things. I've had practice here by myself, but--but if you
+don't mind I should like to try it before somebody--you. Do you mind?"
+
+She stood there, slim, blue-eyed, reflecting; then innocently: "If I've
+compromised myself the damage was done long ago, wasn't it? They're going
+to take away my studio anyhow, so I might as well have as much pleasure
+as I can."
+
+And she sat down, gracefully, linking her white fingers over her knees.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+AN IDEAL IDOL
+
+
+_A Chapter Devoted to the Proposition that All Mankind Are Born of Woman_
+
+He began by suddenly filling the air with canary birds; they flew and
+chirped and fluttered about her head, until, bewildered, she shrank back,
+almost frightened at the golden hurricane.
+
+To reassure her he began doing incredible things with the big silver
+hoops, forming chains and linked figures under her amazed eyes, although
+each hoop seemed solid and without a break in its polished circumference.
+Then, one by one, he tossed the rings up and they vanished in mid-air
+before her very eyes.
+
+"How did you do that?" she cried, enchanted.
+
+He laughed and produced the big, white Persian cats, changed them into
+kittens, then into birds and butterflies, and finally into a bowl full of
+big, staring goldfish. Then he picked up a ladle, dipped out the fish,
+carefully fried them over an electric lamp, dumped them from the smoking
+frying pan back into the water, where they quietly swam off again,
+goggling their eyes in astonishment.
+
+"That," said the girl, excitedly, "is miraculous!"
+
+"Isn't it?" he said, delighted as a boy at her praise. "What card will
+you choose?"
+
+And he handed her a pack.
+
+"The ace of hearts, if you please."
+
+"Draw it from the pack."
+
+"Any card?" she inquired. "Oh! how on earth did you make me draw the ace
+of hearts?"
+
+"Hold it tightly," he warned her.
+
+She clutched it in her pretty fingers.
+
+"Are you sure you hold it?" he asked.
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Look!"
+
+She looked and found that it was the queen of diamonds she held so
+tightly; but, looking again to reassure herself, she was astonished to
+find that the card was the jack of clubs. "Tear it up," he said. She tore
+it into small pieces.
+
+"Throw them into the air!"
+
+She obeyed, and almost cried out to see them take fire in mid-air and
+float away in ashy flakes.
+
+Face flushed, eyes brilliant, she turned to him, hanging on his every
+movement, every expression.
+
+Before her rapt eyes the multicolored mice danced jigs on slack wires,
+then were carefully rolled up into little balls of paper which
+immediately began to swell until each was as big as a football. These
+burst open, and out of each football of white paper came kittens,
+turtles, snakes, chickens, ducks, and finally two white rabbits with
+silly pink eyes that began gravely waltzing round and round the room.
+
+"Please stand up and shake your skirts," he said.
+
+She rose hastily and obeyed; a rain of silver coins fell, then gold, then
+banknotes, littering the floor. Then precious stones began to drop about
+her; she shook them from her hair, her collar, her neck; she clenched her
+hands in nervous amazement, but inside each tight little fist she felt
+something, and opening her fingers she fairly showered the floor with
+diamonds.
+
+"Can't you save one for me?" he asked. "I really need it." But when again
+she looked for the glittering heap at her feet, it was gone; and, search
+as she might, not one coin, not one gem remained.
+
+Glancing up in dismay she found herself in a perfect storm of white
+butterflies--no, they were red--no, green!
+
+"Is there anything in this world you desire?" he asked her.
+
+"A--a glass of water----"
+
+She was already holding it in her hands, and she cried out in amazement,
+spilling the brimming glass; but no water fell, only a rain of little
+crimson flames.
+
+"I can't--can't drink this--can I?" she faltered.
+
+"With perfect safety," he smiled, and she tasted it.
+
+"Taste it again," he said.
+
+She tried it; it was lemonade.
+
+"Again."
+
+It was ginger ale.
+
+"Once more."
+
+She stared at the glass, frothing with ice-cream soda; there was a long
+silver spoon in it, too.
+
+Enchanted, she lay back, savoring her ice, shyly watching him.
+
+He went on gayly doing uncanny or charming things; her eyes were tired,
+dazzled, but not too weary to watch him, though she scarcely followed the
+marvelous objects that appeared and vanished and glittered and flamed
+under his ceaselessly busy hands.
+
+She did notice with a shudder the appearance of an owl that sat for a
+while on his shoulder and then turned into a big fur muff which was all
+right as long as he held it, but walked away on four legs when he tossed
+it to the floor.
+
+A shower of brilliant things followed like shooting stars; two or three
+rose trees grew, budded, and bloomed before her eyes; and he laid the
+fresh, sweet blossoms in her hands. They turned to violets later, but
+that did not matter; nothing mattered any longer as long as she could lie
+there and gaze at him--the most splendid man her maiden eyes had ever
+unclosed upon.
+
+About two thousand yards of brilliant ribbons suddenly fell from the
+ceiling; she looked at him with something perilously close to a sigh. Out
+of an old hat he produced a cage full of parrots; every parrot repeated
+her first name decorously, monotonously, until packed back into the hat
+and stuffed into a box which was then set on fire.
+
+Her heart was pretty full now; for she was only eighteen and she had been
+considering his poverty. So when in due time the box burned out and from
+the black and charred _debris_ the parrots stepped triumphantly forth,
+gravely repeating her name in unison; and when she saw that the
+entertainment was at an end, she rose, setting her ice-cream soda upon a
+table, and, although the glass instantly changed into a teapot, she
+walked straight up to him and held out her hand.
+
+"I've had a perfectly lovely time," she said. "And I want to say to you
+that I have been thinking of several things, and one is that it is
+perfectly ridiculous for you to be poor."
+
+"It is rather ridiculous," he admitted, surprised. "Isn't it! And no need
+of it at all. Your father made a fortune for my father. All you have to
+do is to let my father make a fortune for you."
+
+"Is that all?" he asked, laughing.
+
+"Of course. Why did you not tell him so? Have you seen him?"
+
+"No," he said gravely.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I saw others--I did not care to try--any more--friends."
+
+"Will you--now?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Then I will."
+
+"Please don't," he said quietly. Her hand still lay in his; she looked up
+at him; her eyes were starry bright and a little moist.
+
+"I simply can't stand this," she said, steadying her voice.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Your--your distress--" She choked; her sensitive mouth trembled.
+
+"Good Heavens!" he breathed; "do you care!"
+
+"Care--care," she stammered. "You saved my life with a laugh! You face
+st-starvation with a laugh! Your father made mine! Care? Yes, I care!"
+
+But she had bent her head; a bright tear fell, spangling his polished
+shoes; the pulsating seconds passed; he laid his other hand above both of
+hers which he held, and stood silent, stunned, scarcely daring to
+understand.
+
+Nor was it here he could understand or even hope--his instinct held him
+stupid and silent. Presently he released her hands.
+
+She said "Good-by" calmly enough; he followed her to the door and opened
+it, watching her pass through the hall to her own door. And there she
+paused and looked back; and he found himself beside her again.
+
+"Only," she began, "only don't do all those beautiful magic things for
+any--anybody else--will you? I wish to have--have them all for myself--to
+share them with no one----"
+
+He held her hands imprisoned again. "I will never do one of those things
+for anybody but you," he said unsteadily.
+
+"Truly?" Her face caught fire.
+
+"Yes, truly."
+
+"But how--how, then, can you--can----"
+
+"I don't care what happens to me!" he said. To look at him nobody would
+have thought him young enough to say that sort of thing.
+
+"I care," she said, releasing her hands and stepping back into her
+studio.
+
+For a moment her lovely, daring face swam before his eyes; then, in the
+next moment, she was in his arms, crying her eyes out against his
+shoulder, his lips pressed to her bright hair.
+
+And that was all right in its way, too; madder things have happened in
+our times; but nothing madder ever happened than a large, bald gentleman
+who came up the stairs in a series of bounces and planted his legs apart
+and tightened his pudgy grip upon his malacca walking stick, and
+confronted them with distended eyes and waistband.
+
+In vigorous but incoherent English he begged to know whether this scene
+was part of an education in art.
+
+"Papah," she said calmly, "you are just in time. Go into the studio and
+I'll come in one moment."
+
+Then giving her lover both hands and looking at him with all her soul in
+her young eyes: "I love you; I'll marry you. And if there's trouble"--she
+smiled upon her frantic father--"if there is trouble I will follow you
+about the country exhibiting green mice----"
+
+"What!" thundered her father.
+
+"Green mice," she repeated with an adorable smile at her lover--"unless
+my father finds a necessity for you in his business--with a view to
+partnership. And I'm going to let you arrange that together. Good-by."
+
+And she entered her studio, closing the door behind her, leaving the two
+men confronting one another in the entry.
+
+For one so young she had much wisdom and excellent taste; and listening,
+she heard her father explode in one lusty Saxon word. He always said it
+when beaten; it was the beginning of the end, and the end of the sweetest
+beginning that ever dawned on earth for a maid since the first sunbeam
+stole into Eden.
+
+So she sat down on her little camp stool before her easel and picked up a
+hand glass; and, sitting there, carefully removed all traces of tears
+from her wet and lovely eyes with the cambric hem of her painting apron.
+
+"Damnation!" repeated Mr. Carr, "am I to understand that the only thing
+you can do for a living is to go about with a troupe of trained mice?"
+
+"I've invented a machine," observed the young man, modestly. "It ought to
+be worth millions--if you'd care to finance it."
+
+"The idea is utterly repugnant to me!" shouted her father.
+
+The young man reddened. "If you wouldn't mind examining it--" He drew
+from his pocket a small, delicately contrived bit of clockwork. "This is
+the machine----"
+
+"I don't want to see it!"
+
+"You _have_ seen it. Do you mind sitting down a moment? Be careful of
+that kitten! Kindly take this chair. Thank you. Now, if you would be good
+enough to listen for ten minutes----"
+
+"I don't want to be good enough! Do you hear!"
+
+"Yes, I hear," said young Destyn, patiently. "And as I was going to
+explain, the earth is circumscribed by wireless currents of
+electricity----"
+
+"I--dammit, sir----"
+
+"But those are not the only invisible currents that are ceaselessly
+flowing around our globe!" pursued the young man, calmly. "Do you see
+this machine?"
+
+"No, I don't!" snarled the other.
+
+"Then--" And, leaning closer, William Augustus Destyn whispered into
+Bushwyck Carr's fat, red ear.
+
+"What!!!"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You can't _prove_ it!"
+
+"Watch me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ethelinda had dried her eyes. Every few minutes she glanced anxiously at
+the little French clock over her easel.
+
+"What on earth can they be doing?" she murmured. And when the long hour
+struck she arose with resolution and knocked at the door.
+
+"Come in," said her father, irritably, "but don't interrupt. William and
+I are engaged in a very important business transaction."
+
+[Illustration: ]
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+SACHARISSA
+
+
+_Treating of Certain Scientific Events Succeeding the Wedding Journey of
+William and Ethelinda_
+
+Sacharissa took the chair. She knew nothing about parliamentary
+procedure; neither did her younger, married sister, Ethelinda, nor the
+recently acquired family brother-in-law, William Augustus Destyn.
+
+"The meeting will come to order," said Sacharissa, and her brother-in-law
+reluctantly relinquished his new wife's hand--all but one finger.
+
+"Miss Chairman," he began, rising to his feet.
+
+The chair recognized him and bit into a chocolate.
+
+"I move that our society be known as The Green Mouse, Limited."
+
+"Why limited?" asked Sacharissa.
+
+"Why not?" replied her sister, warmly.
+
+"Well, what does your young man mean by limited?"
+
+"I suppose," said Linda, "that he means it is to be the limit. Don't you,
+William?"
+
+"Certainly," said Destyn, gravely; and the motion was put and carried.
+
+"Rissa, dear!"
+
+The chair casually recognized her younger sister.
+
+"I propose that the object of this society be to make its members very,
+very wealthy."
+
+The motion was carried; Linda picked up a scrap of paper and began to
+figure up the possibility of a new touring car.
+
+Then Destyn arose; the chair nodded to him and leaned back, playing a
+tattoo with her pencil tip against her snowy teeth.
+
+He began in his easy, agreeable voice, looking across at his pretty wife:
+
+"You know, dearest--and Sacharissa, over there, is also aware--that, in
+the course of my economical experiments in connection with your father's
+Wireless Trust, I have accidentally discovered how to utilize certain
+brand-new currents of an extraordinary character."
+
+Sacharissa's expression became skeptical; Linda watched her husband in
+unfeigned admiration.
+
+"These new and hitherto unsuspected currents," continued Destyn modestly,
+"are not electrical but psychical. Yet, like wireless currents, their
+flow eternally encircles the earth. These currents, I believe, have their
+origin in that great unknown force which, for lack of a better name, we
+call fate, or predestination. And I am convinced that by intercepting one
+of these currents it is possible to connect the subconscious
+personalities of two people of opposite sex who, although ultimately
+destined for one another since the beginning of things, have, through
+successive incarnations, hitherto missed the final consummation--
+marriage!--which was the purpose of their creation."
+
+"Bill, dear," sighed Linda, "how exquisitely you explain the infinite."
+
+"Fudge!" said Sacharissa; "go on, William."
+
+"That's all," said Destyn. "We agreed to put in a thousand dollars apiece
+for me to experiment with. I've perfected the instrument--here it is."
+
+He drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, flat jeweler's case and took
+out a delicate machine resembling the complicated interior of a watch.
+
+"Now," he said, "with this tiny machine concealed in my waistcoat pocket,
+I walk up to any man and, by turning a screw like the stem of a watch,
+open the microscopical receiver. Into the receiver flow all psychical
+emanations from that unsuspicious citizen. The machine is charged,
+positively. Then I saunter up to some man, place the instrument on a
+table--like that--touch a lever. Do you see that hair wire of Rosium
+uncoil like a tentacle? It is searching, groping for the invisible,
+negative, psychical current which will carry its message."
+
+"To whom?" asked Sacharissa.
+
+"To the subconscious personality of the only woman for whom he was
+created, the only woman on earth whose psychic personality is properly
+attuned to intercept that wireless greeting and respond to it."
+
+"How can you tell whether she responds?" asked Sacharissa, incredulously.
+He pointed to the hair wire of Rosium:
+
+"I watch that. The instant that the psychical current reaches and awakens
+her, crack!--a minute point of blue incandescence tips the tentacle. It's
+done; psychical communication is established. And that man and that
+woman, wherever they may be on earth, surely, inexorably, will be drawn
+together, even from the uttermost corners of the world, to fulfill that
+for which they were destined since time began."
+
+There was a semirespectful silence; Linda looked at the little jewel-like
+machine with a slight shudder; Sacharissa shrugged her young shoulders.
+
+"How much of this," said she, "is theory and how much is fact?--for,
+William, you always were something of a poet."
+
+"I don't know. A month ago I tried it on your father's footman, and in a
+week he'd married a perfectly strange parlor maid."
+
+"Oh, they do such things, anyway," observed Sacharissa, and added,
+unconvinced: "Did that tentacle burn blue?"
+
+"It certainly did," said Destyn.
+
+Linda murmured: "I believe in it. Let's issue stock."
+
+"To issue stock is one thing," said Destyn, "to get people to buy it is
+another. You and I may believe in Green Mouse, Limited, but the rest of
+the world is always from beyond the Mississippi."
+
+"The thing to do," said Linda, "is to prove your theory by practicing on
+people. They may not like the idea, but they'll be so grateful, when
+happily and unexpectedly married, that they'll buy stock."
+
+"Or give us testimonials," added Sacharissa, "that their bliss was
+entirely due to a single dose of Green Mouse, Limited."
+
+"Don't be flippant," said Linda. "Think what William's invention means to
+the world! Think of the time it will save young men barking up wrong
+trees! Think of the trouble saved--no more doubt, no timidity, no
+hesitation, no speculation, no opposition from parents."
+
+"Any of our clients," added Destyn, "can be instantly switched on to a
+private psychical current which will clinch the only girl in the world.
+Engagements will be superfluous; those two simply can't get away from
+each other."
+
+"If that were true," observed Sacharissa, "it would be most unpleasant.
+There would be no fun in it. However," she added, smiling, "I don't
+believe in your theory or your machine, William. It would take more than
+that combination to make me marry anybody."
+
+"Then we're not going to issue stock?" asked Linda. "I do need so many
+new and expensive things."
+
+"We've got to experiment a little further, first," said Destyn.
+
+Sacharissa laughed: "You blindfold me, give me a pencil and lay the
+Social Register before me. Whatever name I mark you are to experiment
+with."
+
+"Don't mark any of our friends," began Linda.
+
+"How can I tell whom I may choose. It's fair for everybody. Come; do you
+promise to abide by it--you two?"
+
+They promised doubtfully.
+
+"So do I, then," said Sacharissa. "Hurry up and blindfold me, somebody.
+The bus will be here in half an hour, and you know how father acts when
+kept waiting."
+
+Linda tied her eyes with a handkerchief, gave her a pencil and seated
+herself on an arm of the chair watching the pencil hovering over the
+pages of the Social Register which her sister was turning at hazard.
+
+"_This_ page," announced Sacharissa, "and _this_ name!" marking it with a
+quick stroke.
+
+Linda gave a stifled cry and attempted to arrest the pencil; but the
+moving finger had written.
+
+"Whom have I selected?" inquired the girl, whisking the handkerchief from
+her eyes. "What are you having a fit about, Linda?"
+
+And, looking at the page, she saw that she had marked her own name.
+
+"We must try it again," said Destyn, hastily. "That doesn't count. Tie
+her up, Linda."
+
+"But--that wouldn't be fair," said Sacharissa, hesitating whether to take
+it seriously or laugh. "We all promised, you know. I ought to abide by
+what I've done."
+
+"Don't be silly," said Linda, preparing the handkerchief and laying it
+across her sister's forehead.
+
+Sacharissa pushed it away. "I can't break my word, even to myself," she
+said, laughing. "I'm not afraid of that machine."
+
+"Do you mean to say you are willing to take silly chances?" asked Linda,
+uneasily. "I believe in William's machine whether you do or not. And I
+don't care to have any of the family experimented with."
+
+"If I were willing to try it on others it would be cowardly for me to
+back out now," said Sacharissa, forcing a smile; for Destyn's and Linda's
+seriousness was beginning to make her a trifle uncomfortable.
+
+"Unless you want to marry somebody pretty soon you'd better not risk it,"
+said Destyn, gravely.
+
+"You--you don't particularly care to marry anybody, just now, do you,
+dear?" asked Linda. "No," replied her sister, scornfully.
+
+There was a silence; Sacharissa, uneasy, bit her underlip and sat looking
+at the uncanny machine.
+
+She was a tall girl, prettily formed, one of those girls with long limbs,
+narrow, delicate feet and ankles.
+
+That sort of girl, when she also possesses a mass of chestnut hair, a
+sweet mouth and gray eyes, is calculated to cause trouble.
+
+And there she sat, one knee crossed over the other, slim foot swinging,
+perplexed brows bent slightly inward.
+
+"I can't see any honorable way out of it," she said resolutely. "I said
+I'd abide by the blindfolded test."
+
+"When we promised we weren't thinking of ourselves," insisted Ethelinda.
+
+"That doesn't release us," retorted her Puritan sister.
+
+"Why?" demanded Linda. "Suppose, for example, your pencil had marked
+William's name! That would have been im--immoral!"
+
+"_Would_ it?" asked Sacharissa, turning her honest, gray eyes on her
+brother-in-law.
+
+"I don't believe it would," he said; "I'd only be switched on to Linda's
+current again." And he smiled at his wife.
+
+Sacharissa sat thoughtful and serious, swinging her foot.
+
+"Well," she said, at length, "I might as well face it at once. If there's
+anything in this instrument we'll all know it pretty soon. Turn on your
+receiver, Billy."
+
+"Oh," cried Linda, tearfully, "don't you do it, William!"
+
+"Turn it on," repeated Sacharissa. "I'm not going to be a coward and
+break faith with myself, and you both know it! If I've got to go through
+the silliness of love and marriage I might as well know who the bandarlog
+is to be.... Anyway, I don't really believe in this thing.... I can't
+believe in it.... Besides, I've a mind and a will of my own, and I fancy
+it will require more than amateur psychical experiments to change either.
+Go on, Billy."
+
+"You mean it?" he asked, secretly gratified.
+
+"Certainly," with superb affectation of indifference. And she rose and
+faced the instrument.
+
+Destyn looked at his wife. He was dying to try it.
+
+"Will!" she exclaimed, "suppose we are not going to like Rissa's possible
+f--fiance! Suppose father doesn't like him!"
+
+"You'll all probably like him as well as I shall," said her sister
+defiantly. "Willy, stop making frightened eyes at your wife and start
+your infernal machine!"
+
+There was a vicious click, a glitter of shifting clockwork, a snap, and
+it was done.
+
+"Have you now, _theoretically_, got my psychical current bottled up?" she
+asked disdainfully. But her lip trembled a little.
+
+He nodded, looking very seriously at her.
+
+"And now you are going to switch me on to this unknown gentleman's
+psychical current?"
+
+"Don't let him!" begged Linda. "Billy, dear, how _can_ you when nobody
+has the faintest idea who the creature may turn out to be!"
+
+"Go ahead!" interrupted her sister, masking misgiving under a careless
+smile.
+
+Click! Up shot the glittering, quivering tentacle of Rosium, vibrating
+for a few moments like a thread of silver. Suddenly it was tipped with a
+blue flash of incandescence.
+
+"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! There he is!" cried Linda, excitedly. "Rissy! Rissy,
+little sister, _what_ have you done?"
+
+"Nothing," she said, catching her breath. "I don't believe that flash
+means anything. I don't feel a bit different--not the least bit. I feel
+perfectly well and perfectly calm. I don't love anybody and I'm not going
+to love anybody--until I want to, and that will probably never happen."
+
+However, she permitted her sister to take her in her arms and pet her. It
+was rather curious how exceedingly young and inexperienced she felt. She
+found it agreeable to be fussed over and comforted and cradled, and for a
+few moments she suffered Linda's solicitude and misgivings in silence.
+After a while, however, she became ashamed.
+
+"Nothing is going to happen, Linda," she said, looking dreamily up at the
+ceiling; "don't worry, dear; I shall escape the bandarlog."
+
+"If something doesn't happen," observed Destyn, pocketing his instrument,
+"the Green Mouse, Limited, will go into liquidation with no liabilities
+and no assets, and there'll be no billions for you or for me or for
+anybody."
+
+"William," said his wife, "do you place a low desire for money before
+your own sister-in-law's spiritual happiness?"
+
+"No, darling, of course not."
+
+"Then you and I had better pray for the immediate bankruptcy of the Green
+Mouse."
+
+Her husband said, "By all means," without enthusiasm, and looked out of
+the window. "Still," he added, "I made a happy marriage. I'm for wedding
+bells every time. Sacharissa will like it, too. I don't know why you and
+I shouldn't be enthusiastic optimists concerning wedded life; I can't see
+why we shouldn't pray for Sacharissa's early marriage."
+
+"William!"
+
+"Yes, darling."
+
+"You _are_ considering money before my sister's happiness!"
+
+"But in her case I don't see why we can't conscientiously consider both."
+
+Linda cast one tragic glance at her material husband, pushed her sister
+aside, arose and fled. After her sped the contrite Destyn; a distant door
+shut noisily; all the elements had gathered for the happy, first quarrel
+of the newly wedded.
+
+"Fudge," said Sacharissa, walking to the window, slim hands clasped
+loosely behind her back.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+IN WRONG
+
+
+_Wherein Sacharissa Remains In and a Young Man Can't Get Out_
+
+The snowstorm had ceased; across Fifth Avenue the Park resembled the
+mica-incrusted view on an expensive Christmas card. Every limb, branch,
+and twig was outlined in clinging snow; crystals of it glittered under
+the morning sun; brilliantly dressed children, with sleds, romped and
+played over the dazzling expanse. Overhead the characteristic deep blue
+arch of a New York sky spread untroubled by a cloud. Her family--that is,
+her father, brother-in-law, married sister, three unmarried sisters and
+herself--were expecting to leave for Tuxedo about noon. Why? Nobody knows
+why the wealthy are always going somewhere. However, they do, fortunately
+for story writers.
+
+"It's quite as beautiful here," thought Sacharissa to herself, "as it is
+in the country. I'm sorry I'm going."
+
+Idling there by the sunny window and gazing out into the white expanse,
+she had already dismissed all uneasiness in her mind concerning the
+psychical experiment upon herself. That is to say, she had not exactly
+dismissed it, she used no conscious effort, it had gone of itself--or,
+rather, it had been crowded out, dominated by a sudden and strong
+disinclination to go to Tuxedo.
+
+As she stood there the feeling grew and persisted, and, presently, she
+found herself repeating aloud: "I don't want to go, I _don't_ want to go.
+It's stupid to go. Why should I go when it's stupid to go and I'd rather
+stay here?"
+
+Meanwhile, Ethelinda and Destyn were having a classical reconciliation in
+a distant section of the house, and the young wife had got as far as:
+
+"Darling, I am _so_ worried about Rissa. I _do_ wish she were not going
+to Tuxedo. There are so many attractive men expected at the Courlands'."
+
+"She can't escape men anywhere, can she?"
+
+"N-no; but there will be a concentration of particularly good-looking and
+undesirable ones at Tuxedo this week. That idle, horrid, cynical crowd is
+coming from Long Island, and I _don't_ want her to marry any of them."
+
+"Well, then, make her stay at home."
+
+"She wants to go."
+
+"What's the good of an older sister if you can't make her mind you?" he
+asked.
+
+"She won't. She's set her heart on going. All those boisterous winter
+sports appeal to her. Besides, how can one member of the family be absent
+on New Year's Day?"
+
+Arm in arm they strolled out into the great living room, where a large,
+pompous, vividly colored gentleman was laying down the law to the
+triplets--three very attractive young girls, dressed precisely alike, who
+said, "Yes, pa-_pah!_" and "No pa-_pah!_" in a grave and silvery-voiced
+chorus whenever filial obligation required it.
+
+"And another thing," continued the pudgy and vivid old gentleman, whose
+voice usually ended in a softly mellifluous shout when speaking
+emphatically: "that worthless Westbury--Cedarhurst--Jericho--
+Meadowbrook set are going to be in evidence at this housewarming, and I
+caution you now against paying anything but the slightest, most
+superficial and most frivolous attention to anything that any of those
+young whip-snapping, fox-hunting cubs may say to you. Do you hear?" with
+a mellow shout like a French horn on a touring car.
+
+"Yes, pa-_pah!_"
+
+The old gentleman waved his single eyeglass in token of dismissal, and
+looked at his watch.
+
+"The bus is here," he said fussily. "Come on, Will; come, Linda, and you,
+Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla, get your furs on. Don't take the
+elevator. Go down by the stairs, and hurry! If there's one thing in this
+world I won't do it is to wait for anybody on earth!"
+
+Flunkies and maids flew distractedly about with fur coats, muffs, and
+stoles. In solemn assemblage the family expedition filed past the
+elevator, descended the stairs to the lower hall, and there drew up for
+final inspection.
+
+A mink-infested footman waited outside; valets, butlers, second-men and
+maids came to attention.
+
+"Where's Sacharissa?" demanded Mr. Carr, sonorously.
+
+"Here, dad," said his oldest daughter, strolling calmly into the hall,
+hands still linked loosely behind her.
+
+"Why haven't you got your hat and furs on?" demanded her father.
+
+"Because I'm not going, dad," she said sweetly.
+
+The family eyed her in amazement.
+
+"Not going?" shouted her father, in a mellow bellow. "Yes, you are! Not
+_going!_ And why the dickens not?"
+
+"I really don't know, dad," she said listlessly. "I don't want to go."
+
+Her father waved both pudgy arms furiously. "Don't you feel well? You
+look well. You _are_ well. Don't you _feel_ well?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"No, you don't! You're pale! You're pallid! You're peaked! Take a tonic
+and lie down. Send your maid for some doctors--all kinds of doctors--and
+have them fix you up. Then come to Tuxedo with your maid to-morrow
+morning. Do you hear?"
+
+"Very well, dad."
+
+"And keep out of that elevator until it's fixed. It's likely to do
+anything. Ferdinand," to the man at the door, "have it fixed at once.
+Sacharissa, send that maid of yours for a doctor!"
+
+"Very well, dad!"
+
+She presented her cheek to her emphatic parent; he saluted it
+explosively, wheeled, marshaled the family at a glance, started them
+forward, and closed the rear with his own impressive person. The iron
+gates clanged, the door of the opera bus snapped, and Sacharissa strolled
+back into the rococo reception room not quite certain why she had not
+gone, not quite convinced that she was feeling perfectly well.
+
+For the first few minutes her face had been going hot and cold,
+alternately flushed and pallid. Her heart, too, was acting in an unusual
+manner--making sufficient stir for her to become uneasily aware of it.
+
+"Probably," she thought to herself, "I've eaten too many chocolates." She
+looked into the large gilded box, took another and ate it reflectively.
+
+A curious languor possessed her. To combat it she rang for her maid,
+intending to go for a brisk walk, but the weight of the furs seemed to
+distress her. It was absurd. She threw them off and sat down in the
+library.
+
+A little while later her maid found her lying there, feet crossed, arms
+stretched backward to form a cradle for her head.
+
+"Are you ill, Miss Carr?"
+
+"No," said Sacharissa.
+
+The maid cast an alarmed glance at her mistress' pallid face.
+
+"Would you see Dr. Blimmer, miss?"
+
+"No."
+
+The maid hesitated:
+
+"Beg pardon, but Mr. Carr said you was to see some doctors."
+
+"Very well," she said indifferently. "And please hand me those
+chocolates. I don't care for any luncheon."
+
+"No luncheon, miss?" in consternation.
+
+Sacharissa had never been known to shun sustenance.
+
+The symptom thoroughly frightened her maid, and in a few minutes she had
+Dr. Blimmer's office on the telephone; but that eminent practitioner was
+out. Then she found in succession the offices of Doctors White, Black,
+and Gray. Two had gone away over New Year's, the other was out.
+
+The maid, who was clever and resourceful, went out to hunt up a doctor.
+There are, in the cross streets, plenty of doctors between the Seventies
+and Eighties. She found one without difficulty--that is, she found the
+sign in the window, but the doctor was out on his visits.
+
+She made two more attempts with similar results, then, discovering a
+doctor's sign in a window across the street, started for it regardless of
+snowdrifts, and at the same moment the doctor's front door opened and a
+young man, with a black leather case in his hand, hastily descended the
+icy steps and hurried away up the street.
+
+The maid ran after him and arrived at his side breathless, excited:
+
+"Oh, _could_ you come--just for a moment, if you please, sir! Miss Carr
+won't eat her luncheon!"
+
+"What!" said the young man, surprised.
+
+"Miss Carr wishes to see you--just for a----"
+
+"Miss Carr?"
+
+"Miss Sacharissa!"
+
+"Sacharissa?"
+
+"Y-yes, sir--she----"
+
+"But I don't know any Miss Sacharissa!"
+
+"I understand that, sir."
+
+"Look here, young woman, do you know my name?"
+
+"No, sir, but that doesn't make any difference to Miss Carr."
+
+"She wishes to see _me!_"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"I--I'm in a hurry to catch a train." He looked hard at the maid, at his
+watch, at the maid again.
+
+"Are you perfectly sure you're not mistaken?" he demanded.
+
+"No, sir, I----"
+
+"A certain Miss Sacharissa Carr desires to see _me?_ Are you certain of
+that?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir--she----"
+
+"Where does she live?"
+
+"One thousand eight and a half Fifth Avenue, sir."
+
+"I've got just three minutes. Can you run?"
+
+"I--yes!"
+
+"Come on, then!"
+
+And away they galloped, his overcoat streaming out behind, the maid's
+skirts flapping and her narrow apron flickering in the wind. Wayfarers
+stopped to watch their pace--a pace which brought them to the house in
+something under a minute. Ferdinand, the second man, let them in.
+
+"Now, then," panted the young man, "which way? I'm in a hurry, remember!"
+And he started on a run for the stairs.
+
+"Please follow me, sir; the elevator is quicker!" gasped the maid,
+opening the barred doors.
+
+The young man sprang into the lighted car, the maid turned to fling off
+hat and jacket before entering; something went fizz-bang! snap! clink!
+and the lights in the car were extinguished.
+
+"Oh!" shrieked the maid, "it's running away again! Jump, sir!"
+
+The ornate, rococo elevator, as a matter of fact, was running away,
+upward, slowly at first. Its astonished occupant turned to jump out--too
+late.
+
+"P-push the third button, sir! Quick!" cried the maid, wringing her
+hands.
+
+"W-where is it!" stammered the young man, groping nervously in the dark
+car. "I can't see any."
+
+"Cr-rack!" went something.
+
+"It's stopped! It's going to fall!" screamed the maid. "Run, Ferdinand!"
+
+The man at the door ran upstairs for a few steps, then distractedly slid
+to the bottom, shouting:
+
+"Are you hurt, sir?"
+
+"No," came a disgusted voice from somewhere up the shaft.
+
+Every landing was now noisy with servants, maids sped upstairs, flunkeys
+sped down, a butler waddled in a circle.
+
+"Is anybody going to get me out of this?" demanded the voice in the
+shaft. "I've a train to catch."
+
+The perspiring butler poked his head into the shaft from below:
+
+"'Ow far hup, sir, might you be?"
+
+"How the devil do I know?"
+
+"Can't you see nothink, sir?"
+
+"Yes, I can see a landing and a red room."
+
+"'E's stuck hunder the library!" exclaimed the butler, and there was a
+rush for the upper floors.
+
+The rush was met and checked by a tall, young girl who came leisurely
+along the landing, nibbling a chocolate.
+
+"What is all this noise about?" she asked. "Has the elevator gone wrong
+again?"
+
+Glancing across the landing at the grille which screened the shaft she
+saw the gilded car--part of it--and half of a perfectly strange young man
+looking earnestly out.
+
+"It's the doctor!" wailed her maid.
+
+"That isn't Dr. Blimmer!" said her mistress.
+
+"No, miss, it's a perfectly strange doctor."
+
+"I am _not_ a doctor," observed the young man, coldly.
+
+Sacharissa drew nearer.
+
+"If that maid of yours had asked me," he went on, "I'd have told her. She
+saw me coming down the steps of a physician's house--I suppose she
+mistook my camera case for a case of medicines."
+
+"I did--oh, I did!" moaned the maid, and covered her head with her apron.
+
+"The thing to do," said Sacharissa, calmly, "is to send for the nearest
+plumber. Ferdinand, go immediately!"
+
+"Meanwhile," said the imprisoned young man, "I shall miss my train. Can't
+somebody break that grille? I could climb out that way."
+
+"Sparks," said Miss Carr, "can you break that grille?"
+
+Sparks tried. A kitchen maid brought a small tackhammer--the only "'ammer
+in the 'ouse," according to Sparks, who pounded at the foliated steel
+grille and broke the hammer off short.
+
+"Did it 'it you in the 'ead, sir?" he asked, panting.
+
+"Exactly," replied the young man, grinding his teeth.
+
+Sparks 'oped as 'ow it didn't 'urt the gentleman. The gentleman stanched
+his wound in terrible silence.
+
+Presently Ferdinand came back to report upon the availability of the
+family plumber. It appeared that all plumbers, locksmiths, and similar
+indispensable and free-born artisans had closed shop at noon and would
+not reopen until after New Year's, subject to the Constitution of the
+United States.
+
+"But this gentleman cannot remain here until after New Year's," said
+Sacharissa. "He says he is in a hurry. Do you hear, Sparks?"
+
+The servants stood in a helpless row.
+
+"Ferdinand," she said, "Mr. Carr told you to have that elevator fixed
+before it was used again!"
+
+Ferdinand stared wildly at the grille and ran his thumb over the bars.
+
+"And Clark"--to her maid--"I am astonished that you permitted this
+gentleman to risk the elevator."
+
+"He was in a hurry--I thought he was a doctor." The maid dissolved into
+tears.
+
+"It is now," broke in the voice from the shaft, "an utter impossibility
+for me to catch any train in the United States."
+
+"I am dreadfully sorry," said Sacharissa.
+
+"Isn't there an ax in the house?"
+
+The butler mournfully denied it.
+
+"Then get the furnace bar."
+
+It was fetched; nerve-racking blows rained on the grille; puffing
+servants applied it as a lever, as a battering-ram, as a club. The house
+rang like a boiler factory.
+
+"I can't stand any more of that!" shouted the young man. "Stop it!"
+
+Sacharissa looked about her, hands closing both ears.
+
+"Send them away," said the young man, wearily. "If I've got to stay here
+I want a chance to think."
+
+After she had dismissed the servants Sacharissa drew up a chair and
+seated herself a few feet from the grille. She could see half the car and
+half the man--plainer, now that she had come nearer.
+
+He was a young and rather attractive looking fellow, cheek tied up in his
+handkerchief, where the head of the hammer had knocked off the skin.
+
+"Let me get some witch-hazel," said Sacharissa, rising.
+
+"I want to write a telegram first," he said.
+
+So she brought some blanks, passed them and a pencil down to him through
+the grille, and reseated herself.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+THE INVISIBLE WIRE
+
+
+_In Which the Telephone Continues Ringing_
+
+When he had finished writing he sorted out some silver, and handed it and
+the yellow paper to Sacharissa.
+
+"It's dark in here. Would you mind reading it aloud to me to see if I've
+made it plain?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly," said Sacharissa; and she read:
+
+MRS. DELANCY COURLAND,
+
+Tuxedo.
+
+I'm stuck in an idiotic elevator at 1008-1/2 Fifth Avenue. If I don't
+appear by New Year's you'll know why. Be careful that no reporters get
+hold of this.
+
+KILLIAN VAN K. VANDERDYNK.
+
+Sacharissa flushed deeply. "I can't send this," she said.
+
+"Why not?" demanded the young man, irritably.
+
+"Because, Mr. Vanderdynk, my father, brother-in-law, married sister, and
+three younger sisters are expected at the Courlands'. Imagine what effect
+such a telegram would have on them!"
+
+"Then cross out the street and number," he said; "just say I'm stuck in a
+strange elevator."
+
+She did so, rang, and a servant took away the telegram.
+
+"Now," said the heir apparent to the Prince Regency of Manhattan, "there
+are two things still" possible. First, you might ring up police
+headquarters and ask for aid; next, request assistance from fire
+headquarters."
+
+"If I do," she said, "wouldn't the newspapers get hold of it?"
+
+"You are perfectly right," he said.
+
+She had now drawn her chair so close to the gilded grille that, hands
+resting upon it, she could look down into the car where sat the scion of
+the Vanderdynks on a flimsy Louis XV chair.
+
+"I can't express to you how sorry I am," she said. "Is there anything I
+can do to--to ameliorate your imprisonment?"
+
+He looked at her in a bewildered way.
+
+"You don't expect me to remain here until after New Year's, do you?" he
+inquired.
+
+"I don't see how you can avoid it. Nobody seems to want to work until
+after New Year's."
+
+"Stay in a cage--two days and a night!"
+
+"Perhaps I had better call up the police."
+
+"No, no! Wait. I'll tell you what to do. Start that man, Ferdinand, on a
+tour of the city. If he hunts hard enough and long enough he'll find some
+plumber or locksmith or somebody who'll come."
+
+She rang for Ferdinand; together they instructed him, and he went away,
+promising to bring salvation in some shape.
+
+Which promise made the young man more cheerful and smoothed out the
+worried pucker between Sacharissa's straight brows.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "that you will never forgive my maid for this--or
+me either."
+
+He laughed. "After all," he admitted, "it's rather funny."
+
+"I don't believe you think it's funny."
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Didn't you want to go to Tuxedo?"
+
+"I!" He looked up at the pretty countenance of Sacharissa. "I _did_ want
+to--a few minutes ago."
+
+"And now that you can't your philosophy teaches you that you _don't_ want
+to?"
+
+They laughed at each other in friendly fashion.
+
+"Perhaps it's my philosophy," he said, "but" I really don't care very
+much.... I'm not sure that I care at all.... In fact, now that I think of
+it, why should I have wished to go to Tuxedo? It's stupid to want to go
+to Tuxedo when New York is so attractive."
+
+"Do you know," she said reflectively, "that I came to the same
+conclusion?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Be-before you--I----"
+
+"Oh, yes," she said rather hastily, "before you came----"
+
+She broke off, pink with consternation. What a ridiculous thing to say!
+What on earth was twisting her tongue to hint at such an absurdity?
+
+She said, gravely, with heightened color: "I was standing by the window
+this morning, thinking, and it occurred to me that I didn't care to go to
+Tuxedo.... When did you change _your_ mind?"
+
+"A few minutes a--that is--well, I never _really_ wanted to go. It's
+jollier in town. Don't you think so? Blue sky, snow--er--and all that?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "it is perfectly delightful in town to-day."
+
+He assented, then looked discouraged.
+
+"Perhaps you would like to go out?" he said.
+
+"I? Oh, no.... The sun on the snow is bad for one's eyes; don't you think
+so?"
+
+"Very.... I'm terribly sorry that I'm giving you so much trouble."
+
+"I don't mind--really. If only I could do something for you."
+
+"You are."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes; you are being exceedingly nice to me. I am afraid you feel under
+obligations to remain indoors and----"
+
+"Truly, I don't. I was not going out."
+
+She leaned nearer and looked through the bars: "Are you quite sure you
+feel comfortable?"
+
+"I feel like something in a zoo!"
+
+She laughed. "That reminds me," she said, "have you had any luncheon?"
+
+He had not, it appeared, after a little polite protestation, so she rang
+for Sparks.
+
+Her own appetite, too, had returned when the tray was brought; napkin and
+plate were passed through the grille to him, and, as they lunched, he in
+his cage, she close to the bars, they fell into conversation, exchanging
+information concerning mutual acquaintances whom they had expected to
+meet at the Delancy Courlands'.
+
+"So you see," she said, "that if I had not changed my mind about going to
+Tuxedo this morning you would not be here now. Nor I.... And we would
+never have--lunched together."
+
+"That didn't alter things," he said, smiling. "If you hadn't been ill you
+would have gone to Tuxedo, and I should have seen you there."
+
+"Then, whatever I did made no difference," she assented, thoughtfully,
+"for we were bound to meet, anyway."
+
+He remained standing close to the grille, which, as she was seated,
+brought his head on a level with hers.
+
+"It would seem," he said laughingly, "as though we were doomed to meet
+each other, anyway. It looks like a case of Destiny to me."
+
+She started slightly: "What did you say?"
+
+"I said that it looks as though Fate intended us to meet, anyhow. Don't
+you think so?"
+
+She remained silent.
+
+He added cheerfully: "I never was afraid of Fate."
+
+"Would you care for a--a book--or anything?" she asked, aware of a new
+constraint in her voice.
+
+"I don't believe I could see to read in here.... Are you--going?"
+
+"I--ought to." Vexed at the feeble senselessness of her reply she found
+herself walking down the landing, toward nowhere in particular. She
+turned abruptly and came back.
+
+"Do you want a book?" she repeated.
+
+"Oh, I forgot that you can't see to read. But perhaps you might care to
+smoke."
+
+"Are you going away?"
+
+"I--don't mind your smoking."
+
+He lighted a cigarette; she looked at him irresolutely.
+
+"You mustn't think of remaining," he said. Whereupon she seated herself.
+
+"I suppose I ought to try to amuse you--till Ferdinand returns with a
+plumber," she said.
+
+He protested: "I couldn't think of asking so much from you."
+
+"Anyway, it's my duty," she insisted. "I ought."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you are under my roof--a guest."
+
+"Please don't think----"
+
+"But I really don't mind! If there is anything I can do to make your
+imprisonment easier----"
+
+"It is easy. I rather like being here."
+
+"It is very amiable of you to say so."
+
+"I really mean it."
+
+"How can you _really_ mean it?"
+
+"I don't know, but I do." In their earnestness they had come close to the
+bars; she stood with both hands resting on the grille, looking in; he in
+a similar position, looking out.
+
+He said: "I feel like an occupant of the Bronx, and it rather astonishes
+me that you haven't thrown me in a few peanuts."
+
+She laughed, fetched her box of chocolates, then began seriously: "If
+Ferdinand doesn't find anybody I'm afraid you might be obliged to remain
+to dinner."
+
+"That prospect," he said, "is not unpleasant. You know when one becomes
+accustomed to one's cage it's rather a bore to be let out."
+
+They sampled the chocolates, she sitting close to the cage, and as the
+box would not go through the bars she was obliged to hand them to him,
+one by one.
+
+"I wonder," she mused, "how soon Ferdinand will find a plumber?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+She bent her adorable head, chose a chocolate and offered it to him.
+
+[Illustration: "Are you not terribly impatient?" she inquired]
+
+"Are you not terribly impatient?" she inquired.
+
+"Not--terribly."
+
+Their glances encountered and she said hurriedly:
+
+"I am sure you must be perfectly furious with everybody in this house.
+I--I think it is most amiable of you to behave so cheerfully about it."
+
+"As a matter of fact," he said, "I'm feeling about as cheerful as I ever
+felt in my life."
+
+"Cooped up in a cage?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"Which may fall at any--" The idea was a new one to them both. She leaned
+forward in sudden consternation. "I never thought of that!" she
+exclaimed. "You don't think there's any chance of its falling, do you?"
+
+He looked at the startled, gray eyes so earnestly fixed on his. The sweet
+mouth quivered a little--just a little--or he thought it did.
+
+"No," he replied, with a slight catch in his voice, "I don't believe it's
+going to fall."
+
+"Perhaps you had better not move around very much in it. Be careful, I
+beg of you. You will, won't you, Mr. Vanderdynk?"
+
+"Please don't let it bother you," he said, stepping toward her
+impulsively.
+
+"Oh, don't, don't move!" she exclaimed. "You really must keep perfectly
+still. Won't you promise me you will keep perfectly still?"
+
+"I'll promise you anything," he said a little wildly.
+
+Neither seemed to notice that he had overdone it.
+
+She drew her chair as close as it would go to the grille and leaned
+against it.
+
+"You _will_ keep up your courage, won't you?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"Certainly. By the way, how far is it to the b-basement?"
+
+She turned quite white for an instant, then:
+
+"I think I'd better go and ring up the police."
+
+"No! A thousand times no! I couldn't stand that."
+
+"But the car might--drop before----"
+
+"Better decently dead than publicly paragraphed.... I haven't the least
+idea that this thing is going to drop.... Anyway, it's worth it," he
+added, rather vaguely.
+
+"Worth--what?" she asked, looking into his rather winning, brown eyes.
+
+"Being here," he said, looking into her engaging gray ones.
+
+After a startling silence she said calmly: "Will you promise me not to
+move or shake the car till I return?"
+
+"You won't be very long, will you?"
+
+"Not--very," she replied faintly.
+
+She walked into the library, halted in the center of the room, hands
+clasped behind her. Her heart was beating like a trip hammer.
+
+"I might as well face it," she said to herself; "he is--by far--the most
+thoroughly attractive man I have ever seen.... I--I _don't_ know what's
+the matter," she added piteously.... "if it's that machine William made I
+can't help it; I don't care any longer; I wish----"
+
+A sharp crack from the landing sent her out there in a hurry, pale and
+frightened.
+
+"Something snapped somewhere," explained the young man with forced
+carelessness, "some unimportant splinter gave way and the thing slid down
+an inch or two."
+
+"D-do you think----"
+
+"No, I don't. But it's perfectly fine of you to care."
+
+"C-care? I'm a little frightened, of course.... Anybody would be.... Oh,
+I wish you were out and p-perfectly safe." "If I thought you could ever
+really care what became of a man like me----"
+
+Killian Van K. Vanderdynk's aristocratic senses began gyrating; he
+grasped the bars, the back of his hand brushed against hers, and the
+momentary contact sent a shock straight through the scion of that
+celebrated race.
+
+She seated herself abruptly; a delicate color grew, staining her face.
+
+Neither spoke. A long, luminous sunbeam fell across the landing, touching
+the edge of her hair till it glimmered like bronze afire. The sensitive
+mouth was quiet, the eyes, very serious, were lifted from time to time,
+then lowered, thoughtfully, to the clasped fingers on her knee.
+
+Could it be possible? How could it be possible?--with a man she had never
+before chanced to meet--with a man she had seen for the first time in her
+life only an hour or so ago! Such things didn't happen outside of short
+stories. There was neither logic nor common decency in it. Had she or had
+she not any ordinary sense remaining?
+
+She raised her eyes and looked at the heir of the Vanderdynks.
+
+Of course anybody could see he was unusually attractive--that he had that
+indefinable something about him which is seldom, if ever, seen outside of
+fiction or of Mr. Gibson's drawings--perhaps it is entirely confined to
+them--except in this one very rare case.
+
+Sacharissa's eyes fell.
+
+Another unusual circumstance was engaging her attention, namely, that his
+rather remarkable physical perfection appeared to be matched by a
+breeding quite as faultless, and a sublimity of courage in the face of
+destruction itself, which----
+
+Sacharissa lifted her gray eyes.
+
+There he stood, suspended over an abyss, smoking a cigarette, bravely
+forcing himself to an attitude of serene insouciance, while the basement
+yawned for him! Machine or no machine, how could any girl look upon such
+miraculous self-control unmoved? _She_ could not. It was natural that a
+woman should be deeply thrilled by such a spectacle--and William Destyn's
+machine had nothing to do with it--not a thing! Neither had psychology,
+nor demonology, nor anything, with wires or wireless. She liked him,
+frankly. Who wouldn't? She feared for him, desperately. Who wouldn't?
+She----
+
+"C-r-rack!"
+
+"Oh--_what_ is it!" she cried, springing to the grille.
+
+"I don't know," he said, somewhat pale. "The old thing seems--to be
+sliding."
+
+"Giving way!"
+
+"A--little--I think----"
+
+"Mr. Vanderdynk! I _must_ call the police----"
+
+"Cr-rackle--crack-k-k!" went the car, dropping an inch or two.
+
+With a stifled cry she caught his hands through the bars, as though to
+hold him by main strength.
+
+"Are you crazy?" he said fiercely, thrusting them away. "Be careful! If
+the thing drops you'll break your arms!"
+
+"I--I don't care!" she said breathlessly. "I can't let----"
+
+"Crack!" But the car stuck again.
+
+"I _will_ call the police!" she cried.
+
+"The papers may make fun of _you_."
+
+"Was it for _me_ you were afraid? Oh, Mr. Vanderdynk! What do I care for
+ridicule compared to--to----"
+
+The car had sunk so far in the shaft now that she had to kneel and put
+her head close to the floor to see him.
+
+"I will only be a minute at the telephone," she said. "Keep up courage; I
+am thinking of you every moment."
+
+"W-will you let me say one word?" he stammered.
+
+"Oh, what? Be quick, I beg you."
+
+"It's only goodbye--in case the thing drops. May I say it?"
+
+"Y-yes--yes! But say it quickly."
+
+"And if it doesn't drop after all, you won't be angry at what I'm going
+to say?"
+
+"N-no. Oh, for Heaven's sake, hurry!"
+
+"Then--you are the sweetest woman in the world!... Goodbye--Sacharissa--
+dear."
+
+She sprang up, dazed, and at the same moment a terrific crackling and
+splintering resounded from the shaft, and the car sank out of sight.
+
+Faint, she swayed for a second against the balustrade, then turned and
+ran downstairs, ears strained for the sickening crash from below.
+
+There was no crash, no thud. As she reached the drawing-room landing, to
+her amazement a normally-lighted elevator slid slowly down, came to a
+stop, and the automatic grilles opened quietly.
+
+As Killian Van K. Vanderdynk crept forth from the elevator, Sacharissa's
+nerves gave way; his, also, seemed to disintegrate; and they stood for
+some moments mutually supporting each other, during which interval
+unaccustomed tears fell from the gray eyes, and unaccustomed words,
+breathed brokenly, reassured her; and, altogether unaccustomed to such
+things, they presently found themselves seated in a distant corner of the
+drawing-room, still endeavoring to reassure each other with interclasped
+hands.
+
+They said nothing so persistently that the wordless minutes throbbed into
+hours; through the windows the red west sent a glowing tentacle into the
+room, searching the gloom for them.
+
+It fell, warm, across her upturned throat, in the half light.
+
+For her head lay back on his shoulder; his head was bent down, lips
+pressed to the white hands crushed fragrantly between his own.
+
+A star came out and looked at them with astonishment; in a little while
+the sky was thronged with little stars, all looking through the window at
+them.
+
+Her maid knocked, backed out hastily and fled, distracted. Then Ferdinand
+arrived with a plumber.
+
+Later the butler came. They did not notice him until he ventured to cough
+and announce dinner.
+
+The interruptions were very annoying, particularly when she was summoned
+to the telephone to speak to her father.
+
+"What is it, dad?" she asked impatiently.
+
+"Are you all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes," she answered, carelessly; "we are all right, dad. Goodbye."
+
+"We? Who the devil is 'We'?"
+
+"Mr. Vanderdynk and I. We're taking my maid and coming down to Tuxedo
+this evening together. I'm in a hurry now."
+
+"What!!!"
+
+"Oh, it's all right, dad. Here, Killian, please explain things to my
+father."
+
+Vanderdynk released her hand and picked up the receiver as though it had
+been a live wire.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Carr?" he began--stopped short, and stood listening,
+rigid, bewildered, turning redder and redder as her father's fluency
+increased. Then, without a word, he hooked up the receiver.
+
+"Is it all right?" she asked calmly. "Was dad--vivacious?"
+
+The young man said: "I'd rather go back into that elevator than go to
+Tuxedo.... But--I'm going."
+
+"So am I," said Bushwyck Carr's daughter, dropping both hands on her
+lover's shoulders.... "Was he really very--vivid?"
+
+"Very."
+
+The telephone again rang furiously.
+
+He bent his head; she lifted her face and he kissed her.
+
+After a while the racket of the telephone annoyed them, and they slowly
+moved away out of hearing.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+"IN HEAVEN AND EARTH"
+
+
+_The Green Mouse Stirs_
+
+"I've been waiting half an hour for you," observed Smith, dryly, as
+Beekman Brown appeared at the subway station, suitcase in hand.
+
+"It was a most extraordinary thing that detained me," said Brown,
+laughing, and edging his way into the ticket line behind his friend where
+he could talk to him across his shoulder; "I was just leaving the office,
+Smithy, when Snuyder came in with a card."
+
+"Oh, all right--of course, if----"
+
+"No, it was not a client; I must be honest with you."
+
+"Then you had a terrible cheek to keep me here waiting."
+
+"It was a girl," said Beekman Brown.
+
+Smith cast a cold glance back at him over his left shoulder.
+
+"What kind of a girl?"
+
+"A most extraordinary girl. She came on--on a matter----"
+
+"Was it business or a touch?"
+
+"Not exactly business."
+
+"Ornamental girl?" demanded Smith.
+
+"Yes--exceedingly; but it wasn't that----
+
+"Oh, it was not that which kept you talking to her half an hour while
+I've sat suffocating in this accursed subway!"
+
+"No, Smith; her undeniably attractive features and her--ah--winning
+personality had nothing whatever to do with it. Buy the tickets and I'll
+tell you all about it."
+
+Smith bought two tickets. A north bound train roared into the station.
+The young men stepped aboard, seated themselves, depositing their
+suitcases at their feet.
+
+"Now what about that winning-looker who really didn't interest you?"
+suggested Smith in tones made slightly acid by memory of his half hour
+waiting.
+
+"Smith, it was a most unusual episode. I was just leaving the office to
+keep my appointment with you when Snuyder came in with a card----"
+
+"You've said that already."
+
+"But I didn't tell you what was on that card, did I?"
+
+"I can guess."
+
+"No, you can't. Her name was not on the card. She was not an agent; she
+had nothing to sell; she didn't want a position; she didn't ask for a
+subscription to anything. And what do you suppose was on that card?"
+
+"Well, what was on the card, for the love of Mike?" snapped Smith. "I'll
+tell you. The card seemed to be an ordinary visiting card; but down in
+one corner was a tiny and beautifully drawn picture of a green mouse."
+
+"A--what?"
+
+"A mouse."
+
+"G-green?"
+
+"Pea green.... Come, now, Smith, if you were just leaving your office and
+your clerk should come in, looking rather puzzled and silly, and should
+hand you a card with nothing on it but a little green mouse, wouldn't it
+give you pause?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+Brown removed his straw hat, touched his handsome head with his
+handkerchief, and continued:
+
+"I said to Snuyder: 'What the mischief is this?' He said: 'It's for you.
+And there's an exceedingly pretty girl outside who expects you to receive
+her for a few moments.' I said: 'But what has this card with a green
+mouse on it got to do with that girl or with me?' Snuyder said he didn't
+know and that I'd better ask her. So I looked at my watch and I thought
+of you----"
+
+"Yes, you did."
+
+"I tell you I did. Then I looked at the card with the green mouse on
+it.... And I want to ask you frankly, Smith, what would _you_ have done?"
+
+"Oh, what you did, I suppose," replied Smith, wearily. "Go on."
+
+"I'm going. She entered----"
+
+"She was tall and squeenly; you probably forgot that," observed Smith in
+his most objectionable manner.
+
+"Probably not; she was of medium height, as a detail of external
+interest. But, although rather unusually attractive in a merely
+superficial and physical sense, it was instantly evident from her speech
+and bearing, that, in her, intellect dominated; her mind, Smithy, reigned
+serene, unsullied, triumphant over matter."
+
+Smith looked up in amazement, but Brown, a reminiscent smile lighting his
+face, went on:
+
+"She had a very winsome manner--a way of speaking--so prettily in
+earnest, so grave. And she looked squarely at me all the time----"
+
+"So you contributed to the Home for Unemployed Patagonians."
+
+"Would you mind shutting up?" asked Brown.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then try to listen respectfully. She began by explaining the
+significance of that pea-green mouse on the card. It seems, Smith, that
+there is a scientific society called The Green Mouse, composed of a few
+people who have determined to apply, practically, certain theories which
+they believe have commercial value."
+
+"Was she," inquired Smith with misleading politeness, "what is known as
+an 'astrologist'?"
+
+"She was not. She is the president, I believe, of The Green Mouse
+Society. She explained to me that it has been indisputably proven that
+the earth is not only enveloped by those invisible electric currents
+which are now used instead of wires to carry telegraphic messages, but
+that this world of ours is also belted by countless psychic currents
+which go whirling round the earth----"
+
+"_What_ kind of currents?"
+
+"Psychic."
+
+"Which circle the earth?"
+
+"Exactly. If you want to send a wireless message you hitch on to a
+current, don't you?--or you tap it--or something. Now, they have
+discovered that each one of these numberless millions of psychic currents
+passes through two, living, human entities of opposite sex; that, for
+example, all you have got to do to communicate with the person who is on
+the same psychical current that you are, is to attune your subconscious
+self to a given intensity and pitch, and it will be like communication by
+telephone, no matter how far apart you are."
+
+"Brown!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Did she go to your office to tell you that sort of--of--information?"
+
+"Partly. She was perfectly charming about it. She explained to me that
+all nature is divided into predestined pairs, and that somewhere, at some
+time, either here on earth or in some of the various future existences,
+this predestined pair is certain to meet and complete the universal
+scheme as it has been planned. Do you understand, Smithy?"
+
+Smith sat silent and reflective for a while, then:
+
+"You say that her theory is that everybody owns one of those psychic
+currents?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am on a private psychic current whirling around this globe?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"And some--ah--young girl is at the other end?"
+
+"Sure thing."
+
+"Then if I could only get hold of my end of the wire I could--ah--call
+her up?"
+
+"I believe that's the idea."
+
+"And--she's for muh?"
+
+"So they say."
+
+"Is--is there any way to get a look at her first?"
+
+"You'd have to take her anyway, sometime."
+
+"But suppose I didn't like her?"
+
+The two young men sat laughing for a few moments, then Brown went on:
+
+"You see, Smith, my interview with her was such a curious episode that
+about all I did was to listen to what she was saying, so I don't know how
+details are worked out. She explained to me that The Green Mouse Society
+has just been formed, not only for the purpose of psychical research, but
+for applying practically and using commercially the discovery of the
+psychic currents. That's what The Green Mouse is trying to do: form
+itself into a company and issue stocks and bonds----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Certainly. It sounds like a madman's dream at first, but when you come
+to look into it--for instance, think of the millions of clients such a
+company would have. As example, a young man, ready for marriage, goes to
+The Green Mouse and pays a fee. The Green Mouse sorts out, identifies,
+and intercepts the young man's own particular current, hitches his
+subconscious self to it, and zip!--he's at one end of an invisible
+telephone and the only girl on earth is at the other.... What's the
+matter with their making a quick date for an introduction?"
+
+Smith said slowly: "Do you mean to tell me that any sane person came to
+you in your office with a proposition to take stock in such an
+enterprise?"
+
+"She did not even suggest it."
+
+"What did she want, then?"
+
+"She wanted," said Brown, "a perfectly normal, unimaginative business man
+who would volunteer to permit The Green Mouse Society to sort out his
+psychic current, attach him to it, and see what would happen."
+
+"She wants to experiment on _you?_"
+
+"So I understand."
+
+"And--you're not going to let her, are you?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because it's--it's idiotic!" said Smith, warmly. "I don't believe in
+such things--you don't, either--nobody does--but, all the same, you can't
+be perfectly sure in these days what devilish sort of game you might be
+up against."
+
+Brown smiled. "I told her, very politely, that I found it quite
+impossible to believe in such things; and she was awfully nice about it,
+and said it didn't matter what I believed. It seems that my name was
+chosen by chance--they opened the Telephone Directory at random and she,
+blindfolded, made a pencil mark on the margin opposite one of the names
+on the page. It happened to be my name. That's all."
+
+"Wouldn't let her do it!" said Smith, seriously.
+
+"Why not, as long as there's absolutely nothing in it? Besides, if it
+pleases her to have a try why shouldn't she? Besides, I haven't the
+slightest intention or desire to woo or wed anybody, and I'd like to see
+anybody make me."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you told her to go ahead?"
+
+"Certainly," said Brown serenely. "And she thanked me very prettily.
+She's well bred--exceptionally."
+
+"Oh! Then what did you do?"
+
+"We talked a little while."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"Well, for instance, I mentioned that curiously-baffling sensation which
+comes over everybody at times--the sudden conviction that everything that
+you say and do has been said and done by you before--somewhere. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"And she smiled and said that such sensations were merely echoes from the
+invisible psychic wire, and that repetitions from some previous
+incarnation were not unusual, particularly when the other person through
+whom the psychic current passed, was near by."
+
+"You mean to say that when a fellow has that queer feeling that it has
+all happened before, the--the predestined girl is somewhere in your
+neighborhood?"
+
+"That is what my pretty informant told me."
+
+"Who," asked Smith, "is this pretty informant?"
+
+"She asked permission to withhold her name."
+
+"Didn't she ask you to subscribe?"
+
+"No; she merely asked for the use of my name as reference for future
+clients if The Green Mouse Society was successful in my case."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+Brown laughed. "I said that if any individual or group of individuals
+could induce me, within a year, to fall in love with and pay court to any
+living specimen of human woman I'd cheerfully admit it from the house-
+tops and take pleasure in recommending The Green Mouse to everybody I
+knew who yet remained unmarried."
+
+They both laughed.
+
+"What rot we've been talking," observed Smith, rising and picking up his
+suitcase. "Here's our station, and we'd better hustle or we'll lose the
+boat. I wouldn't miss that week-end party for the world!"
+
+"Neither would I," said Beekman Brown.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+A CROSS-TOWN CAR
+
+
+_Concerning the Sudden Madness of One Brown_
+
+As the two young fellows, carrying their suitcases, emerged from the
+subway at Times Square into the midsummer glare and racket of Broadway
+and Forty-second Street, Brown suddenly halted, pressed his hand to his
+forehead, gazed earnestly up at the sky as though trying to recollect how
+to fly, then abruptly gripped Smith's left arm just above the elbow and
+squeezed it, causing the latter gentleman exquisite discomfort.
+
+"Here! Stop it!" protested Smith, wriggling with annoyance.
+
+Brown only gazed at him and then at the sky.
+
+"Stop it!" repeated Smith, astonished. "Why do you pinch me and then look
+at the sky? Is--is a monoplane attempting to alight on me? _What_ is the
+matter with you, anyway?"
+
+"That peculiar consciousness," said Brown, dreamily, "is creeping over
+me. Don't move--don't speak--don't interrupt me, Smith."
+
+"Let go of me!" retorted Smith.
+
+"Hush! Wait! It's certainly creeping over me."
+
+"What's creeping over you?"
+
+"You know what I mean. I am experiencing that strange feeling that all--
+er--all _this_--has happened before."
+
+"All what?--confound it!"
+
+"All _this!_ My standing, on a hot summer day, in the infernal din of
+some great city; and--and I seem to recall it vividly--after a fashion--
+the blazing sun, the stifling odor of the pavements; I seem to remember
+that very hackman over there sponging the nose of his horse--even that
+pushcart piled up with peaches! Smith! What is this maddeningly elusive
+memory that haunts me--haunts me with the peculiar idea that it has all
+occurred before?... Do you know what I mean?"
+
+"I've just admitted to you that everybody has that sort of fidget
+occasionally, and there's no reason to stand on your hindlegs about it.
+Come on or we'll miss our train."
+
+But Beekman Brown remained stock still, his youthful and attractive
+features puckered in a futile effort to seize the evanescent memories
+that came swarming--gnatlike memories that teased and distracted.
+
+"It's as if the entire circumstances were strangely familiar," he said;
+"as though everything that you and I do and say had once before been done
+and said by us under precisely similar conditions--somewhere--sometime."
+
+"We'll miss that boat at the foot of Forty-second Street," cut in Smith
+impatiently. "And if we miss the boat we lose our train."
+
+Brown gazed skyward.
+
+"I never felt this feeling so strongly in all my life," he muttered;
+"it's--it's astonishing. Why, Smith, I _knew_ you were going to say
+that."
+
+"Say what?" demanded Smith.
+
+"That we would miss the boat and the train. Isn't it funny?"
+
+"Oh, very. I'll say it again sometime if it amuses you; but, meanwhile,
+as we're going to that week-end at the Carringtons we'd better get into a
+taxi and hustle for the foot of West Forty-second Street. Is there
+anything very funny in that?"
+
+"I knew _that_, too. I knew you'd say we must take a taxi!" insisted
+Brown, astonished at his own "clairvoyance."
+
+"Now, look here," retorted Smith, thoroughly vexed; "up to five minutes
+ago you were reasonable. What the devil's the matter with you, Beekman
+Brown?"
+
+"James Vanderdynk Smith, I don't know. Good Heavens! I knew you were
+going to say that to me, and that I was going to answer that way!"
+
+"Are you coming or are you going to talk foolish on this broiling
+curbstone the rest of the afternoon?" inquired Smith, fiercely.
+
+"Jim, I tell you that everything we've done and said in the last five
+minutes we have done and said before--somewhere--perhaps on some other
+planet; perhaps centuries ago when you and I were Romans and wore
+togas----"
+
+"Confound it! What do I care," shouted Smith, "whether we were Romans and
+wore togas? We are due this century at a house party on this planet. They
+expect us on this train. Are you coming? If not--kindly relax that
+crablike clutch on my elbow before partial paralysis ensues."
+
+"Smith, wait! I tell you this is somehow becoming strangely portentous.
+I've got the funniest sensation that something is going to happen to me."
+
+"It will," said Smith, dangerously, "if you don't let go my elbow."
+
+But Beekman Brown, a prey to increasing excitement, clung to his friend.
+
+"Wait just one moment, Jim; something remarkable is likely to occur! I--I
+never before felt this way--so strongly--in all my life. Something
+extraordinary is certainly about to happen to me."
+
+"It has happened," said his friend, coldly; "you've gone dippy. Also,
+we've lost that train. Do you understand?"
+
+"I knew we would. Isn't that curious? I--I believe I can almost tell you
+what else is going to happen to us."
+
+"_I'll_ tell _you_," hissed Smith; "it's an ambulance for yours and ding-
+dong to the funny-house! _What_ are you trying to do now?" With real
+misgiving, for Brown, balanced on the edge of the gutter, began waving
+his arms in a birdlike way as though about to launch himself into aerial
+flight across Forty-second Street.
+
+"The car!" he exclaimed excitedly, "the cherry-colored cross-town car!
+Where is it? Do you see it anywhere, Smith?"
+
+"What? What do you mean? There's no cross-town car in sight. Brown, don't
+act like that! Don't be foolish! What on earth----"
+
+"It's coming! There's a car coming!" cried Brown.
+
+"Do you think you're a racing runabout and I'm a curve?"
+
+Brown waved him away impatiently.
+
+"I tell you that something most astonishing is going to occur--in a
+cherry-colored tram car.... And somehow there'll be some reason for me to
+get into it."
+
+"Into what?"
+
+"Into that cherry-colored car, because--because--there'll be a wicker
+basket in it--somebody holding a wicker basket--and there'll be--there'll
+be--a--a--white summer gown--and a big white hat----"
+
+Smith stared at his friend in grief and amazement. Brown stood balancing
+himself on the gutter's edge, pale, rapt, uttering incoherent prophecy
+concerning the advent of a car not yet visible anywhere in the immediate
+metropolitan vista.
+
+"Old man," began Smith with emotion, "I think you had better come very
+quietly somewhere with me. I--I want to show you something pretty and
+nice."
+
+"Hark!" exclaimed Brown.
+
+"Sure, I'll hark for you," said Smith, soothingly, "or I'll bark for you
+if you like, or anything if you'll just come quietly."
+
+"The cherry-colored car!" cried Brown, laboring under tremendous emotion.
+"Look, Smithy! That is the car!"
+
+"Sure, it is! I see it, old man. They run 'em every five minutes. What
+the devil is there to astonish anybody about a cross-town cruiser with a
+red water line?"
+
+"Look!" insisted Brown, now almost beside himself. "The wicker basket!
+The summer gown! Exactly as I foretold it! The big straw hat!--the--the
+_girl!_"
+
+And shoving Smith violently away he galloped after the cherry-colored
+car, caught it, swung himself aboard, and sank triumphant and breathless
+into the transverse seat behind that occupied by a wicker basket, a filmy
+summer frock, a big, white straw hat, and--a girl--the most amazingly
+pretty girl he had ever laid eyes on. After him, headlong, like a
+distracted chicken, rushed Smith and alighted beside him, panting,
+menacing.
+
+"Wha'--dyeh--board--this--car--for!" he gasped, sliding fiercely up
+beside Brown. "Get off or I'll drag you off!"
+
+But Brown only shook his head with an infatuated smile.
+
+"Is it that girl?" said Smith, incensed. "Are you a--a Broadway Don Juan,
+or are you a respectable lawyer with a glimmering sense of common decency
+and an intention to keep a social engagement at the Carringtons' to-day?"
+
+And Smith drew out his timepiece and flourished it furiously under
+Brown's handsome and sun-tanned nose.
+
+But Brown only slid along the seat away from him, saying:
+
+"Don't bother me, Jim; this is too momentous a crisis in my life to have
+a well-intentioned but intellectually dwarfed friend butting into me and
+running about under foot."
+
+"Intellectually d-d--do you mean _me?_" asked Smith, unable to believe
+his ears. "_Do_ you?"
+
+"Yes, I do! Because a miracle suddenly happens to me on Forty-second
+Street, and you, with your mind of a stockbroker, unable to appreciate
+it, come clattering and clamoring after me about a house party--a common-
+place, every-day, social appointment, when I have a full-blown miracle on
+my hands!"
+
+"What miracle?" faltered Smith, stupefied.
+
+"What miracle? Haven't I been telling you that I've been having that
+queer sense that all this has happened before? Didn't I suddenly begin--
+as though compelled by some unseen power--to foretell things? Didn't I
+prophesy the coming of this cross-town car? Didn't I even name its color
+before it came into sight? Didn't I warn you that I'd probably get into
+it? Didn't I reveal to you that a big straw hat and a pretty summer
+gown----"
+
+"Confound it!" almost shouted Smith, "There are about five thousand
+cherry-colored cross-town cars in this town. There are about five million
+white hats and dresses in this borough. There are five billion girls
+wearing 'em----!" "Yes; but the _wicker basket_" breathed Brown. "How do
+you account for _that?_... And, anyway, you annoy me, Smith. Why don't
+you get out of the car and go somewhere?"
+
+"I want to know where you are going before I knock your head off."
+
+"I don't know," replied Brown, serenely.
+
+"Are you actually attempting to follow that girl?" whispered Smith,
+horrified.
+
+"Yes.... It sounds low, doesn't it? But it really isn't. It is something
+I can't explain--you couldn't understand even if I tried to enlighten
+you. The sentiment I harbor is too lofty for some to comprehend, too
+vague, too pure, too ethereal for----"
+
+"I'm as lofty and ethereal as you are!" retorted Smith, hotly. "And I
+know a--an ethereal Lothario when I see him, too!"
+
+"I'm not--though it looks like it--and I forgive you, Smithy, for losing
+your temper and using such language."
+
+"Oh, you do?" said Smith, grinning with rage.
+
+"Yes," nodded Brown, kindly. "I forgive you, but don't call me that
+again. You mean well, but I'm going to find out at last what all this
+maddening, tantalizing, unexplained and mysterious feeling that it all
+has occurred before really is. I'm going to trace it to its source; I'm
+going to compare notes with this highly intelligent girl."
+
+"You're going to _speak_ to her?"
+
+"I am. I must. How else can I compare data."
+
+"I hope she'll call the police. If she doesn't _I_ will."
+
+"Don't worry. She's part of this strange situation. She'll comprehend as
+soon as I begin to explain. She is intelligent; you only have to look at
+her to understand that."
+
+Smith choking with impotent fury, nevertheless ventured a swift glance.
+Her undeniable beauty only exasperated him. "To think--to _think_," he
+burst out, "that a modest, decent, law-loving business man like me should
+suddenly awake to find his boyhood friend had turned into a godless
+votary of Venus!"
+
+"I'm not a votary of Venus!" retorted Brown, turning pink. "I'll punch
+you if you say it again. I'm as decent and respectable a business man as
+you are! And my grammar is better. And, thank Heaven! I've intellect
+enough to recognize a miracle when it happens to me.... Do you think I am
+capable of harboring any sentiments that might bring the blush of
+coquetry to the cheek of modesty? Do you?"
+
+"Well--well, _I_ don't know what you're up to!" Smith raised his voice in
+bewilderment and despair. "I don't know what possesses you to act this
+way. People don't experience miracles in New York cross-town cars. The
+wildest stretch of imagination could only make a coincidence out of this.
+There are trillions of girls in cross-town cars dressed just like this
+one."
+
+"But the basket!"
+
+"Another coincidence. There are quadrillions of wicker baskets."
+
+"Not," said Brown, "with the contents of this one."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Smith instinctively turned to look at the basket balanced daintily on the
+girl's knees.
+
+He strove to penetrate its wicker exterior with concentrated gaze. He
+could see nothing but wicker.
+
+"Well," he began angrily, "what _is_ in that basket? And how do _you_
+know it--you lunatic?"
+
+"Will you believe me if I tell you?"
+
+"If you can offer any corroborative evidence----"
+
+"Well, then--there's a cat in that basket."
+
+"A--what?"
+
+"A cat."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I don't know how I know, but there's a big, gray cat in that basket."
+
+"Why a _gray_ one?"
+
+"I can't tell, but it _is_ gray, and it has six toes on every foot."
+
+Smith truly felt that he was now being trifled with.
+
+"Brown," he said, trying to speak civilly, "if anybody in the five
+boroughs had come to me with affidavits and told me yesterday how you
+were going to behave this morning----"
+
+His voice, rising unconsciously as the realization of his outrageous
+wrongs dawned upon him, rang out above the rattle and grinding of the
+car, and the girl turned abruptly and looked straight at him and then at
+Brown.
+
+The pure, fearless beauty of the gaze, the violet eyes widening a little
+in surprise, silenced both young men.
+
+She inspected Brown for an instant, then turned serenely to her calm
+contemplation of the crowded street once more. Yet her dainty, close-set
+ears looked as though they were listening.
+
+The young men gazed at one another.
+
+"That girl is well bred," said Smith in a low, agitated voice. "You--you
+wouldn't think of venturing to speak to her!"
+
+"I'm obliged to, I tell you! This all happened before. I recognize
+everything as it occurs.... Even to your making a general nuisance of
+yourself."
+
+Smith straightened up.
+
+"I'm going to push you forcibly from this car. Do you remember _that_
+incident?"
+
+[Illustration: "The lid of the basket tilted a little. Then a plaintive
+voice said 'Meow-w'."]
+
+"No," said Brown with conviction, "that incident did not happen. You only
+threatened to do it. I remember now."
+
+In spite of himself Smith felt a slight chill creep up over his neck and
+inconvenience his spine.
+
+He said, deeply agitated: "What a terrible position for me to be in--with
+a friend suddenly gone mad in the streets of New York and running after a
+basket containing what he believes to be a cat. A _Cat!_ Good----"
+
+Brown gripped his arm. "Watch it!" he breathed.
+
+The lid of the basket tilted a little, between lid and rim a soft, furry,
+six-toed gray paw was thrust out. Then a plaintive voice said, "Meow-w!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+THE LID OFF
+
+
+_An Alliance, Offensive, Defensive, and Back-Fensive_
+
+Smith, petrified, looked blankly at the paw.
+
+For a while he remained stupidly incapable of speech or movement, then,
+as though arousing from a bad dream:
+
+"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked with an effort. "This car is
+bound to stop sometime, I suppose, and--and then what?"
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to do. Whatever I do will be the thing that
+ought to happen to me, to that cat and to that girl--that is the thing
+which is destined to happen. That's all I know about it."
+
+His friend passed an unsteady hand across his brow.
+
+"This whole proceeding is becoming a nightmare," he said unsteadily. "Am
+I awake? Is this Forty-second Street? Hold up some fingers, Brown, and
+let me guess how many you hold up, and if I guess wrong I'm home in bed
+asleep and the whole thing is off."
+
+Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.
+
+"You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere. And if I don't come go on
+alone to the Carringtons'.... You don't mind going on and fixing things
+up with the Carringtons, do you?"
+
+"Brown, _do_ you believe that The Green Mouse Society has got hold of
+you? _Do_ you?"
+
+"I don't know and don't care.... Smith, I ask you plainly, did you ever
+before see such a perfectly beautiful girl as that one is?"
+
+"Beekman, do you believe anything queer is going to result? You don't
+suppose _she_ has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?"
+
+"Anything to do with it? How?"
+
+"I mean," he sank his voice to hoarser depths, "how do you know but that
+this girl, who pretends to pay no attention to us, _might_ be a--a--one
+of those clever, professional mesmerists who force you to follow 'em, and
+get you into their power, and exhibit you, and make you eat raw potatoes
+and tallow candles and tacks before an audience."
+
+He peeped furtively at Brown, who did not appear uneasy.
+
+"All I'm afraid of," added Smith, sullenly, "is that you'll get yourself
+into vaudeville or the patrol wagon."
+
+He waited, but Brown made no reply.
+
+"Oh, very well," he said, coldly. "I'll take a cab back to the boat."
+
+No observation from Brown.
+
+"So, _good_-by, old fellow"--with some emotion.
+
+"Good-by," said Beekman Brown, absently.
+
+In fact, he did not even notice when his thoroughly offended partner left
+the car, so intent was he in following the subtly thrilling train of
+thought which tantalized him, mocked him, led him nowhere, yet always
+lured him to fresh endeavor of memory. _Where_ had all this occurred
+before? When? What was going to happen next--happen inexorably, as it had
+once happened, or as it once should have happened, in some dim, bygone
+age when he and that basket and that cat and this same hauntingly lovely
+girl existed together on earth--or perhaps upon some planet, swimming far
+out beyond the ken of men with telescopes?
+
+He looked at the girl, strove to consider her impersonally, for her
+youthful beauty began to disturb him. Then cold doubt crept in; something
+of the monstrosity of the proceeding chilled his enthusiasm for occult
+research. Should he speak to her?
+
+Certainly, it was a dreadful thing to do--an offense the enormity of
+which was utterly inexcusable except under the stress of a purely
+impersonal and scientific necessity for investigating a mental phase of
+humanity which had always thrilled him with a curiosity most profound.
+
+He folded his arms and began to review in cold blood the circumstances
+which had led to his present situation in a cross-town car. Number one,
+and he held up one finger:
+
+As it comes, at times, to every normal human, the odd idea had come to
+him that what he was saying and doing as he emerged from the subway at
+Times Square was what he had, sometime, somewhere, said and done before
+under similar circumstances. That was the beginning.
+
+Number two, and he gravely held up a second finger:
+
+Always before when this idea had come to bother him it had faded after a
+moment or two, leaving him merely uneasy and dissatisfied.
+
+This time it persisted--intruding, annoying, exasperating him in his
+efforts to remember things which he could not recollect.
+
+Number three, and he held up a third finger:
+
+He _had_ begun to remember! As soon as he or Smith said or did anything
+he recollected having said or done it sometime, somewhere, or recollected
+that he _ought_ to have.
+
+Number four--four fingers in air, stiff, determined digits:
+
+He had not only, by a violent concentration of his memory, succeeded in
+recognizing the things said and done as having been said and done before,
+but suddenly he became aware that he was going to be able to foretell,
+vaguely, certain incidents that were yet to occur--like the prophesied
+advent of the cherry-colored car and the hat, gown, and wicker basket.
+
+He now had four fingers in the air; he examined them seriously, and then
+stuck up the fifth.
+
+"Here I am," he thought, "awake, perfectly sane, absolutely respectable.
+Why should a foolish terror of convention prevent me from asking that
+girl whether she knows anything which might throw some light on this most
+interesting mental phenomenon?... I'll do it."
+
+The girl turned her head slightly; speech and the politely perfunctory
+smile froze on his lips.
+
+She held up one finger; Brown's heart leaped. _Was_ that some cabalistic
+sign which he ought to recognize? But she was merely signaling the
+conductor, who promptly pulled the bell and lifted her basket for her
+when she got off.
+
+She thanked him; Brown heard her, and the crystalline voice began to ring
+in little bell-like echoes all through his ears, stirring endless little
+mysteries of memory.
+
+Brown also got off; his legs struck up a walk of their own volition,
+carrying him across the street, hoisting him into a north-bound Lexington
+Avenue car, and landing him in a seat behind the one where she had
+installed herself and her wicker basket.
+
+She seemed to be having some difficulty with the wicker basket;
+beseeching six-toed paws were thrust out persistently; soft meows pleaded
+for the right of liberty and pursuit of feline happiness. Several
+passengers smiled.
+
+Trouble increased as the car whizzed northward; the meows became wilder;
+mad scrambles agitated the basket; the lid bobbed and creaked; the girl
+turned a vivid pink and, bending close over the basket, attempted to
+soothe its enervated inmate.
+
+In the forties she managed to control the situation; in the fifties a
+frantic rush from within burst a string that fastened the basket lid, but
+the girl held it down with energy.
+
+In the sixties a tempest broke loose in the basket; harrowing yowls
+pierced the atmosphere; the girl, crimson with embarrassment and
+distress, signaled the conductor at Sixty-fourth Street and descended,
+clinging valiantly to a basket which apparently contained a pack of
+firecrackers in process of explosion.
+
+A classical heroine in dire distress invariably exclaims aloud: "Will
+_no_ one aid me?" Brown, whose automatic legs had compelled him to
+follow, instinctively awaited some similar appeal.
+
+It came unexpectedly; the kicking basket escaped from her arms, the lid
+burst open, and an extraordinarily large, healthy and indignant cat flew
+out, tail as big as a duster, and fled east on Sixty-fourth Street.
+
+The girl in the summer gown and white straw hat ran after the cat.
+Brown's legs ran, too.
+
+There was, and is, between the house on the northeast corner of Sixty-
+fourth Street and Lexington Avenue and the next house on Sixty-fourth, an
+open space guarded by an iron railing; through this the cat darted, fur
+on end, and, with a flying leap, took to the back fences.
+
+"Oh!" gasped the girl.
+
+Then Brown's legs did an extraordinary thing--they began to scramble and
+kick and shin up the iron railing, hoisting Brown over; and Brown's
+voice, pleasant, calm, reassuring, was busy, too: "If you will look out
+for my suitcase I think I can recover your cat.... It will give me great
+pleasure to recover your cat. I shall be very glad to have, the
+opportunity of recovering--puff--puff--your--puff--puff--c-cat!" And he
+dropped inside the iron railing and paused to recover his breath.
+
+The girl came up to the railing and gazed anxiously through at the corner
+of the only back fence she could perceive.
+
+"What a perfectly dreadful thing to happen!" she said in a voice not very
+steady. "It is exceedingly nice of you to help me catch Clarence. He is
+quite beside himself, poor lamb! You see, he has never before been in the
+city. I--I shall be distressed beyond m-measure if he is lost."
+
+"He went over those fences," said Brown, breathing faster. "I think I'd
+better go after him."
+
+"Oh--_would_ you mind? I'd be so very grateful. It seems so much to ask
+of you."
+
+"I'll do it," said Brown, firmly. "Every boy in New York has climbed back
+fences, and I'm only thirty."
+
+"It is most kind of you; but--but I don't know whether you could possibly
+get him to come to you. Clarence is timid with strangers."
+
+Brown had already clambered on to the wooden fence. He balanced himself
+there, astride. Whitewash liberally decorated coat and trousers.
+
+"I see him," he said.
+
+"W-what is he doing?"
+
+"Squatting on a trellis three back yards away." And Brown lifted a
+blandishing voice: "Here, Clarence--Clarence--Clarence! Here, kitty--
+kitty--kitty! Good pussy! Nice Clarence!"
+
+"Does he come?" inquired the girl, peering wistfully through the railing.
+
+"He does not," said Brown. "Perhaps you had better call."
+
+"Here, puss--puss--puss--puss!" she began gently in that fascinating,
+crystalline voice which seemed to set tiny silvery chimes ringing in
+Brown's ears: "Here, Clarence, darling--Betty's own little kitty-cat!"
+
+"If he doesn't come to _that_," thought Brown, "he _is_ a brute." And
+aloud: "If you could only let him see you; he sits there blinking at me."
+
+"Do you think he'd come if he saw me?"
+
+"Who wouldn't?" thought Brown, and answered, calmly: "I think so.... Of
+course, you couldn't get up here."
+
+"I could.... But I'd better not.... Besides, I live only a few houses
+away--Number 161--and I _could_ go through into the back yard."
+
+"But you'd better not attempt to climb the fence. Have one of the
+servants do it; we'll get the cat between us then and corner him."
+
+"There are no servants in the house. It's closed for the summer--all
+boarded up!"
+
+"Then how can you get in?"
+
+"I have a key to the basement.... Shall I?"
+
+"And climb up on the fence?"
+
+"Yes--if I must--if it's necessary to save Clarence.... Shall I?"
+
+"Why can't I shoo him into your yard."
+
+"He doesn't know our yard. He's a country cat; he's never stayed in town.
+I was taking him with me to Oyster Bay.... I came down from a week-end at
+Stockbridge, where some relatives kept Clarence for us while we were
+abroad during the winter.... I meant to stop and get some things in the
+house on my way back to Oyster Bay.... Isn't it a perfectly wretched
+situation?... We--the entire family--adore Clarence--and--I-I'm so
+anxious----"
+
+Her fascinating underlip trembled, but she controlled it.
+
+"I'll get that cat if it takes a month!" said Brown. Then he flushed; he
+had not meant to speak so warmly.
+
+The girl flushed too. I am so grateful.... But how----"
+
+"Wait," said Brown; and, addressing Clarence in a softly alluring voice,
+he began cautiously to crawl along the fences toward that unresponsive
+animal. Presently he desisted, partly on account of a conspiracy engaged
+in between his trousers and a rusty nail. The girl was now beyond range
+of his vision around the corner.
+
+"Miss--ah--Miss--er--er--Betty!" he called.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Clarence has retreated over another back yard."
+
+"How horrid!"
+
+"How far down do you live?"
+
+She named the number of doors, anxiously adding: "Is Clarence farther
+down the block? Oh, please, be careful. Please, don't drive him past our
+yard. If you will wait I--I'll let myself into the house and--I'll manage
+to get up on the fence."
+
+"You'll ruin your gown."
+
+"I don't care about my gown."
+
+"These fences are the limit! Full of spikes and nails.... Will you be
+careful?"
+
+"Yes, very."
+
+"The nails are rusty. I--I am h-horribly afraid of lockjaw."
+
+"Then don't remain there an instant."
+
+"I mean--I'm afraid of it for you."
+
+There was a silence; they couldn't see each other. Brown's heart was
+beating fast.
+
+"It is very generous of you to--think of me," came her voice, lower but
+very friendly.
+
+"I ca-can't avoid it," he stammered, and wanted to kick himself for what
+he had blurted out.
+
+Another pause--longer this time. And then:
+
+"I am going to enter my house and climb up on the fence.... Would you
+mind waiting a moment?"
+
+"I will wait here," said Beekman Brown, "until I see you." He added to
+himself: "I'm going mad rapidly and I know it and don't care.... _What_--
+a--girl!"
+
+While he waited, legs swinging, astride the back fence, he examined his
+injuries--thoughtfully touched the triangular tear in his trousers,
+inspected minor sartorial and corporeal lacerations, set his hat firmly
+upon his head, and gazed across the monotony of the back-yard fences at
+Clarence. The cat eyed him disrespectfully, paws tucked under, tail
+curled up against his well-fed flank--disillusioned, disgusted,
+unapproachable.
+
+Presently, through the palings of a back yard on Sixty-fifth Street,
+Brown saw a small boy, evidently the progeny of some caretaker, regarding
+him intently.
+
+"Say, mister," he began as soon as noticed, "you have tore your pants on
+a nail."
+
+"Thanks," said Brown, coldly; "will you be good enough to mind your
+business?"
+
+"I thought I'd tell you," said the small boy, delightedly aware that the
+information displeased Brown. "They're tore awful, too. That's what you
+get for playin' onto back fences. Y'orter be ashamed."
+
+Brown feigned unconsciousness and folded his arms with dignity; but the
+next moment he straightened up, quivering.
+
+"You young devil!" he said; "if you pull that slingshot again I'll come
+over there and destroy you!"
+
+At the same moment above the fence line down the block a white straw hat
+appeared; then a youthful face becomingly flushed; then two dainty,
+gloved hands grasping the top of the fence.
+
+"I am here," she called across to him.
+
+The small boy, who had climbed to the top of his fence, immediately
+joined the conversation:
+
+"Your girl's a winner, mister," he observed, critically.
+
+"Are you going to keep quiet?" demanded Brown, starting across the fence.
+
+"Sure," said the small boy, carelessly.
+
+And, settling down on his lofty perch of observation, he began singing:
+
+_"Lum' me an' the woild is mi-on._"
+
+The girl's cheeks became pinker; she looked at the small boy appealingly.
+
+"Little boy," she said, "if you'll run away somewhere I'll give you ten
+cents."
+
+"No," said the terror, "I want to see him an' you catch that cat."
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," suggested Brown, inspired. "I'll give you a
+dollar if you'll help us catch the cat."
+
+"You're on!" said the boy, briskly. "What'll I do? Touch her up with this
+bean-shooter?"
+
+"No; put that thing into your pocket!" exclaimed Brown, sharply. "Now
+climb across to Sixty-fourth Street and stand by that iron railing so
+that the cat can't bolt out into the street, and," he added, wrapping a
+dollar bill around a rusty nail and tossing it across the fence, "here's
+what's coming to you."
+
+The small boy scrambled over nimbly, ran squirrel-like across the
+transverse fence, dipped, swarmed over the iron railing and stood on
+guard.
+
+"Say, mister," he said, "if the cat starts this way you and your girl
+start a hollerin' like----"
+
+"All right," interrupted Brown, and turned toward the vision of
+loveliness and distress which was now standing on the top of her own back
+fence holding fast to a wistaria trellis and flattering Clarence with low
+and honeyed appeals.
+
+The cat, however, was either too stupid or too confused to respond; he
+gazed blankly at his mistress, and when Brown began furtively edging his
+way toward him Clarence arose, stood a second in alert indecision, then
+began to back away.
+
+"We've got him between us!" called out Brown. "If you'll stand ready to
+seize him when I drive him----"
+
+There was a wild scurry, a rush, a leap, frantic clawing for foothold.
+
+"Now, Miss Betty! Quick!" cried Brown. "Don't let him pass you."
+
+She spread her skirts, but the shameless Clarence rushed headlong between
+the most delicately ornamental pair of ankles in Manhattan.
+
+"Oh-h!" cried the girl in soft despair, and made a futile clutch; but she
+could not arrest the flight of Clarence, she merely upset him, turning
+him for an instant into a furry pinwheel, whirling through mid-air,
+landing in her yard, rebounding like a rubber ball, and disappearing,
+with one flying leap, into a narrow opening in the basement masonry.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Brown, precariously balanced on the next fence.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "this is becoming positively ghastly. He's
+bolted into our cellar."
+
+"Why, that's all right, isn't it?" asked Brown. "All you have to do is to
+go inside, descend to the cellar, and light the gas."
+
+"There's no gas."
+
+"You have electric light?"
+
+"Yes, but it's turned off at the main office. The house is closed for the
+summer, you know."
+
+Brown, balancing cautiously, walked the intervening fence like an amateur
+on a tightrope.
+
+Her pretty hat was a trifle on one side; her cheeks brilliant with
+excitement and anxiety. Utterly oblivious of herself and of appearances
+in her increasing solicitude for the adored Clarence, she sat the fence,
+cross saddle, balancing with one hand and pointing with the other to the
+barred ventilator into which Clarence had darted.
+
+A wisp of sunny hair blew across her crimson cheek; slender, active,
+excitedly unconscious of self, she seemed like some eager, adorable
+little gamin perched there, intent on mischief.
+
+"If you'll drop into our yard," she said, "and place that soap box
+against the ventilator, Clarence can't get out that way!"
+
+It was done before she finished the request. She disengaged herself from
+the fencetop, swung over, hung an instant, and dropped into a soft flower
+bed.
+
+Breathing fast, disheveled, they confronted one another on the grass. His
+blue suit of serge was smeared with whitewash; her gown was a sight. She
+felt for her hat instinctively, repinned it at hazard, looked at her
+gloves, and began to realize what she had done.
+
+"I--I couldn't help it," she faltered; "I couldn't leave Clarence in a
+city of five m-million strangers--all alone--terrified out of his senses--
+could I? I had rather--rather be thought--anything than be c-cruel to a
+helpless animal."
+
+Brown dared not trust himself to answer. She was too beautiful and his
+emotion was too deep. So he bent over and attempted to dust his garments
+with the flat of his hand.
+
+"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice. "Are your clothes quite
+ruined?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mind," he protested happily, "I really don't mind a bit. If
+you'll only let me help you corner that infern--that unfortunate cat I
+shall be perfectly happy."
+
+She said, with heightened color: "It is exceedingly nice of you to say
+so.... I--I don't quite know--what do you think we had better do?"
+
+"Suppose," he said, "you go into the basement, unlock the cellar door and
+call. He can't bolt this way."
+
+She nodded and entered the house. A few moments later he heard her
+calling, so persuasively that it was all he could do not to run to her,
+and why on earth that cat didn't he never could understand.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+BETTY
+
+
+_In Which the Remorseless and Inexorable Results of Psychical Research
+Are Revealed to the Very Young_
+
+At intervals for the next ten minutes her fresh, sweet, fascinating voice
+came to him where he stood in the yard; then he heard it growing fainter,
+more distant, receding; then silence.
+
+Listening, he suddenly heard a far, rushing sound from subterranean
+depths--like a load of coal being put in--then a frightened cry.
+
+He sprang into the basement, ran through laundry and kitchen. The cellar
+door swung wide open above the stairs which ran down into darkness; and
+as he halted to listen Clarence dashed up out of the depths, scuttled
+around the stairs and fled upward into the silent regions above.
+
+"Betty!" he cried, forgetting in his alarm the lesser conventions, "where
+are you?"
+
+"Oh, dear--oh, dear!" she wailed. "I am in such a dreadful plight. Could
+you help me, please?"
+
+"Are you hurt?" he asked. Fright made his voice almost inaudible. He
+struck a match with shaking fingers and ran down the cellar stairs.
+
+"Betty! Where are you?"
+
+"Oh, I am here--in the coal."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I--I can't seem to get out; I stepped into the coal pit in the dark and
+it all--all slid with me and over me and I'm in it up to the shoulders."
+
+Another match flamed; he saw a stump of a candle, seized it, lighted it,
+and, holding it aloft, gazed down upon the most heart rending spectacle
+he had ever witnessed.
+
+The next instant he grasped a shovel and leaped to the rescue. She was
+quite calm about it; the situation was too awful, the future too hopeless
+for mere tears. What had happened contained all the dignified elements of
+a catastrophe. They both realized it, and when, madly shoveling, he at
+last succeeded in releasing her she leaned her full weight on his own,
+breathing rapidly, and suffered him to support and guide her through the
+flame-shot darkness to the culinary regions above.
+
+Here she sank down on a chair for one moment in utter collapse. Then she
+looked up, resolutely steadying her voice:
+
+"Could anything on earth more awful have happened to a girl?" she asked,
+lips quivering in spite of her. She stretched out what had once been a
+pair of white gloves, she looked down at what had been a delicate summer
+gown of white. "How," she asked with terrible calmness, "am I to get to
+Oyster Bay?"
+
+He dropped on to a kitchen chair opposite her, clasping his coal-stained
+hands between his knees, utterly incapable of speech.
+
+She looked at her shoes--once snowy white; with a shudder she stripped
+the soiled gloves from elbow to wrist and flung them aside. Her arms and
+hands formed a starling contrast to the remainder of the ensemble.
+
+"What," she asked, "am I to do?"
+
+"The thing to do," he said, "is to telephone to your family at Oyster
+Bay."
+
+"The telephone has been disconnected. So has the water--we can't even
+w-wash our hands!" she faltered.
+
+He said: "I can go out and telephone to your family to send a maid with
+some clothes for you--if you don't mind being left alone in an empty
+house for a little while."
+
+"No, I don't; but," she gazed uncertainly at the black opening of the
+cellar, "but, please, don't be gone very long, will you?"
+
+He promised fervidly. She gave him the number and her family's name, and
+he left by the basement door.
+
+He was gone a long time, during which, for a while, she paced the floor,
+unaffectedly wringing her hands and contemplating herself and her
+garments in the laundry looking-glass.
+
+At intervals she tried to turn on the water, hoping for a few drops at
+least; at intervals she sat down to wait for him; then, the inaction
+becoming unendurable, musing goaded her into motion, and she ascended to
+the floor above, groping through the dimness in futile search for
+Clarence. She heard him somewhere in obscurity, scurrying under furniture
+at her approach, evidently too thoroughly demoralized to recognize her
+voice. So, after a while, she gave it up and wandered down to the pantry,
+instinct leading her, for she was hungry and thirsty; but she knew there
+could be nothing eatable in a house closed for the summer.
+
+She lifted the pantry window and opened the blinds; noon sunshine flooded
+the place, and she began opening cupboards and refrigerators, growing
+hungrier every moment.
+
+Then her eyes fell upon dozens of bottles of Apollinaris, and with a
+little cry of delight she knelt down, gathered up all she could carry,
+and ran upstairs to the bathroom adjoining her own bedchamber.
+
+"At least," she said to herself, "I can cleanse myself of this dreadful
+coal!" and in a few moments she was reveling, elbow deep, in a marble
+basin brimming with Apollinaris.
+
+As the stain of the coal disappeared she remembered a rose-colored
+morning gown reposing in her bedroom clothespress; and she found more
+than that there--rose stockings and slippers and a fragrant pile of
+exquisitely fine and more intimate garments, so tempting in their
+freshness that she hurried with them into the dressing room; then began
+to make rapid journeys up and downstairs, carrying dozens of quarts of
+Apollinaris to the big porcelain tub, into which she emptied them,
+talking happily to herself all the time.
+
+"If he returns I can talk to him over the banisters!... He's a nice
+boy.... Such a funny boy not to remember me.... And I've thought of him
+quite often.... I wonder if I've time for just one, delicious plunge?"
+She listened; ran to the front windows and looked out through the blinds.
+He was nowhere in sight.
+
+Ten minutes later, delightfully refreshed, she stood regarding herself in
+her lovely rose-tinted morning gown, patting her bright hair into
+discipline with slim, deft fingers, a half-smile on her lips, lids
+closing a trifle over the pensive violet eyes.
+
+"Now," she said aloud, "I'll talk to him over the banisters when he
+returns; it's a little ungracious, I suppose, after all he has done, but
+it's more conventional.... And I'll sit here and read until they send
+somebody from Sandcrest with a gown I can travel in.... And then we'll
+catch Clarence and call a cab----"
+
+A distant tinkling from the area bell interrupted her.
+
+"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "I quite forgot that I had to let him in!"
+
+Another tinkle. She cast a hurried and doubtful glance over her attire.
+It was designed for the intimacy of her boudoir.
+
+"I--I _couldn't_ talk to him out of the window! I've been shocking enough
+as it is!" she thought; and, finger tips on the banisters, she ran down
+the three stairs and appeared at the basement grille, breathless,
+radiant, forgetting, as usual, her self-consciousness in thinking of him,
+a habit of this somewhat harebrained and headlong girl which had its root
+in perfect health of body and wholesomeness of mind.
+
+"I found some clothes--not the sort I can go out in!" she said, laughing
+at his astonishment, as she unlocked the grille. "So, please, overlook my
+attire; I was _so_ full of coal dust! and I found sufficient Apollinaris
+for my necessities.... _What_ did they say at Sandcrest?"
+
+He said very soberly: "We've got to discuss this situation. Perhaps I had
+better come in for a few minutes--if you don't mind."
+
+"No, I don't mind.... Shall we sit in the drying room?" leading the way.
+"Now tell me what is the matter? You rather frighten me, you know. Is--is
+anything wrong at Sandcrest?"
+
+"No, I suppose not." He touched his flushed face with his handkerchief;
+"I couldn't get Oyster Bay on the 'phone."
+
+"W-why not?"
+
+"The wires are out of commission as far as Huntington; there's no use--I
+tried everything! Telegraph and telephone wires were knocked out in this
+morning's electric storm, it seems."
+
+She gazed at him, hands folded on her knee, left leg crossed over, foot
+swinging.
+
+"This," she said calmly, "is becoming serious. Will you tell me what I am
+to do?"
+
+"Haven't you anything to travel in?"
+
+"Not one solitary rag."
+
+"Then--you'll have to stay here to-night and send for some of your
+friends--you surely know somebody who is still in town, don't you?"
+
+"I really don't. This is the middle of July. I don't know a woman in
+town."
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Besides," she said, "we have no light, no water, nothing to eat in the
+house, no telephone to order anything----"
+
+He said: "I foresaw that you would probably be obliged to remain here, so
+when I left the telephone office I took the liberty of calling a taxi and
+visiting the electric light people, the telephone people and the nearest
+plumber. It seems he is your own plumber--Quinn, I believe his name is;
+and he's coming in half an hour to turn on the water."
+
+"Did you think of doing all that?" she asked, astonished.
+
+"Oh, that wasn't anything. And I ventured to telephone the Plaza to serve
+luncheon and dinner here for you----"
+
+"You _did?_"
+
+"And I wired to Dooley's Agency to send you a maid for to-day----"
+
+"That was perfectly splendid of you!"
+
+"They promised to send one as soon as possible.... And I think that may
+be the plumber now," as a tinkle came from the area bell.
+
+It was not the plumber; it was waiters bearing baskets full of silver,
+china, table linen, ice, fruits, confections, cut flowers, and, in
+warmers, a most delectable luncheon.
+
+Four impressive individuals commanded by a butler formed the
+processional, filing solemnly up the basement stairs to the dining room,
+where they instantly began to lay the table with dexterous celerity.
+
+In the drying room below Betty and Beekman Brown stood confronting each
+other.
+
+"I suppose," began Brown with an effort, "that I had better go now."
+
+Betty said thoughtfully: "I suppose you must."
+
+"Unless," continued Brown, "you think I had better remain--somewhere on
+the premises--until your maid arrives."
+
+"That might be safer," said Betty, more thoughtfully.
+
+"Your maid will probably be here in a few minutes."
+
+"Probably," said Betty, head bent, slim, ringless fingers busy with the
+sparkling drop that glimmered pendant from her neckchain.
+
+Silence--the ironing board between them--she standing, bright head
+lowered, worrying the jewel with childish fingers; he following every
+movement, fascinated, spellbound.
+
+After a moment, without looking up: "You have been very, very nice to me--
+in the nicest possible way," she said.... "I am not going to forget it
+easily--even if I might wish to."
+
+"I can never forget _you!_... I d-don't want to."
+
+The sparkling pendant escaped her fingers; she picked it up again and
+spoke as though gravely addressing it:
+
+"Some day somewhere," she said, looking at the jewel, "perhaps chance--
+the hazard of life--may bring us to--togeth--to acquaintance--a more
+formal acquaintance than this.... I hope so. This has been a little--
+irregular, and perhaps you had better not wait for my maid.... I hope we
+may meet--sometime."
+
+"I hope so, too," he managed to say, with so little fervor and so
+successful an imitation of her politely detached interest in convention
+that she raised her eyes. They dropped immediately, because his quiet
+voice and speech scarcely conformed to the uncontrolled protest in his
+eyes.
+
+For a moment she stood, passing the golden links through her white
+fingers like a young novice with a rosary. Steps on the stairs disturbed
+them; the recessional had begun; four solemn persons filed out the area
+gate. At the same moment, suave and respectful, her butler pro tem.
+presented himself at the doorway:
+
+"Luncheon is served, madam."
+
+"Thank you." She looked uncertainly at Brown, hesitated, flushed a
+trifle.
+
+"I will stay here and admit the plumber and then--then--I'll g-go," he
+said with a heartbroken smile.
+
+"I suppose you took the opportunity to lunch when you went out?" she
+said. Her inflection made it a question.
+
+Without answering he stepped back to allow her to pass. She moved
+forward, turned, undecided.
+
+"_Have_ you lunched?"
+
+"Please don't feel that you ought to ask me," he began, and checked
+himself as the vivid pink deepened in her cheeks. Then she freed herself
+of embarrassment with a little laugh.
+
+"Considering," she said, "that we have been chasing cats on the back
+fences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in my
+own cellar, I can't believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheon
+with me.... Is it?"
+
+"It is ador--it is," he corrected himself firmly, "exceedingly civil of
+you to ask me!"
+
+"Then--will you?" almost timidly.
+
+"I will. I shall not pretend any more. I'd rather lunch with you than be
+President of this Republic."
+
+The butler pro tem. seated her.
+
+"You see," she said, "a place had already been laid for you." And with
+the faintest trace of malice in her voice: "Perhaps your butler had his
+orders to lay two covers. Had he?"
+
+"From me?" he protested, reddening.
+
+"You don't suspect _me_, do you?" she asked, adorably mischievous. Then
+glancing over the masses of flowers in the center and at the corners of
+the lace cloth: "This is deliciously pretty. But you are either
+dreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am. Which is it?"
+
+"I think both are true," he said, laughing.
+
+And a little while later when he returned from the basement after
+admitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber:
+
+"Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?" she said, greeting
+his return with delightfully fearless eyes. "Such Astrakan caviar! Such
+salad! Everything I care for most. And how on earth you guessed I can't
+imagine.... I'm beginning to think you are rather wonderful."
+
+They lifted the long, slender glasses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded one
+another over the frosty rims--a long, curious glance from her; a straight
+gaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long.
+
+Later, when she gave the signal, they rose as though they had often dined
+together, and moved leisurely out through the dim, shrouded drawing-rooms
+where, in the golden dusk, the odor of camphor hung.
+
+She had taken a great cluster of dewy Bride's roses from the centerpiece,
+and as she walked forward, sedately youthful, beside him, her fresh,
+young face brooded over the fragrance of the massed petals.
+
+"Sweet--how sweet!" she murmured to herself, and as they reached the end
+of the vista she half turned to face him, dreamily, listless, confident.
+
+They looked at one another, she with chin brushing the roses.
+
+"The strangest of all," she said, "is that it _seems_ all right--and--and
+we _know_ that it is all quite wrong.... Had you better go?"
+
+"Unless I ought to wait and make sure your maid does not fail you....
+Shall I?" he asked evenly.
+
+She did not answer. He drew a linen-swathed armchair toward her; she
+absently seated herself and lay back, caressing the roses with delicate
+lips and chin.
+
+Twice she looked up at him, standing there by the boarded windows.
+Sunshine filtered through the latticework at the top--enough for them to
+see each other as in a dull afterglow.
+
+"I wonder how soon my maid will come," she mused, dropping the loose
+roses on her knees. "If she is going to be very long about it perhaps--
+perhaps you might care to find a chair--if you have decided to wait."
+
+He drew one from a corner and seated himself, pulses hammering his
+throat.
+
+Through the stillness of the house sounded at intervals the clink of
+glass from the pantry. Other sounds from above indicated the plumber's
+progress from floor to floor.
+
+"Do you realize," she said impulsively, "how _very_ nice you have been to
+me? What a perfectly horrid position I might have been in, with poor
+Clarence on the back fence! And suppose I had dared follow him alone to
+the cellar? I--I might have been there yet--up to my neck in coal?"
+
+She gazed into space with considerable emotion.
+
+"And now," she said, "I am safe here in my own home. I have lunched
+divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe
+indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light
+and the telephone will be in working order before very long--and it is
+_all_ due to you!"
+
+"I--I did a few things I almost w-wish I hadn't," stammered Brown,
+"b-because I can't, somehow, decently t-tell you how tremendously
+I--I--" He stuck fast.
+
+"What?"
+
+"It would look as though I were presuming on a t-trifling service
+rendered, and--oh, I can't say it; I want to, but I can't."
+
+"Say what? Please, I don't mind what you are--are going to say."
+
+"It's--it's that I----"
+
+"Y-es?" in soft encouragement.
+
+"W-want to know you most tremendously now. I don't want to wait several
+years for chance and hazard."
+
+"O-h!" as though the information conveyed a gentle shock to her. Her low-
+breathed exclamation nearly finished Brown.
+
+"I knew you'd think it unpardonable for me--at such a time--to venture
+to--to--ask--say--express--convey----"
+
+"Why do you--how can I--where could we--" She recovered herself
+resolutely. "I do not think we ought to take advantage of an accident
+like this.... Do you? Besides, probably, in the natural course of social
+events----"
+
+"But it may be years! months! weeks!" insisted Brown, losing control of
+himself.
+
+"I should hope it would at least be a decently reasonable interval of
+several weeks----"
+
+"But I don't know what to do if I never see you again for weeks! I c-care
+so much--for--you."
+
+She shrank back in her chair, and in her altered face he read that he had
+disgraced himself.
+
+"I knew I was going to," he said in despair. "I couldn't keep it--I
+couldn't stop it. And now that you see what sort of a man I am I'm going
+to tell you more."
+
+"You need not," she said faintly.
+
+"I must. Listen! I--I don't even know your full name--all I know is that
+it is Betty, and that your cat's name is Clarence and your plumber's name
+is Quinn. But if I didn't know anything at all concerning you it would
+have been the same. I suppose you will think me insane if I tell you that
+before the car, on which you rode, came into sight I _knew_ you were on
+it. And I--cared--for--you--before I ever saw you."
+
+"I don't understand----"
+
+"I know you don't. _I_ don't. All I understand is that what you and I
+have done has been done by us before, sometime, somewhere--part only--
+down to--down to where you changed cars. Up to that moment, before you
+took the Lexington Avenue car, I recognized each incident as it
+occurred.... But when all this happened to us before I must have lost
+courage--for I did not recognize anything after that except that I cared
+for you.... _Do_ you understand one single word of what I have been
+saying?"
+
+The burning color in her face had faded slowly while he was speaking; her
+lifted eyes grew softer, serious, as he ended impetuously.
+
+She looked at him in retrospective silence. There was no mistaking his
+astonishing sincerity, his painfully earnest endeavor to impart to her
+some rather unusual ideas in which he certainly believed. No man who
+looked that way at a woman could mean impertinence; her own intelligence
+satisfied her that he had not meant and could never mean offense to any
+woman.
+
+"Tell me," she said quietly, "just what you mean. It is not possible for
+you to--care--for--me.... Is it?"
+
+He disclosed to her, beginning briefly with his own name, material and
+social circumstances, a pocket edition of his hitherto uneventful career,
+the advent that morning of the emissary from The Green Mouse, his
+discussion with Smith, the strange sensation which crept over him as he
+emerged from the tunnel at Forty-second Street, his subsequent
+altercation with Smith, and the events that ensued up to the eruption of
+Clarence.
+
+He spoke in his most careful attorney's manner, frank, concise,
+convincing, free from any exaggeration of excitement or emotion. And she
+listened, alternately fascinated and appalled as, step by step, his story
+unfolded the links in an apparently inexorable sequence involving this
+young man and herself in a predestined string of episodes not yet ended--
+if she permitted herself to credit this astounding story.
+
+Sensitively intelligent, there was no escaping the significance of the
+only possible deduction. She drew it and blushed furiously. For a moment,
+as the truth clamored in her brain, the self-evidence of it stunned her.
+But she was young, and the shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous,
+almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lips
+parted in outraged protest--parted and remained so, wordless, silent--the
+soundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had imperceptibly
+begun to tremble.
+
+Her head sank slowly; she laid her white hands above the roses heaped in
+her lap.
+
+For a long while she remained so. And he did not speak.
+
+First the butler went away. Then Mr. Quinn followed. The maid had not yet
+arrived. The house was very still.
+
+And after the silence had worn his self-control to the breaking point he
+rose and walked to the dining room and stood looking down into the yard.
+The grass out there was long and unkempt; roses bloomed on the fence;
+wistaria, in its deeper green of midsummer, ran riot over the trellis
+where Clarence had basely dodged his lovely mistress, and, after making a
+furry pin wheel of himself, had fled through the airhole into Stygian
+depths.
+
+Somewhere above, in the silent house, Clarence was sulkily dissembling.
+
+"I suppose," said Brown, quietly coming back to where the girl was
+sitting in the golden dusk, "that I might as well find Clarence while we
+are waiting for your maid. May I go up and look about?"
+
+And taking her silence as assent, he started upstairs.
+
+He hunted carefully, thoroughly, opening doors, peeping under furniture,
+investigating clothespresses, listening at intervals, at intervals
+calling with misleading mildness. But, like him who died in malmsey,
+Clarence remained perjured and false to all sentiments of decency so
+often protested purringly to his fair young mistress.
+
+Mechanically Brown opened doors of closets, knowing, if he had stopped to
+think, that cats don't usually turn knobs and let themselves into tightly
+closed places.
+
+In one big closet on the fifth floor, however, as soon as he opened the
+door there came a rustle, and he sprang forward to intercept the
+perfidious one; but it was only the air stirring the folds of garments
+hanging on the wall.
+
+As he turned to step forth again the door gently closed with an ominous
+click, shutting him inside. And after five minutes' frantic fussing he
+realized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strange
+house, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, who might, at
+any moment now that the telephone was in order, call a cab and flee from
+a man who had tried to explain to her that they were irrevocably
+predestined for one another.
+
+Calling and knocking were dignified and permissible, but they did no
+good. To kick violently at the door was not dignified, but he was obliged
+to do it. Evidently the closet was too remote for the sound to penetrate
+down four flights of stairs.
+
+He tried to break down the door--they do it in all novels. He only
+rebounded painfully, ineffectively, which served him right for reading
+fiction.
+
+It irked him to shout; he hesitated for a long while; then sudden
+misgiving lest she might flee the house seized him and he bellowed. It
+was no use.
+
+The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruising
+himself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes and
+textures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder and
+madder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence of
+which he had never dreamed himself capable.
+
+Then he sat down. He remained perfectly still for a long while, listening
+and delicately feeling his hurts. A curious drowsiness began to irritate
+him; later the irritation subsided and he felt a little sleepy.
+
+His heart, however, thumped like an inexpensive clock; the cedar-tainted
+air in the closet grew heavier; he felt stupid, swaying as he rose. No
+wonder, for the closet was as near air-tight as it could be made.
+Fortunately he did not realize it.
+
+And, meanwhile, downstairs, Betty was preparing for flight.
+
+She did not know where she was going--how far away she could get in a
+rose-silk morning gown. But she had discovered, in a clothespress, an
+automobile duster, cap, and goggles; on the strength of these she tried
+the telephone, found it working, summoned a coupe, and was now awaiting
+its advent. But the maid from Dooley's must first arrive to take charge
+of the house and Clarence until she, Betty, could summon her family to
+her assistance and defy The Green Mouse, Beekman Brown, and Destiny
+behind her mother's skirts.
+
+Flight was, therefore, imperative--it was absolutely indispensable that
+she put a number of miles between herself and this young man who had just
+informed her that Fate had designed them for one another.
+
+She was no longer considering whether she owed this amazing young man any
+gratitude, or what sort of a man he might be, agreeable, well-bred,
+attractive; all she understood was that this man had suddenly stepped
+into her life, politely expressing his conviction that they could not,
+ultimately, hope to escape from each other. And, beginning to realize the
+awful import of his words, the only thing that restrained her from
+instant flight on foot was the hidden Clarence. She could not abandon her
+cat. She must wait for that maid. She waited. Meanwhile she hunted up
+Dooley's Agency in the telephone book and called them up. They told her
+the maid was on the way--as though Dooley's Agency could thwart Destiny
+with a whole regiment of its employees!
+
+She had discarded her roses with a shudder; cap, goggles, duster, lay in
+her lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she'd flee. If Brown came
+back before the maid arrived she'd tell him plainly what she had decided
+on, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering the
+incredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline to
+encourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her.
+
+At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independent
+affair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series of
+beats which annoyed her.
+
+"It is true," she admitted to herself, "that he is a gentleman, and I can
+scarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave him
+without any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I must
+remember that."
+
+Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularly
+as she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and a
+pencil, and wrote rapidly:
+
+"_Dear Mr. Brown:_
+
+"If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can't help it. The maid
+will stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of the
+family. I don't mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you told
+me about our--about what you told me.... I'm sorry you tore your clothes.
+
+"Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or your
+conduct, which was perfectly ('charming' scratched out) proper. It is
+only that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to ('marry'
+scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and a
+new line begun).
+
+"It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choice
+in life left her--to be forced, by what you say are occult currents,
+into--friendship--with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So I
+don't think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to present
+us to each other. This doesn't sound right, but you will surely
+understand.
+
+"Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, and
+childish--but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you are
+perfectly nice--but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifying
+to me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will--won't
+you?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see you
+again.
+
+"So I am only going to thank you, and say ('with all my heart' crossed
+out) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous and
+considerate--most--most----"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of Beekman
+Brown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy and
+looked at her.
+
+She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mind
+evoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on the
+back of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded.
+
+What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him for
+many minutes now. Why was he so still?
+
+She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder,
+listening.
+
+Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs.
+
+Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? Had
+Clarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can't annihilate
+big, strong young men. But _where_ was he? Had he, pursuing his quest,
+emerged through the scuttle on to the roof--and--and--fallen off?
+
+Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor,
+listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, opening
+doors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searching
+more quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quite
+steady. There was no reply.
+
+Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking up
+her rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously.
+
+A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet at
+hand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of the
+cedar press and tore it wide open.
+
+He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolled rugs, clothes hangers and
+furs, quite motionless.
+
+She knew enough to run into the servants' rooms, fling open the windows
+and, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youth
+across the floor and into the fresh air.
+
+"O-h!" she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she
+took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency,
+performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise
+which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.
+
+It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he
+made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became
+articulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. He
+opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that
+were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the
+floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear
+of death, looked back, breathless, trembling.
+
+"That is a devil of a place, that closet," he said faintly.
+
+She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed,
+being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips--felt his lips on
+them.
+
+Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the
+heart, stilling it--silencing pulse and breath--nay, thought itself. She
+heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:
+
+"I cared for you. You give me life--and I adore you.... Let me. It will
+not harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; but
+unless some day you will prove it for me--Betty--the problem of life is
+but a sorry sum--a total of ciphers without end.... No other two people
+in all the world could be what we are and what we have been to each
+other. No other two people could dare to face what we dare face." He
+paused: "Dare we, Betty?"
+
+Her eyes turned from his. He rose unsteadily, supported on one arm; she
+sprang to her feet, looked at him, and, as he made an awkward effort to
+rise, suddenly bent forward and gave him both hands in aid.
+
+"Wait--wait!" she said; "let me try to think, if I can. Don't speak to me
+again--not yet--not now."
+
+But, at intervals, as they descended the flights of stairs, she turned
+instinctively to watch his progress, for he still moved with difficulty.
+
+In the drawing-room they halted, he leaning heavily on the back of a
+chair, she, distrait, restless, pacing the polished parquet, treading her
+roses under foot, turning from time to time to look at him--a strange,
+direct, pure-lidded gaze that seemed to freshen his very soul.
+
+Once he stooped and picked up one of the trodden roses bruised by her
+slim foot; once, as she passed him, pacing absently the space between the
+door and him, he spoke her name.
+
+But: "Wait!" she breathed. "You have said everything. It is for me to
+reply--if I speak at all. C-can't you wait for--me?"
+
+"Have I angered you?"
+
+She halted, head high, superb in her slim, young beauty.
+
+"Do I look it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Nor I. Let me find out."
+
+The room had become dimmer; the light on her hair and face and hands
+glimmered dully as she passed and re-passed him in her restless progress--
+restless, dismayed, frightened progress toward a goal she already saw
+ahead--close ahead of her--every time she turned to look at him. She
+already knew the end.
+
+_That_ man! And she knew that already he must be, for her, something that
+she could never again forget--something she must reckon with forever and
+ever while life endured.
+
+She paused and inspected him almost insolently. Suddenly the rush of the
+last revolt overwhelmed her; her eyes blazed, her white hands tightened
+into two small clenched fists--and then tumult died in her ringing ears,
+the brightness of the eyes was quenched, her hands relaxed, her head sank
+low, lower, never again to look on this man undismayed, heart free,
+unafraid--never again to look into this man's eyes with the unthinking,
+unbelieving tranquillity born of the most harmless skepticism in the
+world.
+
+She stood there in silence, heard his step beside her, raised her head
+with an effort.
+
+"Betty!"
+
+Her hands quivered, refusing surrender. He bent and lifted them, pressing
+them to his eyes, his forehead. Then lowered them to the level of his
+lips, holding them suspended, eyes looking into hers, waiting.
+
+Suddenly her eyes closed, a convulsive little tremor swept her, she
+pressed both clasped hands against his lips, her own moved, but no words
+came--only a long, sweet, soundless sigh, soft as the breeze that stirs
+the crimson maple buds when the snows of spring at last begin to melt.
+
+From a dark corner under the piano Clarence watched them furtively.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+SYBILLA
+
+
+_Showing What Comes of Disobedience, Rosium, and Flour-Paste_
+
+About noon Bushwyck Carr bounced into the gymnasium, where the triplets
+had just finished their fencing lesson.
+
+"Did any of you three go into the laboratory this morning?" he demanded,
+his voice terminating in a sort of musical bellow, like the blast of a
+mellow French horn on a touring car.
+
+The triplets--Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla--all clothed precisely
+alike in knee kilts, plastrons, gauntlets and masks, came to attention,
+saluting their parent with their foils. The Boznovian fencing mistress,
+Madame Tzinglala, gracefully withdrew to the dressing room and departed.
+
+"Which of you three girls went into the laboratory this morning?"
+repeated their father impatiently.
+
+The triplets continued to stand in a neat row, the buttons of their foils
+aligned and resting on the hardwood floor. In graceful unison they
+removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded
+the author of their being attentively--more attentively still when that
+round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his
+monocle into an angry left eye and glared.
+
+"Didn't I warn you to keep out of that laboratory?" he asked wrathfully;
+"didn't I explain to you that it was none of your business? I believe I
+informed you that whatever is locked up in that room is no concern of
+yours. Didn't I?"
+
+"Yes, Pa-_pah_."
+
+"Well, confound it, what did you go in for, then?"
+
+An anxious silence was his answer. "You didn't all go in, did you?" he
+demanded in a melodious bellow.
+
+"Oh, no, Pa-_pah!_"
+
+"Did two of you go?"
+
+"Oh-h, n-o, Pa-_pah!_"
+
+"Well, which one did?"
+
+The line of beauty wavered for a moment; then Sybilla stepped slowly to
+the front, three paces, and halted with downcast eyes.
+
+"I told you not to, didn't I?" said her father, scowling the monocle out
+of his eye and reinserting it.
+
+"Y-yes, Pa-_pah_."
+
+"But you _did?_"
+
+"Y-yes----"
+
+"That will do! Flavilla! Drusilla! You are excused," dismissing the two
+guiltless triplets with a wave of the terrible eyeglass; and when they
+had faced to the rear and retired in good order, closing the door behind
+them, he regarded his delinquent daughter in wrathy and rubicund dismay.
+
+"What did you see in that laboratory?" he demanded.
+
+Sybilla began to count on her fingers. "As I walked around the room I
+noticed jars, bottles, tubes, lamps, retorts, blowpipes, batteries----"
+
+"Did you notice a small, shiny machine that somewhat resembles the
+interior economy of a watch?"
+
+"Yes, Pa-_pah_, but I haven't come to that yet----"
+
+"Did you go near it?"
+
+"Quite near----"
+
+"You didn't touch it, did you?"
+
+"I was going to tell you----"
+
+"_Did_ you?" he bellowed musically. "Answer me, Sybilla!"
+
+"Y-yes--I did."
+
+"What did you suppose it to be?"
+
+"I thought--we all thought--that you kept a wireless telephone instrument
+in there----"
+
+"Why? Just because I happen to be president of the Amalgamated Wireless
+Trust Company?"
+
+"Yes. And we were dying to see a wireless telephone work.... I thought
+I'd like to call up Central--just to be sure I could make the thing go--
+_What_ is the matter, Pa-_pah?_"
+
+He dropped into a wadded armchair and motioned Sybilla to a seat
+opposite. Then with another frightful facial contortion he reimbedded the
+monocle.
+
+"So you deliberately opened that door and went in to rummage?"
+
+"No," said the girl; "we were--skylarking a little, on our way to the
+gymnasium; and I gave Brasilia a little shove toward the laboratory door,
+and then Flavilla pushed me--very gently--and somehow I--the door flew
+open and my mask fell off and rolled inside; and I went in after it. That
+is how it happened--partly."
+
+She lifted her dark and very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then
+they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the
+polished floor with the point of her foil. "That is partly how," she
+repeated.
+
+"What is the other part?"
+
+"The other part was that, having unfortunately disobeyed you, and being
+already in the room, I thought I might as well stay and take a little
+peep around----"
+
+Her father fairly bounced in his padded chair. The velvet-eyed descendant
+of Eve shot a fearful glance at him and continued, still casually tracing
+invisible arabesques with her foil's point.
+
+"You see, don't you," she said, "that being actually _in_, I thought I
+might as well do something before I came out again, which would make my
+disobedience worth the punishment. So I first picked up my mask, then I
+took a scared peep around. There were only jars and bottles and
+things.... I was dreadfully disappointed. The certainty of being punished
+and then, after all, seeing nothing but bottles, _did_ seem rather
+unfair.... So I--walked around to--to see if I could find something to
+look at which would repay me for the punishment.... There is a proverb,
+isn't there Pa-_pah?_--something about being executed for a lamb----"
+
+"Go on!" he said sharply.
+
+"Well, all I could find that looked as though I had no business to touch
+it was a little jeweled machine----"
+
+"_That_ was it! Did you touch it?"
+
+"Yes, several times. Was it a wireless?"
+
+"Never mind! Yes, it's one kind of a wireless instrument. Go on!"
+
+Sybilla shook her head:
+
+"I'm sure I don't see why you are so disturbingly emphatic; because I
+haven't an idea how to send or receive a wireless message, and I hadn't
+the vaguest notion how that machine might work. I tried very hard to make
+it go; I turned several screws and pushed all the push-buttons----"
+
+Mr. Carr emitted a hollow, despairing sound--a sort of musical groan--and
+feebly plucked at space.
+
+"I tried every lever, screw, and spring," she went on calmly, "but the
+machine must have been out of order, for I only got one miserable little
+spark----"
+
+"You got a _spark?_"
+
+"Yes--just a tiny, noiseless atom of white fire----"
+
+Her father bounced to his feet and waved both hands at her distractedly.
+
+"Do you know what you've done?" he bellowed.
+
+"N-no----"
+
+"Well, you've prepared yourself to fall in love! And you've probably
+induced some indescribable pup to fall in love with you! And _that's_
+what you've done!"
+
+"In--_love!_"
+
+"Yes, you have!"
+
+"But how can a common wireless telephone----"
+
+"It's another kind of a wireless. Your brother-in-law, William Destyn,
+invented it; I'm backing it and experimenting with it. I told you to keep
+out of that room. I hung up a sign on the door: _'Danger! Keep out!'_"
+
+"W-was that thing loaded?"
+
+"Yes, it _was_ loaded!"
+
+"W-what with?"
+
+"Waves!" shouted her father, furiously. "Psychic waves! You little ninny,
+we've just discovered that the world and everything in it is enveloped in
+psychic waves, as well as invisible electric currents. The minute you got
+near that machine and opened the receiver, waves from your subconscious
+personality flowed into it. And the minute you touched that spring and
+got a spark, your psychic waves had signaled, by wireless, the
+subconscious personality of some young man--some insufferable pup--who'll
+come from wherever he is at present--from the world's end if need be--and
+fall in love with you."
+
+Mr. Carr jumped ponderously up and down in pure fury; his daughter
+regarded him in calm consternation.
+
+"I am so very, very sorry," she said; "but I am quite certain that I am
+not going to fall in love----"
+
+"You can't help it," roared her father, "if that instrument worked."
+
+"Is--is that what it's f-for?"
+
+"That's what it's invented for; that's why I'm putting a million into it.
+Anybody on earth desiring to meet the person with whom they're destined,
+some time or other, to fall in love, can come to us, in confidence, buy a
+ticket, and be hitched on to the proper psychic connection which insures
+speedy courtship and marriage--Damnation!"
+
+"Pa-_pah!_"
+
+"I can't help it! Any self-respecting, God-fearing father would swear! Do
+you think I ever expected to have my daughters mixed up with this
+machine? My daughters wooed, engaged and married by _machinery!_ And
+you're only eighteen; do you hear me? I won't have it! I'll certainly not
+have it!"
+
+"But, dear, I don't in the least intend to fall in love and marry at
+eighteen. And if--_he_--really--comes, I'll tell him very frankly that I
+could not think of falling in love. I'll quietly explain that the machine
+went off by mistake and that I am only eighteen; and that Flavilla and
+Drusilla and I are not to come out until next winter. That," she added
+innocently, "ought to hold him."
+
+"The thing to do," said her father, gazing fixedly at her, "is to keep
+you in your room until you're twenty!"
+
+"Oh, Pa-_pah!_"
+
+Mr. Carr smote his florid brow.
+
+"You'll stay in for a week, anyway!" he thundered mellifluously. "No
+motoring party for you! That's your punishment. You'll be safe for today,
+anyhow; and by evening William Destyn will be back from Boston and I'll
+consult him as to the safest way to keep you out of the path of this
+whippersnapper you have managed to wake up--evoke--stir out of space--
+wherever he may be--whoever he may be--whatever he chances to call
+himself----"
+
+"George," she murmured involuntarily.
+
+"_What!!_"
+
+She looked at her father, abashed, confused.
+
+"How absurd of me," she said. "I don't know why I should have thought of
+that name, George; or why I should have said it out loud--that way--I
+really don't----"
+
+"Who do you know named George?"
+
+"N-nobody in particular that I can think of----"
+
+"Sybilla! Be honest!"
+
+"Really, I don't; I am always honest."
+
+He knew she was truthful, always; but he said:
+
+"Then why the devil did you look--er--so, so moonily at me and call me
+George?"
+
+"I can't imagine--I can't understand----"
+
+"Well, _I_ can! You don't realize it, but that cub's name must be George!
+I'll look out for the Georges. I'm glad I've been warned. I'll see that
+no two-legged object named George enters this house! You'll never go
+anywhere where there's anybody named George if I can prevent it."
+
+"I--I don't want to," she returned, almost ready to cry. "You are very
+cruel to me----"
+
+"I wish to be. I desire to be a monster!" he retorted fiercely. "You're
+an exceedingly bad, ungrateful, undutiful, disobedient and foolish child.
+Your sisters and I are going to motor to Westchester and lunch there with
+your sister and your latest brother-in-law. And if they ask why you
+didn't come I'll tell them that it's because you're undutiful, and that
+you are not to stir outdoors for a week, or see anybody who comes into
+this house!"
+
+"I--I suppose I d-deserve it," she acquiesced tearfully. "I'm quite ready
+to be disciplined, and quite willing not to see anybody named George--
+ever! Besides, you have scared me d-dreadfully! I--I don't want to go out
+of the house."
+
+And when her father had retired with a bounce she remained alone in the
+gymnasium, eyes downcast, lips quivering. Later still, sitting in
+precisely the same position, she heard the soft whir of the touring car
+outside; then the click of the closing door.
+
+"There they go," she said to herself, "and they'll have such a jolly
+time, and all those very agreeable Westchester young men will be there--
+particularly Mr. Montmorency.... I _did_ like him awfully; besides, his
+name is Julian, so it is p-perfectly safe to like him--and I _did_ want
+to see how Sacharissa looks after her bridal trip."
+
+Her lower lip trembled; she steadied it between her teeth, gazed
+miserably at the floor, and beat a desolate tattoo on it with the tip of
+her foil.
+
+"I am being well paid for my disobedience," she whimpered. "Now I can't
+go out for a week; and it's April; and when I do go out I'll be so
+anxious all the while, peeping furtively at every man who passes and
+wondering whether his name might be George.... And it is going to be
+horridly awkward, too.... Fancy their bringing up some harmless dancing
+man named George to present to me next winter, and I, terrified, picking
+up my debutante skirts and running.... I'll actually be obliged to flee
+from every man until I know his name isn't George. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
+What an awful outlook for this summer when we open the house at Oyster
+Bay! What a terrible vista for next winter!"
+
+She naively dabbed a tear from her long lashes with the back of her
+gauntlet.
+
+Her maid came, announcing luncheon, but she would have none of it, nor
+any other offered office, including a bath and a house gown.
+
+"You go away somewhere, Bowles," she said, "and please, don't come near
+me, and don't let anybody come anywhere in my distant vicinity, because I
+am v-very unhappy, Bowles, and deserve to be--and I--I desire to be alone
+with c-conscience."
+
+"But, Miss Sybilla----"
+
+"No, no, no! I don't even wish to hear your voice--or anybody's. I don't
+wish to hear a single human sound of any description. I--_what_ is that
+scraping noise in the library?"
+
+"A man, Miss Sybilla----"
+
+"A _man!_ W-what's his name?"
+
+"I don't know, miss. He's a workman--a paper hanger."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Did you wish me to ask him to stop scraping, miss?"
+
+Sybilla laughed: "No, thank you." And she continued, amused at herself
+after her maid had withdrawn, strolling about the gymnasium, making
+passes with her foil at ring, bar, and punching bag. Her anxiety, too,
+was subsiding. The young have no very great capacity for continued
+anxiety. Besides, the first healthy hint of incredulity was already
+creeping in. And as she strolled about, swishing her foil, she mused
+aloud at her ease:
+
+"What an extraordinary and horrid machine!... _How_ can it do such
+exceedingly common things? And what a perfectly unpleasant way to fall in
+love--by machinery!... I had rather not know who I am some day to--to
+like--very much.... It is far more interesting to meet a man by accident,
+and never suspect you may ever come to care for him, than to buy a
+ticket, walk over to a machine full of psychic waves and ring up some
+strange man somewhere on earth."
+
+With a shudder of disdain she dropped on to a lounge and took her face
+between both hands.
+
+She was like her sisters, tall, prettily built, and articulated, with the
+same narrow feet and hands--always graceful when lounging, no matter what
+position her slim limbs fell into.
+
+And now, in her fencing skirts of black and her black stockings, she was
+exceedingly ornamental, with the severe lines of the plastron accenting
+the white throat and chin, and the scarlet heart blazing over her own
+little heart--unvexed by such details as love and lovers. Yes, unvexed;
+for she had about come to the conclusion that her father had frightened
+her more than was necessary; that the instrument had not really done its
+worst; in fact, that, although she had been very disobedient, she had had
+a rather narrow escape; and nothing more serious than paternal
+displeasure was likely to be visited upon her.
+
+Which comforted her to an extent that brought a return of appetite; and
+she rang for luncheon, and ate it with the healthy nonchalance usually so
+characteristic of her and her sisters.
+
+"Now," she reflected, "I'll have to wait an hour for my bath"--one of the
+inculcated principles of domestic hygiene. So, rising, she strolled
+across the gymnasium, casting about for something interesting to do.
+
+She looked out of the back windows. In New York the view from back
+windows is not imposing.
+
+Tiring of the inartistic prospect she sauntered out and downstairs to see
+what her maid might be about. Bowles was sewing; Sybilla looked on for a
+while with languid interest, then, realizing that a long day of
+punishment was before her, that she deserved it, and that she ought to
+perform some act of penance, started contritely for the library with
+resolute intentions toward Henry James.
+
+As she entered she noticed that the bookshelves, reaching part way to the
+ceiling, were shrouded in sheets. Also she encountered a pair of
+sawhorses overlaid with boards, upon which were rolls of green flock
+paper, several pairs of shears, a bucket of paste, a large, flat brush, a
+knife and a T-square.
+
+"The paper hanger man," she said. "He's gone to lunch. I'll have time to
+seize on Henry James and flee."
+
+Now Henry James, like some other sacred conventions, was, in that
+library, a movable feast. Sometimes he stood neatly arranged on one
+shelf, sometimes on another. There was no counting on Henry.
+
+Sybilla lifted the sheets from the face of one case and peered closer.
+Henry was not visible. She lifted the sheets from another case; no Henry;
+only G.P.R., in six dozen rakish volumes.
+
+Sybilla peeped into a third case. Then a very unedifying thing occurred.
+Surely, surely, this was Sybilla's disobedient day. She saw a forbidden
+book glimmering in old, gilded leather--she saw its classic back turned
+mockingly toward her--the whole allure of the volume was impudent, dog-
+eared, devil-may-care-who-reads-me.
+
+She took it out, replaced it, looked hard, hard for Henry, found him not,
+glanced sideways at the dog-eared one, took a step sideways.
+
+"I'll just see where it was printed," she said to herself, drawing out
+the book and backing off hastily--so hastily that she came into collision
+with the sawhorse table, and the paste splashed out of the bucket.
+
+But Sybilla paid no heed; she was examining the title page of old Dog-
+ear: a rather wonderful title page, printed in fascinating red and black
+with flourishes.
+
+"I'll just see whether--" And the smooth, white fingers hesitated; but
+she had caught a glimpse of an ancient engraving on the next page--a very
+quaint one, that held her fascinated.
+
+"I wonder----"
+
+She turned the next page. The first paragraph of the famous classic began
+deliciously. After a few moments she laughed, adding to herself: "I can't
+see what harm----"
+
+There was no harm. Her father had meant another book; but Sybilla did not
+know that.
+
+"I'll just glance through it to--to--be sure that I mustn't read it."
+
+She laid one hand on the paper hanger's table, vaulted up sideways, and,
+seated on the top, legs swinging, buried herself in the book, unconscious
+that the overturned paste was slowly fastening her to the spattered table
+top.
+
+An hour later, hearing steps on the landing, she sprang--that is, she
+went through all the graceful motions of springing lightly to the floor.
+But she had not budged an inch. No Gorgon's head could have consigned her
+to immovability more hopeless.
+
+Restrained from freedom by she knew not what, she made one frantic and
+demoralized effort--and sank back in terror at the ominous tearing sound.
+
+She was glued irrevocably to the table.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+THE CROWN PRINCE
+
+
+_Wherein the Green Mouse Squeaks_
+
+A few minutes later the paper hanging young man entered, swinging an
+empty dinner pail and halted in polite surprise before a flushed young
+girl in full fencing costume, who sat on his operating table, feet
+crossed, convulsively hugging a book to the scarlet heart embroidered on
+her plastron.
+
+"I--hope you don't mind my sitting here," she managed to say. "I wanted
+to watch the work."
+
+"By all means," he said pleasantly. "Let me get you a chair----"
+
+"No, thank you. I had rather sit th-this way. Please begin and don't mind
+if I watch you."
+
+The young man appeared to be perplexed.
+
+"I'm afraid," he ventured, "that I may require that table for cutting
+and----"
+
+"Please--if you don't mind--begin to paste. I am in-intensely interested
+in p-pasting--I like to w-watch p-paper p-pasted on a w-wall."
+
+Her small teeth chattered in spite of her; she strove to control her
+voice--strove to collect her wits.
+
+He stood irresolute, rather astonished, too.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, "but----"
+
+"_Please_ paste; won't you?" she asked.
+
+"Why, I've got to have that table to paste on----"
+
+"Then d-don't think of pasting. D-do anything else; cut out some strips.
+I am so interested in watching p-paper hangers cut out things--"
+
+"But I need the table for that, too----"
+
+"No, you don't. You can't be a--a very skillful w-workman if you've got
+to use your table for everything----"
+
+[Illustration: "'I'm afraid', he ventured 'that I may require that table
+for cutting.'"]
+
+He laughed. "You are quite right; I'm not a skillful paper hanger."
+
+"Then," she said, "I am surprised that you came here to paper our
+library, and I think you had better go back to your shop and send a
+competent man."
+
+He laughed again. The paper hanger's youthful face was curiously
+attractive when he laughed--and otherwise, more or less.
+
+He said: "I came to paper this library because Mr. Carr was in a hurry,
+and I was the only man in the shop. I didn't want to come. But they made
+me.... I think they're rather afraid of Mr. Carr in the shop.... And this
+work _must_ be finished today."
+
+She did not know what to say; anything to keep him away from the table
+until she could think clearly.
+
+"W-why didn't you want to come?" she asked, fighting for time. "You said
+you didn't want to come, didn't you?"
+
+"Because," he said, smiling, "I don't like to hang wall paper."
+
+"But if you are a paper hanger by trade----"
+
+"I suppose you think me a real paper hanger?"
+
+She was cautiously endeavoring to free one edge of her skirt; she nodded
+absently, then subsided, crimsoning, as a faint tearing of cloth sounded.
+
+"Go on," she said hurriedly; "the story of your career is _so_
+interesting. You say you adore paper hanging----"
+
+"No, I don't," he returned, chagrined. "I say I hate it."
+
+"Why do you do it, then?"
+
+"Because my father thinks that every son of his who finishes college
+ought to be disciplined by learning a trade before he enters a
+profession. My oldest brother, De Courcy, learned to be a blacksmith; my
+next brother, Algernon, ran a bakery; and since I left Harvard I've been
+slapping sheets of paper on people's walls----"
+
+"Harvard?" she repeated, bewildered.
+
+"Yes; I was 1907."
+
+"_You!_"
+
+He looked down at his white overalls, smiling.
+
+"Does that astonish you, Miss Carr?--you are Miss Carr, I suppose----"
+
+"Sybilla--yes--we're--we're triplets," she stammered.
+
+"The beauti--the--the Carr triplets! And you are one of them?" he
+exclaimed, delighted.
+
+"Yes." Still bewildered, she sat there, looking at him. How
+extraordinary! How strange to find a Harvard man pasting paper! Dire
+misgivings flashed up within her.
+
+"Who are you?" she asked tremulously. "Would you mind telling me your
+name. It--it isn't--_George!_"
+
+He looked up in pleased surprise:
+
+"So you know who I am?"
+
+"N-no. But--it isn't George--is it?"
+
+"Why, yes----"
+
+"O-h!" she breathed. A sense of swimming faintness enveloped her: she
+swayed; but an unmistakable ripping noise brought her suddenly to
+herself.
+
+"I am afraid you are tearing your skirt somehow," he said anxiously. "Let
+me----"
+
+"No!"
+
+The desperation of the negative approached violence, and he involuntarily
+stepped back.
+
+For a moment they faced one another; the flush died out on her cheeks.
+
+"If," she said, "your name actually is George, this--this is the most--
+the most terrible punishment--" She closed her eyes with her fingers as
+though to shut out some monstrous vision.
+
+"What," asked the amazed young man, "has my name to do with----"
+
+Her hands dropped from her eyes; with horror she surveyed him, his paste-
+spattered overalls, his dingy white cap, his dinner pail.
+
+"I--I _won't_ marry you!" she stammered in white desperation. "I _won't!_
+If you're not a paper hanger you look like one! I don't care whether
+you're a Harvard man or not--whether you're playing at paper hanging or
+not--whether your name is George or not--I won't marry you--I won't! I
+_won't!_"
+
+With the feeling that his senses were rapidly evaporating the young man
+sat down dizzily, and passed a paste-spattered but well-shaped hand
+across his eyes.
+
+Sybilla set her lips and looked at him.
+
+"I don't suppose," she said, "that you understand what I am talking
+about, but I've got to tell you at once; I can't stand this sort of
+thing."
+
+"W-what sort of thing?" asked the young man, feebly.
+
+"Your being here in this house--with me----"
+
+"I'll be very glad to go----"
+
+"Wait! _That_ won't do any good! You'll come back!"
+
+"N-no, I won't----"
+
+"Yes, you will. Or I--I'll f-follow you----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"One or the other! We can't help it, I tell you. _You_ don't understand,
+but I do. And the moment I knew your name was George----"
+
+"What the deuce has that got to do with anything?" he demanded, turning
+red in spite of his amazement.
+
+"Waves!" she said passionately, "psychic waves! I--somehow--knew that
+he'd be named George----"
+
+"Who'd be named George?"
+
+"_He!_ The--man... And if I ever--if you ever expect me to--to c-care for
+a man all over overalls----"
+
+"But I don't--Good Heavens!--I don't expect you to care for--for
+overalls----"
+
+"Then why do you wear them?" she asked in tremulous indignation.
+
+The young man, galvanized, sprang from his chair and began running about,
+taking little, short, distracted steps. "Either," he said, "I need mental
+treatment immediately, or I'll wake up toward morning.... I--don't know
+what you're trying to say to me. I came here to--to p-paste----"
+
+"That machine sent you!" she said. "The minute I got a spark you
+started----"
+
+"Do you think I'm a motor? Spark! Do you think I----"
+
+"Yes, I do. You couldn't help it; I know it was my own fault, and this--
+_this_ is the dreadful punishment--g-glued to a t-table top--with a man
+named George----"
+
+"What!!!"
+
+"Yes," she said passionately, "everything disobedient I have done has
+brought lightning retribution. I was forbidden to go into the laboratory;
+I disobeyed and--you came to hang wall paper! I--I took a b-book--which I
+had no business to take, and F-fate glues me to your horrid table and
+holds me fast till a man named George comes in...."
+
+Flushed, trembling, excited, she made a quick and dramatic gesture of
+despair; and a ripping sound rent the silence.
+
+"_Are you pasted to that table?_" faltered the young man, aghast.
+
+"Yes, I am. And it's utterly impossible for you to aid me in the
+slightest, except by pretending to ignore it."
+
+"But you--you can't remain there!"
+
+"I can't help remaining here," she said hotly, "until you go."
+
+"Then I'd better----"
+
+"No! You shall _not_ go! I--I won't have you go away--disappear somewhere
+in the city. Certainty is dreadful enough, but it's better than the awful
+suspense of knowing you are somewhere in the world, and are sure to come
+back sometime----"
+
+"But I don't want to come back!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Why should I
+wish to come back? Have I said--acted--done--looked--_Why_ should you
+imagine that I have the slightest interest in anything or in--in--anybody
+in this house?"
+
+"Haven't you?"
+
+"No!... And I cannot ignore your--your amazing--and intensely
+f-flattering fear that I have d-designs--that I desire--in other words,
+that I--er--have dared to cherish impossible aspirations in connection
+with a futile and absurd hope that one day you might possibly be induced
+to listen to any tentative suggestion of mine concerning a matrimonial
+alliance----"
+
+He choked and turned a dull red.
+
+She reddened, too, but said calmly:
+
+"Thank you for putting it so nicely. But it is no use. Sooner or later
+you and I will be obliged to consider a situation too hopeless to admit
+of discussion."
+
+"What situation?"
+
+"Ours."
+
+"I can't see any situation--except your being glued--I _beg_ your
+pardon!--but I must speak truthfully."
+
+"So must I. Our case is too desperate for anything but plain and terrible
+truths. And the truths are these: _I_ touched the forbidden machine and
+got a spark; your name is George; _I'm_ glued here, unable to escape;
+_you_ are not rude enough to go when I ask you not to.... And now--here--
+in this room, you and I must face these facts and make up our minds....
+For I simply _must_ know what I am to expect; I can't endure--I couldn't
+live with this hanging over me----"
+
+"_What_ hanging over you?"
+
+He sprang to his feet, waving his dinner pail around in frantic circles:
+
+"What is it, in Heaven's name, that is hanging over you?"
+
+"Over _you_, too!"
+
+"Over me?"
+
+"Certainly. Over us both. We are headed straight for m-marriage."
+
+"T-to _each other?_"
+
+"Of course," she said faintly. "Do you think I'd care whom you are going
+to marry if it wasn't I? Do you think I'd discuss my own marital
+intentions with you if you did not happen to be vitally concerned?"
+
+"Do _you_ expect to marry _me?_" he gasped.
+
+"I--I don't _want_ to: but I've got to."
+
+He stood petrified for an instant, then with a wild look began to gather
+up his tools.
+
+She watched him with the sickening certainty that if he got away she
+could never survive the years of suspense until his inevitable return. A
+mad longing to get the worst over seized her. She knew the worst, knew
+what Fate held for her. And she desired to get it over--have the worst
+happen--and be left to live out the shattered remains of her life in
+solitude and peace.
+
+"If--if we've got to marry," she began unsteadily, "why not g-get it over
+quickly--and then I don't mind if you go away."
+
+She was quite mad: that was certain. He hastily flung some brushes into
+his tool kit, then straightened up and gazed at her with deep compassion.
+
+"Would you mind," she asked timidly, "getting somebody to come in and
+marry us, and then the worst will be over, you see, and we need never,
+never see each other again."
+
+He muttered something soothing and began tying up some rolls of wall
+paper.
+
+"Won't you do what I ask?" she said pitifully. "I-I am almost afraid
+that--if you go away without marrying me I could not live and endure
+the--the certainty of your return."
+
+He raised his head and surveyed her with deepest pity. Mad--quite mad!
+And so young--so exquisite... so perfectly charming in body! And the mind
+darkened forever.... How terrible! How strange, too; for in the pure-
+lidded eyes he seemed to see the soft light of reason not entirely
+quenched.
+
+Their eyes encountered, lingered; and the beauty of her gaze seemed to
+stir him to the very wellspring of compassion.
+
+"Would it make you any happier to believe--to know," he added hastily,
+"that you and I were married?"
+
+"Y-yes, I think so."
+
+"Would you be quite happy to believe it?"
+
+"Yes--if you call that happiness."
+
+"And you would not be unhappy if I never returned?"
+
+"Oh, no, no! I--that would make me--comparatively--happy!"
+
+"To be married to me, and to know you would never again see me?"
+
+"Yes. Will you?"
+
+"Yes," he said soothingly. And yet a curious little throb of pain
+flickered in his heart for a moment, that, mad as she undoubtedly was,
+she should be so happy to be rid of him forever.
+
+He came slowly across the room to the table on which she was sitting. She
+drew back instinctively, but an ominous ripping held her.
+
+"Are you going for a license and a--a clergyman?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, no," he said gently, "that is not necessary. All we have to do is to
+take each other's hands--so----"
+
+She shrank back.
+
+"You will have to let me take your hand," he explained.
+
+She hesitated, looked at him fearfully, then, crimson, laid her slim
+fingers in his.
+
+The contact sent a quiver straight through him; he squared his shoulders
+and looked at her.... Very, very far away it seemed as though he heard
+his heart awaking heavily.
+
+What an uncanny situation! Strange--strange--his standing here to humor
+the mad whim of this stricken maid--this wonderfully sweet young
+stranger, looking out of eyes so lovely that he almost believed the dead
+intelligence behind them was quickening into life again.
+
+"What must we do to be married?" she whispered.
+
+"Say so; that is all," he answered gently. "Do you take me for your
+husband?"
+
+"Yes.... Do you t-take me for your--wife?"
+
+"Yes, dear----"
+
+"Don't say _that_!... Is it--over?"
+
+"All over," he said, forcing a gayety that rang hollow in the pathos of
+the mockery and farce.... But he smiled to be kind to her; and, to make
+the poor, clouded mind a little happier still, he took her hand again and
+said very gently:
+
+"Will it surprise you to know that you are now a princess?"
+
+"A--_what?_" she asked sharply.
+
+"A princess." He smiled benignly on her, and, still beaming, struck a not
+ungraceful attitude.
+
+"I," he said, "am the Crown Prince of Rumtifoo."
+
+She stared at him without a word; gradually he lost countenance; a vague
+misgiving stirred within him that he had rather overdone the thing.
+
+"Of course," he began cheerfully, "I am an exile in disguise--er--
+disinherited and all that, you know."
+
+She continued to stare at him.
+
+"Matters of state--er--revolution--and that sort of thing," he mumbled,
+eying her; "but I thought it might gratify you to know that I am Prince
+George of Rumtifoo----"
+
+"_What!_"
+
+The silence was deadly.
+
+"Do you know," she said deliberately, "that I believe you think I am
+mentally unsound. _Do_ you?"
+
+"I--you--" he began to stutter fearfully.
+
+"_Do_ you?"
+
+"W-well, either you or I----"
+
+"Nonsense! I _thought_ that marriage ceremony was a miserably inadequate
+affair!... And I am hurt--grieved--amazed that you should do such a--a
+cowardly----"
+
+"What!" he exclaimed, stung to the quick.
+
+"Yes, it is cowardly to deceive a woman."
+
+"I meant it kindly--supposing----"
+
+"That I am mentally unsound? Why do you suppose that?"
+
+"Because--Good Heavens--because in this century, and in this city, people
+who never before saw one another don't begin to talk of marrying----"
+
+"I explained to you"--she was half crying now, and her voice broke
+deliciously--"I told you what I'd done, didn't I?"
+
+"You said you had got a spark," he admitted, utterly bewildered by her
+tears. "Don't cry--please don't. Something is all wrong here--there is
+some terrible misunderstanding. If you will only explain it to me----"
+
+She dried her eyes mechanically: "Come here," she said. "I don't believe
+I did explain it clearly."
+
+And, very carefully, very minutely, she began to tell him about the
+psychic waves, and the instrument, and the new company formed to exploit
+it on a commercial basis.
+
+She told him what had happened that morning to her; how her disobedience
+had cost her so much misery. She informed him about her father, and that
+florid and rotund gentleman's choleric character.
+
+"If you are here when I tell him I'm married," she said, "he will
+probably frighten you to death; and that's one of the reasons why I wish
+to get it over and get you safely away before he returns. As for me, now
+that I know the worst, I want to get the worst over and--and live out my
+life quietly somewhere.... So now you see why I am in such a hurry, don't
+you?"
+
+He nodded as though stunned, leaning there on the table, hands folded,
+head bent.
+
+"I am so very sorry--for you," she said. "I know how you must feel about
+it. But if we are obliged to marry some time had we not better get it
+over and then--never--see--one another----"
+
+He lifted his head, then stood upright.
+
+Her soft lips were mute, but the question still remained in her eyes.
+
+So, for a long while, they looked at each other; and the color under his
+cheekbones deepened, and the pink in her cheeks slowly became pinker.
+
+"Suppose," he said, under his breath, "that I--wish--to return--to you?"
+
+"_I_ do not wish it----"
+
+"Try."
+
+"Try to--to wish for----"
+
+"For my return. Try to wish that you also desire it. Will you?"
+
+"If you are going to--to talk that way--" she stammered.
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"Then--then----"
+
+"Is there any reason why I should not, if we are engaged?" he asked. "We
+_are_--engaged, are we not?"
+
+"Engaged?"
+
+"Yes. Are we?"
+
+"I--yes--if you call it----"
+
+"I do.... And we are to be--married?" He could scarcely now speak the
+word which but a few moments since he pronounced so easily; for a totally
+new significance attached itself to every word he uttered.
+
+"Are we?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then--if I--if I find that I----"
+
+"Don't say it," she whispered. She had turned quite white.
+
+"Will you listen----"
+
+"No. It--it isn't true--it cannot be."
+
+"It is coming truer every moment.... It is very, very true--even now....
+It is almost true.... And now it has come true. Sybilla!"
+
+White, dismayed, she gazed at him, her hands instinctively closing her
+ears. But she dropped them as he stepped forward.
+
+"I love you, Sybilla. I wish to marry you.... Will you try to care for
+me--a little----"
+
+"I couldn't--I can't even try----"
+
+"Dear----"
+
+He had her hands now; she twisted them free; he caught them again. Over
+their interlocked hands she bowed her head, breathless, cheeks aflame,
+seeking to cover her eyes.
+
+"Will you love me, Sybilla?"
+
+She struggled silently, desperately.
+
+"_Will_ you?"
+
+"No.... Let me go----"
+
+"Don't cry--please, dear--" His head, bowed beside hers over their
+clasped hands, was more than she could endure; but her upflung face,
+seeking escape, encountered his. There was a deep, indrawn breath, a sob,
+and she lay, crying her heart out, in his arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Darling!"
+
+"W-what?"
+
+It is curious how quickly one recognizes unfamiliar forms of address.
+
+"You won't cry any more, will you?" he whispered.
+
+"N-n-o," sighed Sybilla.
+
+"Because we _do_ love each other, don't we?"
+
+"Y-yes, George." Then, radiant, yet sweetly shamed, confident, yet
+fearful, she lifted her adorable head from his shoulder.
+
+"George," she said, "I am beginning to think that I'd like to get off
+this table."
+
+"You poor darling!"
+
+"And," she continued, "if you will go home and change your overalls for
+something more conventional, you shall come and dine with us this
+evening, and I will be waiting for you in the drawing-room.... And,
+George, although some of your troubles are now over----"
+
+"All of them, dearest!" he cried with enthusiasm.
+
+"No," she said tenderly, "you are yet to meet Pa-_pah_."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS
+
+
+_A Chapter Concerning Drusilla, Pa-pah and a Minion_
+
+Capital had now been furnished for The Green Mouse, Limited; a great
+central station of white marble was being built, facing Madison Avenue
+and occupying the entire block front between Eighty-second and Eighty-
+third streets.
+
+The building promised to be magnificent; the plans provided for a
+thousand private operating rooms, each beautifully furnished in Louis XVI
+style, a restaurant, a tea room, a marriage licence bureau, and an
+emergency chapel where first aid clergymen were to be always in
+attendance.
+
+In each of the thousand Louis XVI operating rooms a Destyn-Carr wireless
+instrument was to stand upon a rococo table. A maid to every two rooms, a
+physician to every ten, and smelling salts to each room, were provided
+for in this gigantic enterprise.
+
+Millions of circulars were being prepared to send broadcast over the
+United States. They read as follows:
+
+ARE YOU IN LOVE? IF NOT, WHY NOT?
+
+Wedlock by Wireless. Marriage by Machinery. A Wondrous Wooer Without
+Words! No more doubt; no more hesitation; no more uncertainty. The
+Destyn-Carr Wireless Apparatus does it all for you. Happy Marriage
+Guaranteed or money eagerly refunded!
+
+Psychical Science says that for every man and woman on earth there is a
+predestined mate!
+
+That mate can be discovered for you by The Green Mouse, Limited.
+
+Why waste time with costly courtship? Why frivol? Why fuss?
+
+There is only ONE mate created for YOU. You pay us; We find that ONE,
+thereby preventing mistakes, lawsuits, elopements, regrets, grouches,
+alimony.
+
+Divorce Absolutely Eliminated
+
+By Our Infallible Wireless Method
+
+Success Certain
+
+It is now known the world over that Professor William Augustus Destyn has
+discovered that the earth we live on is enveloped in Psychical Currents.
+By the Destyn-Carr instrument these currents may be tapped, controlled
+and used to communicate between two people of opposite sex whose
+subconscious and psychic personalities are predestined to affinity and
+amorous accord. In other words, when psychic waves from any individual
+are collected or telegraphed along these wireless psychical currents,
+only that one affinity attuned to receive them can properly respond.
+
+_We catch your psychic waves for you. We send them out into the world._
+
+WATCH THAT SPARK!
+
+When you see a tiny bluish-white spark tip the tentacle of the Destyn-
+Carr transmitter,
+
+THE WORLD IS YOURS!
+
+for $25.
+
+Our method is quick, painless, merciful and certain. Fee, twenty-five
+dollars in advance. Certified checks accepted.
+
+THE GREEN MOUSE, Limited.
+
+President              PROF. WM. AUGUSTUS DESTYN.
+Vice-Presidents        THE HON. KILLIAN VAN K. VANDERDYNK.
+                       THE HON. GEORGE GRAY, 3D.
+Treasurer              THE HON. BUSHWYCK CARR.
+
+These circulars were composed, illuminated and printed upon vellum by
+what was known as an "Art" community in West Borealis, N.J. Several tons
+were expected for delivery early in June.
+
+Meanwhile, the Carr family and its affiliations had invested every cent
+they possessed in Green Mouse, Limited; and those who controlled the
+stock were Bushwyck Carr; William Augustus Destyn and Mrs. Destyn, nee
+Ethelinda Carr; Mr. Killian Van K. Vanderdynk and Mrs. Vanderdynk, nee
+Sacharissa Carr; George Gray and Mrs. Gray, very lately Sybilla Carr; and
+the unmarried triplets, Flavilla and Drusilla Carr.
+
+Remembering with a shudder how Bell Telephone and Standard Oil might once
+have been bought for a song, Bushwyck Carr determined that in this case
+his pudgy fingers should not miss the forelock of Time and the divided
+skirts of Chance.
+
+Squinting at the viewless ether through his monocle he beheld millions in
+it; so did William Augustus Destyn and the other sons-in-law.
+
+Only the unmarried triplets, Flavilla and Drusilla, remained amiably
+indifferent in the midst of all these family financial scurryings and
+preparations to secure world patents in a monopoly which promised the
+social regeneration of the globe.
+
+The considerable independent fortunes that their mother had left them
+they invested in Green Mouse, at their father's suggestion; but further
+than that they took no part in the affair.
+
+For a while the hurry and bustle and secret family conferences mildly
+interested them. Very soon, however, the talk of psychic waves and
+millions bored them; and as soon as the villa at Oyster Bay was opened
+they were glad enough to go.
+
+Here, at Oyster Bay, there was some chance of escaping their money-mad
+and wave-intoxicated family; they could entertain and be entertained by
+both of the younger sets in that dignified summer resort; they could
+wander about their own vast estate alone; they could play tennis, sail,
+swim, ride, and drive their tandem.
+
+But best of all--for they were rather seriously inclined at the age of
+eighteen, or, rather, on the verge of nineteen--they adored sketching, in
+water colors, out of doors.
+
+Scrubby forelands set with cedars, shadow-flecked paths under the scrub
+oak, meadows where water glimmered, white sails off Center Island and
+Cooper's Bluff--Cooper's Bluff from the north, northeast, east,
+southeast, south--this they painted with never-tiring, Pecksniffian
+patience, boxing the compass around it as enthusiastically as that
+immortal architect circumnavigated Salisbury Cathedral.
+
+And one delicious morning in early June, when the dew sparkled on the
+poison ivy and the air was vibrant with the soft monotone of mosquitoes
+and the public road exhaled a delicate aroma of crude oil, Drusilla and
+Flavilla, laden with sketching-blocks, color-boxes, camp-stools, white
+umbrellas and bonbons, descended to the great hall, on sketching bent.
+
+Mr. Carr also stood there, just outside on the porch, red, explosive,
+determined legs planted wide apart, defying several courtly reporters,
+who for a month had patiently and politely appeared every hour to learn
+whether Mr. Carr had anything to say about the new invention, rumors of
+which were flying thick about Park Row.
+
+"No, I haven't!" he shouted in his mellow and sonorously musical bellow.
+"I have told you one hundred times that when I have anything to say I'll
+send for you. Now, permit me to inform you, for the hundred and first
+consecutive time, that I have nothing to say--which won't prevent you
+from coming back in an hour and standing in exactly the same ridiculous
+position you now occupy, and asking me exactly the same unmannerly
+questions, and taking the same impertinent snapshots at my house and my
+person!"
+
+He executed a ferocious facial contortion, clapped the monocle into his
+left eye, and squinted fiercely.
+
+"I'm getting tired of this!" he continued. "When I wake in the morning
+and look out of my window there are always anywhere from one to twenty
+reporters decorating my lawn! That young man over there is the worst and
+most persistent offender!"--scowling at a good-looking youth in white
+flannels, who immediately blushed distressingly. "Yes, you are, young
+man! I'm amazed that you have the decency to blush! Your insolent sheet,
+the Evening Star, refers to my Trust Company as a Green Mouse Trap and a
+_Mouse_leum. It also publishes preposterous pictures of myself and
+family. Dammit, sir, they even produce a photograph of Orlando, the
+family cat! You did it, I am told. Did you?"
+
+"I am trying to do what I can for my paper, Mr. Carr," said the young
+man. "The public is interested."
+
+Mr. Carr regarded him with peculiar hatred.
+
+"Come here," he said; "I _have_ got something to say to _you_."
+
+The young man cautiously left the ranks of his fellows and came up on the
+porch. Behind Mr. Carr, in the doorway, stood Drusilla and Flavilla. The
+young man tried not to see them; he pretended not to. But he flushed
+deeply.
+
+"I want to know," demanded Mr. Carr, "why the devil you are always around
+here blushing. You've been around here blushing for a month, and I want
+to know why you do it."
+
+The youth stood speechless, features afire to the tips of his glowing
+ears.
+
+"At first," continued Mr. Carr, mercilessly, "I had a vague hope that you
+might perhaps be blushing for shame at your profession; I heard that you
+were young at it, and I was inclined to be sorry for you. But I'm not
+sorry any more!"
+
+The young man remained crimson and dumb.
+
+"Confound it," resumed Mr. Carr, "I want to know why the deuce you come
+and blush all over my lawn. I won't stand it! I'll not allow anybody to
+come blushing around me----"
+
+Indignation choked him; he turned on his heel to enter the house and
+beheld Flavilla and Drusilla regarding him, wide-eyed.
+
+He went in, waving them away before him.
+
+"I've taught that young pup a lesson," he said with savage satisfaction.
+"I'll teach him to blush at me! I'll----"
+
+"But why," asked Drusilla, "are you so cruel to Mr. Yates? We like him."
+
+"Mr.--Mr. _Yates!_" repeated her father, astonished. "Is that his name?
+And who told _you?_"
+
+"He did," said Drusilla, innocently.
+
+"He--that infernal newspaper bantam----"
+
+"Pa-_pah!_ Please don't say that about Mr. Yates. He is really
+exceedingly kind and civil to us. Every time you go to town on business
+he comes and sketches with us at----"
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Carr, with the calm of deadly fury, "so he goes to
+Cooper's Bluff with you when I'm away, does he?"
+
+Flavilla said: "He doesn't exactly go with us; but he usually comes there
+to sketch. He makes sketches for his newspaper."
+
+"Does he?" asked her father, grinding his teeth.
+
+"Yes," said Drusilla; "and he sketches so beautifully. He made such
+perfectly charming drawings of Flavilla and of me, and he drew pictures
+of the house and gardens, and of all the servants, and"--she laughed--"I
+once caught a glimpse in his sketch-book of the funniest caricature of
+you----"
+
+The expression on her father's face was so misleading in its terrible
+calm that she laughed again, innocently.
+
+"It was not at all an offensive caricature, you know--really it was not a
+caricature at all--it was _you_--just the way you stand and look at
+people when you are--slightly--annoyed----"
+
+"Oh, he is so clever," chimed in Flavilla, "and is so perfectly well-bred
+and so delightful to us--to Drusilla particularly. He wrote the prettiest
+set of verses--To Drusilla in June--just dashed them off while he was
+watching her sketch Cooper's Bluff from the southwest----"
+
+"He is really quite wonderful," added Drusilla, sincerely, "and so
+generous and helpful when my drawing becomes weak and wobbly----"
+
+"Mr. Yates shows Drusilla how to hold her pencil," said Flavilla,
+becoming warmly earnest in her appreciation of this self-sacrificing
+young man. "He often lays aside his own sketching and guides Drusilla's
+hand while she holds the pencil----"
+
+"And when I'm tired," said Drusilla, "and the water colors get into a
+dreadful mess, Mr. Yates will drop his own work and come and talk to me
+about art--and other things----"
+
+"He is _so_ kind!" cried Flavilla in generous enthusiasm.
+
+"And _so_ vitally interesting," said Drusilla.
+
+"And so talented!" echoed Flavilla.
+
+"And so--" Drusilla glanced up, beheld something in the fixed stare of
+her parent that frightened her, and rose in confusion. "Have I said--
+done--anything?" she faltered.
+
+With an awful spasm Mr. Carr jerked his congested features into the
+ghastly semblance of a smile.
+
+"Not at all," he managed to say. "This is very interesting--what you tell
+me about this p-pu--this talented young man. Does he--does he seem--
+attracted toward you--unusually attracted?"
+
+"Yes," said Drusilla, smiling reminiscently.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because he once said so."
+
+"S-said--w-what?"
+
+"Why, he said quite frankly that he thought me the most delightful girl
+he had ever met."
+
+"What--else?" Mr. Carr's voice was scarcely audible.
+
+"Nothing," said Drusilla; "except that he said he cared for me very much
+and wished to know whether I ever could care very much for him.... I told
+him I thought I could. Flavilla told him so, too.... And we all felt
+rather happy, I think; at least I did."
+
+Her parent emitted a low, melodious sort of sound, a kind of mellifluous
+howl.
+
+"Pa-pah!" they exclaimed in gentle consternation.
+
+He beat at the empty air for a moment like a rotund fowl about to seek
+its roost. Suddenly he ran distractedly at an armchair and kicked it.
+
+They watched him in sorrowful amazement.
+
+"If we are going to sketch Cooper's Bluff this morning," observed
+Drusilla to Flavilla, "I think we had better go--quietly--by way of the
+kitchen garden. Evidently Pa-pah does not care for Mr. Yates."
+
+Orlando, the family cat, strolled in, conciliatory tail hoisted. Mr. Carr
+hurled a cushion at Orlando, then beat madly upon his own head with both
+hands. Servants respectfully gave him room; some furniture was
+overturned--a chair or two--as he bounced upward and locked and bolted
+himself in his room.
+
+What transports of fury he lived through there nobody else can know; what
+terrible visions of vengeance lit up his outraged intellect, what cold
+intervals of quivering hate, what stealthy schemes of reprisal, what
+awful retribution for young Mr. Yates were hatched in those dreadful
+moments, he alone could tell. And as he never did tell, how can I know?
+
+However, in about half an hour his expression of stony malignity changed
+to a smile so cunningly devilish that, as he caught sight of himself in
+the mirror, his corrugated countenance really startled him.
+
+"I must smooth out--smooth out!" he muttered. "Smoothness does it!" And
+he rang for a servant and bade him seek out a certain Mr. Yates among the
+throng of young men who had been taking snapshots.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+DRUSILLA
+
+
+_During Which Chapter Mr. Carr Sings and One of His Daughters Takes her
+Postgraduate_
+
+Mr. Yates came presently, ushered by Ferdinand, and looking extremely
+worried. Mr. Carr received him in his private office with ominous
+urbanity.
+
+"Mr. Yates," he said, forcing a distorted smile, "I have rather abruptly
+decided to show you exactly how one of the Destyn-Carr instruments is
+supposed to work. Would you kindly stand here--close by this table?"
+
+Mr. Yates, astounded, obeyed.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Carr, with a deeply creased smile, "here is the famous
+Destyn-Carr apparatus. That's quite right--take a snapshot at it without
+my permission----"
+
+"I--I thought----"
+
+"Quite right, my boy; I intend you shall know all about it. You see it
+resembles the works of a watch.... Now, when I touch this spring the
+receiver opens and gathers in certain psychic waves which emanate from
+the subconscious personality of--well, let us say you, for example!...
+And now I touch this button. You see that slender hairspring of Rosium
+uncurl and rise, trembling and waving about like a tentacle?"
+
+Young Yates, notebook in hand, recovered himself sufficiently to nod. Mr.
+Carr leered at him:
+
+"That tentacle," he explained, "is now seeking some invisible, wireless,
+psychic current along which it is to transmit the accumulated psychic
+waves. As soon as the wireless current finds the subconscious personality
+of the woman you are destined to love and marry some day----"
+
+"I?" exclaimed young Yates, horrified.
+
+"Yes, you. Why not? Do you mind my trying it on you?"
+
+"But I am already in love," protested the young man, turning, as usual, a
+ready red. "I don't care to have you try it on me. Suppose that machine
+should connect me with--some other--girl----"
+
+"It has!" cried Carr with a hideous laugh as a point of bluish-white fire
+tipped the tentacle for an instant. "You're tied fast to something
+feminine! Probably a flossy typewriter--or a burlesque actress--somebody
+you're fitted for, anyway!" He clapped on his monocle, and glared
+gleefully at the stupefied young man.
+
+"That will teach you to enter my premises and hold my daughter's hand
+when she is drawing innocent pictures of Cooper's Bluff!" he shouted.
+"That will teach you to write poems to my eighteen-year-old daughter,
+Drusilla; that will teach you to tell her you are in love with her--you
+young pup!"
+
+"I am in love with her!" said Yates, undaunted; but he was very white
+when he said it. "I do love her; and if you had behaved halfway decently
+I'd have told you so two weeks ago!"
+
+Mr. Carr turned a delicate purple, then, recovering, laughed horribly.
+
+"Whether or not you were once in love with my daughter is of no
+consequence now. That machine has nullified your nonsense! That
+instrument has found you your proper affinity--doubtless below stairs----"
+
+"I _am_ still in love with Drusilla," repeated Yates, firmly.
+
+"I tell you, you're not!" retorted Carr. "Didn't I turn that machine on
+you? It has never missed yet! The Green Mouse has got _you_ in the
+Mouseleum!"
+
+"You are mistaken," insisted Yates, still more firmly. "I was in love
+with your daughter Drusilla before you started the machine; and I love
+her yet! Now! At the present time! This very instant I am loving her!"
+
+"You can't!" shouted Carr.
+
+"Yes, I can. And I do!"
+
+"No, you don't! I tell you it's a scientific and psychical impossibility
+for you to continue to love her! Your subconscious personality is now in
+eternal and irrevocable accord and communication with the subconscious
+personality of some chit of a girl who is destined to love and marry you!
+And she's probably a ballet-girl, at that!"
+
+"I shall marry Drusilla!" retorted the young man, very pale; "because I
+am quite confident that she loves me, though very probably she doesn't
+know it yet."
+
+"You talk foolishness!" hissed Carr. "This machine has settled the whole
+matter! Didn't you see that spark?"
+
+"I saw a spark--yes!"
+
+"And do you mean to tell me you are not beginning to feel queer?"
+
+"Not in the slightest."
+
+"Look me squarely in the eye, young man, and tell me whether you do not
+have a sensation as though your heart were cutting capers?"
+
+"Not in the least," said Yates, calmly. "If that machine worked at all it
+wouldn't surprise me if you yourself had become entangled in it--caught
+in your own machine!"
+
+"W-what!" exclaimed Carr, faintly.
+
+"It wouldn't astonish me in the slightest," repeated Yates, delighted to
+discover the dawning alarm in the older man's features. "_You_ opened the
+receiver; _you_ have psychic waves as well as I. _I_ was in love at the
+time; _you_ were not. What was there to prevent your waves from being
+hitched to a wireless current and, finally, signaling the subconscious
+personality of--of some pretty actress, for example?"
+
+Mr. Carr sank nervously onto a chair; his eyes, already wild, became
+wilder as he began to realize the risk he had unthinkingly taken.
+
+"Perhaps _you_ feel a little--queer. You look it," suggested the young
+man, in a voice made anxious by an ever-ready sympathy. "Can I do
+anything? I am really very sorry to have spoken so."
+
+A damp chill gathered on the brow of Bushwyck Carr. He _did_ feel a
+trifle queer. A curious lightness--a perfectly inexplicable buoyancy
+seemed to possess him. He was beginning to feel strangely youthful; the
+sound of his own heart suddenly became apparent. To his alarm it was
+beating playfully, skittishly. No--it was not even beating; it was
+skipping.
+
+"Y-Yates," he stammered, "you don't think that I could p-possibly have
+become inadvertently mixed up with that horrible machine--do you?"
+
+Now Yates was a generous youth; resentment at the treatment meted out to
+him by this florid, bad-tempered and pompous gentleman changed to
+instinctive sympathy when he suddenly realized the plight his future
+father-in-law might now be in.
+
+"Yates," repeated Mr. Carr in an agitated voice, "tell me honestly: _do_
+you think there is anything unusual the matter with me? I--I seem to
+f-feel unusually--young. Do I look it? Have I changed? W-watch me while
+I walk across the room."
+
+Mr. Carr arose with a frightened glance at Yates, put on his hat, and
+fairly pranced across the room. "Great Heavens!" he faltered; "my hat's
+on one side and my walk is distinctly jaunty! Do you notice it, Yates?"
+
+"I'm afraid I do, Mr. Carr."
+
+"This--this is infamous!" gasped Mr. Carr. "This is--is outrageous! I'm
+forty-five! I'm a widower! I detest a jaunty widower! I don't want to be
+one; I don't want to----"
+
+Yates gazed at him with deep concern.
+
+"Can't you help lifting your legs that way when you walk--as though a
+band were playing? Wait, I'll straighten your hat. Now try it again."
+
+Mr. Carr pranced back across the room.
+
+"I _know_ I'm doing it again," he groaned, "but I can't help it! I--I
+feel so gay--dammit!--so frivolous--it's--it's that infernal machine.
+W-what am I to do, Yates," he added piteously, "when the world looks
+so good to me?"
+
+"Think of your family!" urged Yates. "Think of--of Drusilla."
+
+"Do you know," observed Carr, twirling his eyeglass and twisting his
+mustache, "that I'm beginning not to care what my family think!... Isn't
+it amazing, Yates? I--I seem to be somebody else, several years younger.
+Somewhere," he added, with a flourish of his monocle--"somewhere on earth
+there is a little birdie waiting for me."
+
+"Don't talk that way!" exclaimed Yates, horrified.
+
+"Yes, I will, young man. I repeat, with optimism and emphasis, that
+_somewhere_ there is a birdie----"
+
+"Mr. Carr!"
+
+"Yes, merry old Top!"
+
+"May I use your telephone?"
+
+"I don't care what you do!" said Carr, gayly. "Use my telephone if you
+like; pull it out by the roots and throw it over Cooper's Bluff, for all
+I care! But"--and a sudden glimmer of reason seemed to come over him--"if
+you have one grain of human decency left in you, you won't drag me and my
+terrible plight into that scurrilous New York paper of yours."
+
+"No," said Yates, "I won't. And that ends my career on Park Row. I'm
+going to telephone my resignation."
+
+Mr. Carr gazed calmly around and twisted his mustache with a satisfied
+and retrospective smile.
+
+"That's very decent of you, Yates; you must pardon me; I was naturally
+half scared to death at first; but I realize you are acting very
+handsomely in this horrible dilemma----"
+
+"Naturally," interrupted Yates. "I must stand by the family into which I
+am, as you know, destined to marry."
+
+"To be sure," nodded Carr, absently; "it really looks that way, doesn't
+it! And, Yates, you have no idea how I hated you an hour ago."
+
+"Yes, I have," said Yates.
+
+"No, you really have not, if you will permit me to contradict you, merry
+old Top. I--but never mind now. You have behaved in an unusually
+considerate manner. Who the devil are you, anyway?"
+
+Yates informed him modestly.
+
+"Well, why didn't you say so, instead of letting me bully you! I've known
+your father for twenty years. Why didn't you tell me you wanted to marry
+Drusilla, instead of coming and blushing all over the premises? I'd have
+told you she was too young; and she is! I'd have told you to wait; and
+you'd have waited. You'd have been civil enough to wait when I explained
+to you that I've already lost, by marriage, two daughters through that
+accursed machine. You wouldn't entirely denude me of daughters, would
+you?"
+
+"I only want one," said John Yates, simply.
+
+"Well, all right; I'm a decent father-in-law when I've got to be. I'm
+really a good sport. You may ask all my sons-in-law; they'll admit it."
+He scrutinized the young man and found him decidedly agreeable to look
+at, and at the same time a vague realization of his own predicament
+returned for a moment.
+
+"Yates," he said unsteadily, "all I ask of you is to keep this terrible
+n-news from my innocent d-daughters until I can f-find out what sort of a
+person is f-fated to lead me to the altar!"
+
+Yates took the offered hand with genuine emotion.
+
+"Surely," he said, "your unknown intended must be some charming leader in
+the social activities of the great metropolis."
+
+"Who knows! She may be m-my own l-laundress for all I know. She may be
+anything, Yates! She--she might even be b-black!"
+
+"Black!"
+
+Mr. Carr nodded, shuddered, dashed the unmanly moisture from his
+eyeglass.
+
+"I think I'd better go to town and tell my son-in-law, William Destyn,
+exactly what has happened to me," he said. "And I think I'll go through
+the kitchen garden and take my power boat so that those devilish
+reporters can't follow me. Ferdinand!" to the man at the door, "ring up
+the garage and order the blue motor, and tell those newspaper men I'm
+going to town. That, I think, will glue them to the lawn for a while."
+
+"About--Drusilla, sir?" ventured Yates; but Mr. Carr was already gone,
+speeding noiselessly out the back way, through the kitchen garden, and
+across the great tree-shaded lawn which led down to the boat landing.
+
+Across the distant hedge, from the beautiful grounds of his next-door
+neighbor, floated sounds of mirth and music. Gay flags fluttered among
+the trees. The Magnelius Grandcourts were evidently preparing for the
+brilliant charity bazaar to be held there that afternoon and evening.
+
+"To think," muttered Carr, "that only an hour ago I was agreeably and
+comfortably prepared to pass the entire afternoon there with my
+daughters, amid innocent revelry. And now I'm in flight--pursued by
+furies of my own invoking--threatened with love in its most hideous form--
+matrimony! Any woman I now look upon may be my intended bride for all I
+know," he continued, turning into the semiprivate driveway, bordered
+heavily by lilacs; "and the curious thing about it is that I really don't
+care; in fact, the excitement is mildly pleasing."
+
+He halted; in the driveway, blocking it, stood a red motor car--a little
+runabout affair; and at the steering-wheel sat a woman--a lady's maid by
+her cap and narrow apron, and an exceedingly pretty one, at that.
+
+When she saw Mr. Carr she looked up, showing an edge of white teeth in
+the most unembarrassed of smiles. She certainly was an unusually
+agreeable-looking girl.
+
+"Has something gone wrong with your motor?" inquired Mr. Carr,
+pleasantly.
+
+"I am afraid so." She didn't say "sir"; probably because she was too
+pretty to bother about such incidentals. And she looked at Carr and
+smiled, as though he were particularly ornamental.
+
+"Let me see," began Mr. Carr, laying his hand on the steering-wheel;
+"perhaps I can make it go."
+
+"It won't go," she said, a trifle despondently and shaking her charming
+head. "I've been here nearly half an hour waiting for it to do something;
+but it won't."
+
+Mr. Carr peered wisely into the acetylenes, looked carefully under the
+hood, examined the upholstery. He didn't know anything about motors.
+
+"I'm afraid," he said sadly, "that there's something wrong with the
+magne-e-to!"
+
+"Do you think it is as bad as that?"
+
+"I fear so," he said gravely. "If I were you I'd get out--and keep well
+away from that machine."
+
+"Why?" she asked nervously, stepping to the grass beside him.
+
+"It _might_ blow up."
+
+They backed away rather hastily, side by side. After a while they backed
+farther away, hand in hand.
+
+"I--I hate to leave it there all alone," said the maid, when they had
+backed completely out of sight of the car. "If there was only some safe
+place where I could watch and see if it is going to explode."
+
+They ventured back a little way and peeped at the motor.
+
+"You could take a rowboat and watch it from the water," said Mr. Carr.
+
+"But I don't know how to row."
+
+Mr. Carr looked at her. Certainly she was the most prepossessing specimen
+of wholesome, rose-cheeked and ivory-skinned womanhood that he had ever
+beheld; a trifle nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, he thought, but so
+sweet and fresh and with such charming eyes and manners.
+
+"I have," said Mr. Carr, "several hours at my disposal before I go to
+town on important business. If you like I will row you out in one of my
+boats, and then, from a safe distance, we can sit and watch your motor
+blow up. Shall we?"
+
+"It is most kind of you----"
+
+"Not at all. It would be most kind of you."
+
+She looked sideways at the motor, sideways at the water, sideways at Mr.
+Carr.
+
+It was a very lovely morning in early June.
+
+As Mr. Carr handed her into the rowboat with ceremony she swept him a
+courtesy. Her apron and manners were charmingly incongruous.
+
+When she was gracefully seated in the stern Mr. Carr turned for a moment,
+stared all Oyster Bay calmly in the face through his monocle, then,
+untying the painter, fairly skipped into the boat with a step distinctly
+frolicsome.
+
+"It's curious how I feel about this," he observed, digging both oars into
+the water.
+
+"_How_ do you feel, Mr. Carr?"
+
+"Like a bird," he said softly.
+
+And the boat moved off gently through the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay.
+
+At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gently
+caressing the classic contours of Cooper's Bluff, and upon that
+monumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla and
+Drusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates,
+in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod and
+looked at Drusilla.
+
+Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, brooded
+over Cooper's Bluff.
+
+"There's no use," said Drusilla at last; "one can draw a landscape from
+every point of view except looking _down_ hill. Mr. Yates, how on earth
+am I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?"
+
+"Perhaps," he said, "I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?"
+
+"Do you think that would help?"
+
+"I think it helps--somehow."
+
+Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed over
+it. She looked at the pad on her knees.
+
+After a while she said: "I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don't
+you?"
+
+They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers,
+and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.
+
+"It is very pleasant to have you here," she said dreamily.
+
+"It is very heavenly to be here," he said.
+
+"How generous you are to give us so much of your time!" murmured
+Drusilla.
+
+"I think so, too," said Flavilla, washing a badger brush. "And I am
+becoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is."
+
+"Don't you like him as well as I do?" asked Drusilla.
+
+Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.
+
+"Not quite as well," she said frankly. "You know, Drusilla, you are very
+nearly in love with him." And she resumed her sketching.
+
+Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarrassed. "Am I?" she said
+absently.
+
+[Illustration: "Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil
+again'"]
+
+"Are you?" he repeated, close to her shoulder.
+
+She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.
+
+"What is it--to love? Is it"--she looked at him undisturbed--"is it to be
+quite happy and lazy with a man like you?"
+
+He was silent.
+
+"I thought," she continued, "that there would be some hesitation, some
+shyness about it--some embarrassment. But there, has been none between
+you and me."
+
+He said nothing.
+
+She went on absently:
+
+"You said, the other day, very simply, that you cared a great deal for
+me; and I was not very much surprised. And I said that I cared very much
+for you.... And, by the way, I meant to ask you yesterday; are we
+engaged?"
+
+"Are we?" he asked.
+
+"Yes--if you wish.... Is _that_ all there is to an engagement?"
+
+"There's a ring," observed Flavilla, dabbing on too much ultramarine and
+using a sponge. "You've got to get her one, Mr. Yates."
+
+Drusilla looked at the man beside her and smiled.
+
+"How simple it is, after all!" she said. "I have read in the books Pa-pah
+permits us to read such odd things about love and lovers.... Are we
+lovers, Mr. Yates? But, of course, we must be, I fancy."
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"Some time or other, when it is convenient," observed Flavilla, "you
+ought to kiss each other occasionally."
+
+"That doesn't come until I'm a bride, does it?" asked Drusilla.
+
+"I believe it's a matter of taste," said Flavilla, rising and naively
+stretching her long, pretty limbs.
+
+She stood a moment on the edge of the bluff, looking down.
+
+"How curious!" she said after a moment. "There is Pa-pah on the water
+rowing somebody's maid about."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Yates, springing to his feet.
+
+"How extraordinary," said Drusilla, following him to the edge of the
+bluff; "and they're singing, too, as they row!"
+
+From far below, wafted across the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Mr.
+Carr's rich and mellifluous voice was wafted shoreward:
+
+"_I der-reamt that I dwelt in ma-arble h-a-l-ls._"
+
+The sunlight fell on the maid's coquettish cap and apron, and sparkled
+upon the buckle of one dainty shoe. It also glittered across the monocle
+of Mr. Carr.
+
+"Pa-_pah!_" cried Flavilla.
+
+Far away her parent waved a careless greeting to his offspring, then
+resumed his oars and his song.
+
+"How extraordinary!" said Flavilla. "Why do you suppose that Pa-_pah_ is
+rowing somebody's maid around the bay, and singing that way to her?"
+
+"Perhaps it's one of our maids," said Drusilla; "but that would be rather
+odd, too, wouldn't it, Mr. Yates?"
+
+"A--little," he admitted. And his heart sank.
+
+Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.
+
+"I'm going to see whose maid it is," she called back.
+
+Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried grass and watched her sister.
+
+Yates stood beside her in bitter dejection.
+
+So _this_ was the result! His unfortunate future father-in-law was done
+for. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answer
+had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by
+mistake, summoned his own affinity! And _what_ an affinity! A saucy
+soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the _coulisse_ of a
+Parisian theater!
+
+Yates looked at Drusilla. What an awful blow was impending! She never
+could have suspected it, but there, in that boat, sat her future
+stepmother in cap and apron!--his own future stepmother-in-law!
+
+And in the misery of that moment's realization John Chillingham Yates
+showed the material of which he was constructed.
+
+"Dear," he said gently.
+
+"Do you mean me?" asked Drusilla, looking up in frank surprise.
+
+And at the same time she saw on his face a look which she had never
+before encountered there. It was the shadow of trouble; and it drew her
+to her feet instinctively.
+
+"What is it, Jack?" she asked.
+
+She had never before called him anything but Mr. Yates.
+
+"What is it?" she repeated, turning away beside him along the leafy path;
+and with every word another year seemed, somehow, to be added to her
+youth. "Has anything happened, Jack? Are you unhappy--or ill?"
+
+He did not speak; she walked beside him, regarding him with wistful eyes.
+
+So there was more of love than happiness, after all; she began to half
+understand it in a vague way as she watched his somber face. There
+certainly was more of love than a mere lazy happiness; there was
+solicitude and warm concern, and desire to comfort, to protect.
+
+"Jack," she said tremulously.
+
+He turned and took her unresisting hands. A quick thrill shot through
+her. Yes, there _was_ more to love than she had expected.
+
+"Are you unhappy?" she asked. "Tell me. I can't bear to see you this way.
+I--I never did--before."
+
+"Will you love me; Drusilla?"
+
+"Yes--yes, I will, Jack."
+
+"Dearly?"
+
+"I do--dearly." The first blush that ever tinted her cheek spread and
+deepened.
+
+"Will you marry me, Drusilla?"
+
+"Yes.... You frighten me."
+
+She trembled, suddenly, in his arms. Surely there were more things to
+love than she had dreamed of in her philosophy. She looked up as he bent
+nearer, understanding that she was to be kissed, awaiting the event which
+suddenly loomed up freighted with terrific significance.
+
+There was a silence, a sob.
+
+"Jack--darling--I--I love you so!"
+
+Flavilla was sketching on her camp-stool when they returned.
+
+"I'm horridly hungry," she said. "It's luncheon time, isn't it? And, by
+the way, it's all right about that maid. She was on her way to serve in
+the tea pavilion at Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's bazaar, and her runabout
+broke down and nearly blew up."
+
+"What on earth are you talking about?" exclaimed Drusilla.
+
+"I'm talking about Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt's younger sister from
+Philadelphia, who looks perfectly sweet as a lady's maid. Tea," she
+added, "is to be a dollar a cup, and three if you take sugar. And," she
+continued, "if you and I are to sell flowers there this afternoon we'd
+better go home and dress.... _What_ are you smiling at, Mr. Yates?"
+
+Drusilla naturally supposed she could answer that question.
+
+"Dearest little sister," she said shyly and tenderly, "we have something
+very wonderful to tell you."
+
+"What is it?" asked Flavilla.
+
+"We--we are--engaged," whispered Drusilla, radiant.
+
+"Why, I knew that already!" said Flavilla.
+
+"Did you?" sighed her sister, turning to look at her tall, young lover.
+"I didn't.... Being in love is a much more complicated matter than you
+and I imagined, Flavilla. Is it not, Jack?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+FLAVILLA
+
+
+_Containing a Parable Told with Such Metaphorical Skill that the Author
+Is Totally Unable to Understand It_
+
+The Green Mouse now dominated the country; the entire United States was
+occupied in getting married. In the great main office on Madison Avenue,
+and in a thousand branch offices all over the Union, Destyn-Carr machines
+were working furiously; a love-mad nation was illuminated by their
+sparks.
+
+Marriage-license bureaus had been almost put out of business by the
+sudden matrimonial rush; clergymen became exhausted, wedding bells in the
+churches were worn thin, California and Florida reported no orange crops,
+as all the blossoms had been required for brides; there was a shortage of
+solitaires, traveling clocks, asparagus tongs; and the corner in rice
+perpetrated by some conscienceless captain of industry produced a panic
+equaled only by a more terrible _coup_ in slightly worn shoes.
+
+All America was rushing to get married; from Seattle to Key West the
+railroads were blocked with bridal parties; a vast hum of merrymaking
+resounded from the Golden Gate to Governor's Island, from Niagara to the
+Gulf of Mexico. In New York City the din was persistent; all day long
+church bells pealed, all day long the rattle of smart carriages and hired
+hacks echoed over the asphalt. A reporter of the _Tribune_ stood on top
+of the New York Life tower for an entire week, devouring cold-slaw
+sandwiches and Marie Corelli, and during that period, as his affidavit
+runs, "never for one consecutive second were his ample ears free from the
+near or distant strains of the Wedding March."
+
+And over all, in approving benediction, brooded the wide smile of the
+greatest of statesmen and the great smile of the widest of statesmen--
+these two, metaphorically, hand in hand, floated high above their people,
+scattering encouraging blessings on every bride.
+
+A tremendous rise in values set in; the newly married required homes;
+architects were rushed to death; builders, real-estate operators,
+brokers, could not handle the business hurled at them by impatient
+bridegrooms.
+
+Then, seizing time by the fetlock, some indescribable monster secured the
+next ten years' output of go-carts. The sins of Standard Oil were
+forgotten in the menace of such a national catastrophe; mothers' meetings
+were held; the excitement became stupendous; a hundred thousand brides
+invaded the Attorney-General's office, but all he could think of to say
+was: "Thirty centuries look down upon you!"
+
+These vague sentiments perplexed the country. People understood that the
+Government meant well, but they also realized that the time was not far
+off when millions of go-carts would be required in the United States. And
+they no longer hesitated.
+
+All over the Union fairs and bazaars were held to collect funds for a
+great national factory to turn out carts. Alarmed, the Trust tried to
+unload; militant womanhood, thoroughly aroused, scorned compromise. In
+every city, town, and hamlet of the nation entertainments were given,
+money collected for the great popular go-cart factory.
+
+The affair planned for Oyster Bay was to be particularly brilliant--a
+water carnival at Center Island with tableaux, fireworks, and
+illuminations of all sorts.
+
+Reassured by the magnificent attitude of America's womanhood, business
+discounted the collapse of the go-cart trust and began to recover from
+the check very quickly. Stocks advanced, fluctuated, and suddenly whizzed
+upward like skyrockets; and the long-expected wave of prosperity
+inundated the country. On the crest of it rode Cupid, bow and arrows
+discarded, holding aloft in his right hand a Destyn-Carr machine.
+
+For the old order of things had passed away; the old-fashioned doubts and
+fears of courtship were now practically superfluous.
+
+Anybody on earth could now buy a ticket and be perfectly certain that
+whoever he or she might chance to marry would be the right one--the one
+intended by destiny.
+
+Yet, strange as it may appear, there still remained, here and there, a
+few young people in the United States who had no desire to be safely
+provided for by a Destyn-Carr machine.
+
+Whether there was in them some sporting instinct, making hazard
+attractive, or, perhaps, a conviction that Fate is kind, need not be
+discussed. The fact remains that there were a very few youthful and
+marriageable folk who had no desire to know beforehand what their fate
+might be.
+
+One of these unregenerate reactionists was Flavilla. To see her entire
+family married by machinery was enough for her; to witness such
+consummate and collective happiness became slightly cloying. Perfection
+can be overdone; a rift in a lute relieves melodious monotony, and when
+discords cease to amuse, one can always have the instrument mended or buy
+a banjo.
+
+"What I desire," she said, ignoring the remonstrances of the family, "is
+a chance to make mistakes. Three or four nice men have thought they were
+in love with me, and I wouldn't take anything for the--experience. Or,"
+she added innocently, "for the chances that some day three or four more
+agreeable young men may think they are in love with me. One learns by
+making mistakes--very pleasantly."
+
+Her family sat in an affectionately earnest row and adjured her--four
+married sisters, four blissful brothers-in-law, her attractive
+stepmother, her father. She shook her pretty head and continued sewing on
+the costume she was to wear at the Oyster Bay Venetian Fete and Go-cart
+Fair.
+
+"No," she said, threading her needle and deftly sewing a shining, silvery
+scale onto the mermaid's dress lying across her knees, "I'll take my
+chances with men. It's better fun to love a man not intended for me, and
+make him love me, and live happily and defiantly ever after, than to have
+a horrid old machine settle you for life."
+
+"But you are wasting time, dear," explained her stepmother gently.
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not. I've been engaged three times and I've enjoyed it
+immensely. That isn't wasting time, is it? And it's _such_ fun!
+He thinks he's in love and you think you're in love, and you have such an
+agreeable time together until you find out that you're spoons on somebody
+else. And then you find out you're mistaken and you say you always want
+him for a friend, and you presently begin all over again with a perfectly
+new man----"
+
+"Flavilla!"
+
+"Yes, Pa-_pah_."
+
+"Are you utterly demoralized!"
+
+"Demoralized? Why? Everybody behaved as I do before you and William
+invented your horrid machine. Everybody in the world married at hazard,
+after being engaged to various interesting young men. And I'm not
+demoralized; I'm only old-fashioned enough to take chances. Please let
+me."
+
+The family regarded her sadly. In their amalgamated happiness they
+deplored her reluctance to enter where perfect bliss was guaranteed.
+
+Her choice of role and costume for the Seawanhaka Club water tableaux
+they also disapproved of; for she had chosen to represent a character now
+superfluous and out of date--the Lorelei who lured Teutonic yachtsmen to
+destruction with her singing some centuries ago. And that, in these
+times, was ridiculous, because, fortified by a visit to the nearest
+Destyn-Carr machine, no weak-minded young sailorman would care what a
+Lorelei might do; and she could sing her pretty head off and comb herself
+bald before any Destyn-Carr inoculated mariner would be lured overboard.
+
+But Flavilla obstinately insisted on her scaled and fish-tailed costume.
+When her turn came, a spot-light on the clubhouse was to illuminate the
+float and reveal her, combing her golden hair with a golden comb and
+singing away like the Musical Arts.
+
+"And," she thought secretly, "if there remains upon this machine-made
+earth one young man worth my kind consideration, it wouldn't surprise me
+very much if he took a header off the Yacht Club wharf and requested me
+to be his. And I'd be very likely to listen to his suggestion."
+
+So in secret hopes of this pleasing episode--but not giving any such
+reason to her protesting family--she vigorously resisted all attempts to
+deprive her of her fish scales, golden comb, and role in the coming water
+fete. And now the programmes were printed and it was too late for them to
+intervene.
+
+She rose, holding out the glittering, finny garment, which flashed like a
+collapsed fish in the sunshine.
+
+"It's finished," she said. "Now I'm going off somewhere by myself to
+rehearse."
+
+"In the water?" asked her father uneasily.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+As Flavilla was a superb swimmer nobody could object. Later, a maid went
+down to the landing, stowed away luncheon, water-bottles and costume in
+the canoe. Later, Flavilla herself came down to the water's edge,
+hatless, sleeves rolled up, balancing a paddle across her shoulders.
+
+As the paddle flashed and the canoe danced away over the sparkling waters
+of Oyster Bay, Flavilla hummed the threadbare German song which she was
+to sing in her role of Lorelei, and headed toward Northport.
+
+"The thing to do," she thought to herself, "is to find some nice, little,
+wooded inlet where I can safely change my costume and rehearse. I must
+know whether I can swim in this thing--and whether I can sing while
+swimming about. It would be more effective, I think, than merely sitting
+on the float, and singing and combing my hair through all those verses."
+
+The canoe danced across the water, the paddle glittered, dipped, swept
+astern, and flashed again. Flavilla was very, very happy for no
+particular reason, which is the best sort of happiness on earth.
+
+There is a sandy neck of land which obstructs direct navigation between
+the sacred waters of Oyster Bay and the profane floods which wash the
+gravelly shores of Northport.
+
+"I'll make a carry," thought Flavilla, beaching her canoe. Then, looking
+around her at the lonely stretch of sand flanked by woods, she realized
+at once that she need seek no farther for seclusion.
+
+First of all, she dragged the canoe into the woods, then rapidly
+undressed and drew on the mermaid's scaly suit, which fitted her to the
+throat as beautifully as her own skin.
+
+It was rather difficult for her to navigate on land, as her legs were
+incased in a fish's tail, but, seizing her comb and mirror, she managed
+to wriggle down to the water's edge.
+
+A few sun-warmed rocks jutted up some little distance from shore; with a
+final and vigorous wriggle Flavilla launched herself and struck out for
+the rocks, holding comb and mirror in either hand.
+
+Fishtail and accessories impeded her, but she was the sort of swimmer who
+took no account of such trifles; and after a while she drew herself up
+from the sea, and, breathless, glittering, iridescent, flopped down upon
+a flat rock in the sunshine. From which she took a careful survey of the
+surroundings.
+
+Certainly nobody could see her here. Nobody would interrupt her either,
+because the route of navigation lay far outside, to the north. All around
+were woods; the place was almost landlocked, save where, far away through
+the estuary, a blue and hazy horizon glimmered in the general direction
+of New England.
+
+So, when she had recovered sufficient breath she let down the flashing,
+golden-brown hair, sat up on the rock, lifted her pretty nose skyward,
+and poured forth melody.
+
+As she sang the tiresome old Teutonic ballad she combed away vigorously,
+and every now and then surveyed her features in the mirror.
+
+  _Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten
+  Dass ich so traurig bin----_
+
+she sang happily, studying her gestures with care and cheerfully flopping
+her tail.
+
+She had a very lovely voice which had been expensively cultivated. One or
+two small birds listened attentively for a while, then started in to help
+her out.
+
+On the veranda of his bungalow, not very far from Northport, stood a
+young man of pleasing aspect, knickerbockers, and unusually symmetrical
+legs. His hands reposed in his pockets, his eyes behind their eyeglasses
+were fixed dreamily upon the skies. Somebody over beyond that screen of
+woods was singing very beautifully, and he liked it--at first.
+
+However, when the unseen singer had been singing the Lorelei for an hour,
+steadily, without intermission, an expression of surprise gradually
+developed into uneasy astonishment upon his clean-cut and unusually
+attractive features.
+
+"That girl, whoever she is, can sing, all right," he reflected, "but why
+on earth does she dope out the same old thing?"
+
+He looked at the strip of woods, but could see nothing of the singer. He
+listened; she continued to sing the Lorelei.
+
+"It can't be a phonograph," he reasoned. "No sane person could endure an
+hour of that fool song. No sane person would sing it for an hour,
+either."
+
+Disturbed, he picked up the marine glasses, slung them over his shoulder,
+walked up on the hill back of the bungalow, selected a promising tree,
+and climbed it.
+
+Astride a lofty limb the lord of Northport gazed earnestly across the
+fringe of woods. Something sparkled out there, something moved,
+glittering on a half-submerged rock. He adjusted the marine glasses and
+squinted through them.
+
+"Great James!" he faltered, dropping them; and almost followed the
+glasses to destruction on the ground below.
+
+How he managed to get safely to earth he never knew. "Either I'm crazy,"
+he shouted aloud, "or there's a--a mermaid out there, and I'm going to
+find out before they chase me to the funny house!"
+
+There was a fat tub of a boat at his landing; he reached the shore in a
+series of long, distracted leaps, sprang aboard, cast off, thrust both
+oars deep into the water, and fairly hurled the boat forward, so that it
+alternately skipped, wallowed, scuttered, and scrambled, like a hen
+overboard.
+
+"This is terrible," he groaned. "If I _didn't_ see what I think I saw,
+I'll eat my hat; if I did see what I'm sure I saw, I'm madder than the
+hatter who made it!"
+
+Nearer and nearer, heard by him distinctly above the frantic splashing of
+his oars, her Lorelei song sounded perilously sweet and clear.
+
+"Oh, bunch!" he moaned; "it's horribly like the real thing; and here I
+come headlong, as they do in the story books----"
+
+He caught a crab that landed him in a graceful parabola in the bow, where
+he lay biting at the air to recover his breath. Then his boat's nose
+plowed into the sandy neck of land; he clambered to his feet, jumped out,
+and ran headlong into the belt of trees which screened the singer. Speed
+and gait recalled the effortless grace of the kangaroo; when he
+encountered logs and gullies he rose grandly, sailing into space, landing
+with a series of soft bounces, which presently brought him to the other
+side of the woods.
+
+And there, what he beheld, what he heard, almost paralyzed him. Weak-
+kneed, he passed a trembling hand over his incredulous eyes; with the
+courage of despair, he feebly pinched himself. Then for sixty sickening
+seconds he closed his eyes and pressed both hands over his ears. But when
+he took his hands away and opened his terrified eyes, the exquisitely
+seductive melody, wind blown from the water, thrilled him in every fiber;
+his wild gaze fell upon a distant, glittering shape--white-armed, golden-
+haired, fish-tailed, slender body glittering with silvery scales.
+
+The low rippling wash of the tide across the pebbly shore was in his
+ears; the salt wind was in his throat. He saw the sun flash on golden
+comb and mirror, as her snowy fingers caressed the splendid masses of her
+hair; her song stole sweetly seaward as the wind veered.
+
+A terrible calm descended upon him.
+
+"This is interesting," he said aloud.
+
+A sickening wave of terror swept him, but he straightened up, squaring
+his shoulders.
+
+"I may as well face the fact," he said, "that I, Henry Kingsbury, of
+Pebble Point, Northport, L.I., and recently in my right mind, am now,
+this very moment, looking at a--a mermaid in Long Island Sound!"
+
+He shuddered; but he was sheer pluck all through. Teeth might chatter,
+knees smite together, marrow turn cold; nothing on earth or Long Island
+could entirely stampede Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point.
+
+His clutch on his self-control in any real crisis never slipped; his
+mental steering-gear never gave way. Again his pallid lips moved in
+speech:
+
+"The--thing--to--do," he said very slowly and deliberately, "is to swim
+out and--and touch it. If it dissolves into nothing I'll probably feel
+better----"
+
+He began to remove coat, collar, and shoes, forcing himself to talk
+calmly all the while.
+
+"The thing to do," he went on dully, "is to swim over there and get a
+look at it. Of course, it isn't really there. As for drowning--it really
+doesn't matter.... In the midst of life we are in Long Island.... And, if
+it _is_ there--I c-c-can c-capture it for the B-B-Bronx----"
+
+Reason tottered; it revived, however, as he plunged into the s. w.[A] of
+Oyster Bay and struck out, silent as a sea otter for the shimmering shape
+on the ruddy rocks.
+
+[Footnote A: Sparkling Waters or Sacred Waters.]
+
+Flavilla was rehearsing with all her might; her white throat swelled with
+the music she poured forth to the sky and sea; her pretty fingers played
+with the folds of burnished hair; her gilded hand-mirror flashed, she
+gently beat time with her tail.
+
+So thoroughly, so earnestly, did she enter into the spirit of the siren
+she was representing that, at moments, she almost wished some fisherman
+might come into view--just to see whether he'd really go overboard after
+her.
+
+However, audacious as her vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely
+unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the
+floating weeds almost at her feet.
+
+"Goodness," she said faintly, and attempted to rise. But her fish tail
+fettered her.
+
+"Are you real!" gasped Kingsbury.
+
+"Y-yes.... Are you?"
+
+"Great James!" he half shouted, half sobbed, "are you _human?_"
+
+"V-very. Are _you?_"
+
+He clutched at the weedy rock and dragged himself up. For a moment he lay
+breathing fast, water dripping from his soaked clothing. Once he feebly
+touched the glittering fish tail that lay on the rock beside him. It
+quivered, but needle and thread had been at work there; he drew a deep
+breath and closed his eyes.
+
+When he opened them again she was looking about for a likely place to
+launch herself into the bay; in fact, she had already started to glide
+toward the water; the scraping of the scales aroused him, and he sat up.
+
+"I heard singing," he said dreamily, "and I climbed a tree and saw--you!
+Do you blame me for trying to corroborate a thing like _you?_"
+
+"You thought I was a _real_ one?"
+
+"I thought that I thought I saw a real one."
+
+She looked at him hopefully.
+
+"Tell me, _did_ my singing compel you to swim out here?"
+
+"I don't know what compelled me."
+
+"But--you _were_ compelled?"
+
+"I--it seems so----"
+
+"O-h!" Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin
+and gazed at him.
+
+"To think," she said softly, "that you believed me to be a real siren,
+and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock! Isn't
+it exciting?"
+
+He looked at her, then turned red:
+
+"Yes, it is," he said.
+
+Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she
+surveyed him with intense interest. He was at a disadvantage; the sleek,
+half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not
+exhibit him at his best.
+
+But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had
+actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human
+being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.
+
+"Please fix your hair," she said, handing him her comb and mirror.
+
+"My hair?"
+
+"Certainly. I want to look at you."
+
+He thought her request rather extraordinary, but he sat up and with the
+aid of the mirror, scraped away at his wet hair, parting it in the middle
+and combing it deftly into two gay little Mercury wings. Then, fishing in
+the soaked pockets of his knickerbockers, he produced a pair of smart
+pince-nez, which he put on, and then gazed up at her.
+
+"Oh!" she said, with a quick, indrawn breath, "you _are_ attractive!"
+
+At that he turned becomingly scarlet.
+
+Leaning on one lovely, bare arm, burnished hair clustering against her
+cheeks, she continued to survey him in delighted approval which sometimes
+made him squirm inwardly, sometimes almost intoxicated him.
+
+"To think," she murmured, "that _I_ lured _you_ out here!"
+
+"I _am_ thinking about it," he said.
+
+She laid her head on one side, inspecting him with frankest approval.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "what your name is. I am Flavilla Carr."
+
+"Not one of the Carr triplets!"
+
+"Yes--but," she added quickly, "I'm not married. Are you?"
+
+"Oh, no, no, no!" he said hastily. "I'm Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point,
+Northport----"
+
+"Master and owner of the beautiful but uncertain _Sappho?_ Oh, tell me,
+_are_ you the man who has tipped over so many times in Long Island Sound?
+Because I--I adore a man who has the pluck to continue to capsize every
+day or two."
+
+"Then," he said, "you can safely adore me, for I am that yachtsman who
+has fallen off the _Sappho_ more times than the White Knight fell off his
+horse."
+
+"I--I _do_ adore you!" she exclaimed impulsively.
+
+"Of course, you d-d-don't mean that," he stammered, striving to smile.
+
+"Yes--almost. Tell me, you--I know you are not like other men! _You_
+never have had anything to do with a Destyn-Carr machine, have you?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Neither have I.... And so you are not in love--are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Neither am I. Oh, I am so glad that you and I have waited, and not
+become engaged to somebody by machinery.... I wonder whom you are
+destined for."
+
+"Nobody--by machinery."
+
+She clapped her hands. "Neither am I. It is too stupid, isn't it? I
+_don't_ want to marry the man I ought to marry. I'd rather take chances
+with a man who attracts me and who is attracted by me.... There was, in
+the old days--before everybody married by machinery--something not
+altogether unworthy in being a siren, wasn't there?... It's perfectly
+delightful to think of your seeing me out here on the rocks, and then
+instantly plunging into the waves and tearing a foaming right of way to
+what might have been destruction!"
+
+Her flushed, excited face between its clustering curls looked straight
+into his.
+
+"It _was_ destruction," he said. His own voice sounded odd to him. "Utter
+destruction to my peace of mind," he said again.
+
+"You--don't think that you love me, do you?" she asked. "That would be
+too--too perfect a climax.... _Do_ you?" she asked curiously.
+
+"I--think so."
+
+"Do--do you _know_ it?" He gazed bravely at her: "Yes."
+
+She flung up both arms joyously, then laughed aloud:
+
+"Oh, the wonder of it! It is too perfect, too beautiful! You really love
+me? Do you? Are you _sure_?"
+
+"Yes.... Will you try to love me?"
+
+"Well, you know that sirens don't care for people.... I've already been
+engaged two or three times.... I don't mind being engaged to you."
+
+"Couldn't you care for me, Flavilla?"
+
+"Why, yes. I do.... Please don't touch me; I'd rather not. Of course, you
+know, I couldn't really love you so quickly unless I'd been subjected to
+one of those Destyn-Carr machines. You know that, don't you? But," she
+added frankly, "I wouldn't like to have you get away from me. I--I feel
+like a tender-hearted person in the street who is followed by a lost
+cat----"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Oh, I _didn't_ mean anything unpleasant--truly I didn't. You know how
+tenderly one feels when a poor stray cat comes trotting after one----"
+
+He got up, mad all through.
+
+"_Are_ you offended?" she asked sorrowfully. "When I didn't mean anything
+except that my heart--which is rather impressionable--feels very warmly
+and tenderly toward the man who swam after me.... Won't you understand,
+please? Listen, we have been engaged only a minute, and here already is
+our first quarrel. You can see for yourself what would happen if we ever
+married."
+
+"It wouldn't be machine-made bliss, anyway," he said.
+
+That seemed to interest her; she inspected him earnestly.
+
+"Also," he added, "I thought you desired to take a sportsman's chances?"
+
+"I--do."
+
+"And I thought you didn't want to marry the man you ought to marry."
+
+"That is--true."
+
+"Then you certainly ought not to marry me--but, will you?"
+
+"How can I when I don't--love you."
+
+"You don't love me because you ought not to on such brief
+acquaintance.... But _will_ you love me, Flavilla?"
+
+She looked at him in silence, sitting very still, the bright hair veiling
+her cheeks, the fish's tail curled up against her side.
+
+"_Will_ you?"
+
+"I don't know," she said faintly.
+
+"Try."
+
+"I--am."
+
+"Shall I help you?"
+
+Evidently she had gazed at him long enough; her eyes fell; her white
+fingers picked at the seaweed pods. His arm closed around her; nothing
+stirred but her heart.
+
+"Shall I help you to love me?" he breathed.
+
+"No--I am--past help." She raised her head.
+
+"This is all so--so wrong," she faltered, "that I think it must be
+right.... Do you truly love me?... Don't kiss me if you do.... Now I
+believe you.... Lift me; I can't walk in this fish's tail.... Now set me
+afloat, please."
+
+He lifted her, walked to the water's edge, bent and placed her in the
+sea. In an instant she had darted from his arms out into the waves,
+flashing, turning like a silvery salmon.
+
+"Are you coming?" she called back to him.
+
+He did not stir. She swam in a circle and came up beside the rock. After
+a long, long silence, she lifted up both arms; he bent over. Then, very
+slowly, she drew him down into the water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I am quite sure," she said, as they sat together at luncheon on the
+sandspit which divides Northport Bay from the s.w. of Oyster Bay, "that
+you and I are destined for much trouble when we marry; but I love you so
+dearly that I don't care."
+
+"Neither do I," he said; "will you have another sandwich?"
+
+And, being young and healthy, she took it, and biting into it, smiled
+adorably at her lover.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+OTHER BOOKS BY
+
+ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+
+It was Mr. Chambers himself who wrote of the caprices of the Mystic
+Three--Fate, Chance, and Destiny--and how it frequently happened that a
+young man "tripped over the maliciously extended foot of Fate and fell
+plump into the open arms of Destiny." Perhaps it was due to one of the
+pranks of the mystic sisters that Mr. Chambers himself should lay down
+his brush and palette and take up the pen. Mr. Chambers studied art in
+Paris for seven years. At twenty-four his paintings were accepted at the
+Salon; at twenty-eight he had returned to New York and was busy as an
+illustrator for _Life, Truth_, and other periodicals. But already the
+desire to write was coursing through him. The Latin Quarter of Paris,
+where he had studied so long, seemed to haunt him; he wanted to tell its
+story. So he did write the story and, in 1893, published it under the
+title of "In the Quarter." The same year he published another book, "The
+King in Yellow," a grewsome tale, but remarkably successful. The easel
+was pushed aside; the painter had become writer.
+
+Writing of Mr. Chambers's novel of last fall
+
+THE DANGER MARK
+
+in _The Bookman_, Dr. Frederic Taber Cooper said, "In this last field
+(the society novel) it would seem as though Mr. Chambers had, at length,
+found himself; and the fact that the last of the four books is the best
+and most sustained and most honest piece of work he has yet done affords
+solid ground for the belief that he has still better and maturer volumes
+yet to come. There is no valid reason why Mr. Chambers should not
+ultimately be remembered as the novelist who left behind him a
+comprehensive human comedy of New York."
+
+This is another novel of society life like "The Fighting Chance" and "The
+Firing Line." The chief characters in the story are a boy and a girl,
+inheritors of a vast fortune, whose parents are dead, and who have been
+left in the guardianship of a large Trust Company. They are brought up
+with no companions of their own age and are a unique pair when turned
+out, on coming of age, into New York society--two children educated by a
+great machine, possessors of fabulous wealth, with every inherited
+instinct for good and evil set free for the first time. The fact that the
+girl has acquired the habit of dropping a little cologne on a lump of
+sugar and nibbling it when tired or depressed gives an indication of the
+struggle that the children have before them, a struggle of their own, in
+the midst of their luxurious surroundings, more vital, more real,
+perhaps, than any that Mr. Chambers has yet depicted. It is a tense,
+powerful, highly dramatic story, handling a delicate subject without
+offense to the taste or the judgment of the most critical reader.
+
+Mr. Chambers's third novel of society life is
+
+THE FIRING LINE
+
+Its scenes are laid principally at Palm Beach, and no more distinct yet
+delicately tinted picture of an American fashionable resort, in the full
+blossom of its brief, recurrent glory, has ever been drawn. In this book,
+Mr. Chambers's purpose is to show that the salvation of society lies in
+the constant injection of new blood into its veins. His heroine, the
+captivating Shiela Cardross, of unknown parentage, yet reared in luxury,
+suddenly finds herself on life's firing line, battling with one of the
+most portentous problems a young girl ever had to face. Only a master
+writer could handle her story; Mr. Chambers does it most successfully.
+
+THE YOUNGER SET
+
+is the second of Mr. Chambers's society novels. It takes the reader into
+the swirling society life of fashionable New York, there to wrestle with
+that ever-increasing evil, the divorce question. As a student of life,
+Mr. Chambers is thorough; he knows society; his pictures are so accurate
+that he enables the reader to imbibe the same atmosphere as if he had
+been born and brought up in it. Moreover, no matter how intricate the
+plot may be or how great the lesson to be taught, the romance in the
+story is always foremost. For "The Younger Set," Mr. Chambers has
+provided a hero with a rigid code of honor and the grit to stick to it,
+even though it be unfashionable and out of date. He is a man whom
+everyone would seek to emulate.
+
+The earliest of Mr. Chambers's society novels is
+
+THE FIGHTING CHANCE
+
+It is the story of a young man who has inherited with his wealth a
+craving for liquor, and a girl who has inherited a certain rebelliousness
+and a tendency toward dangerous caprice. The two, meeting on the brink of
+ruin, fight out their battles--two weaknesses joined with love to make a
+strength.
+
+It is sufficient to say of this novel that more than five million people
+have read it. It has taken a permanent place among the best fiction of
+the period.
+
+SPECIAL MESSENGER
+
+is the title of Mr. Chambers's novel just preceding "The Danger Mark." It
+is the romance of a young woman spy and scout in the Civil War. As a
+special messenger in the Union service, she is led into a maze of
+critical situations, but her coolness and bravery and winsome personality
+always carry her on to victory. The story is crowded with dramatic
+incident, the roar of battle, the grim realities of war; and, at times,
+in sharp contrast, comes the tenderest of romance. It is written with an
+understanding and sympathy for the viewpoint of the partisans on both
+sides of the conflict.
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+is a novel of the Revolutionary War. It is the fourth, chronologically,
+of a series of which "Cardigan" and "The Maid-at-Arms" were the first
+two. The third has not yet been written. These novels of New York in the
+Revolutionary days are another striking example of the enthusiasm which
+Mr. Chambers puts into his work. To write an accurate and successful
+historical novel, one must be a historian as well as a romancer. Mr.
+Chambers is an authority on New York State history during the Colonial
+period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up
+old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The
+facts are not obtrusive, but they are there, interwoven in the gauzy woof
+of the artist's imagination. That is why these romances carry conviction
+always, why we breathe the very air of the period as we read them.
+
+IOLE
+
+Another splendid example of the author's versatility is this farcical,
+humorous satire on the _art nouveau_ of to-day, Mr. Chambers, with all
+his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a
+pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the
+Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and eat nuts and fruit, and
+listen to him while he lectures them and everybody else on art. It is
+easy to imagine what happens when several rich and practical young New
+Yorkers stumble upon this group. Everybody is happy in the end.
+
+One might run on for twenty books more, but there is not space enough
+more than to mention "The Tracer of Lost Persons," "The Tree of Heaven,"
+"Some Ladies in Haste," and Mr. Chambers's delightful nature books for
+children, telling how _Geraldine_ and _Peter_ go wandering through
+"Outdoor-Land," "Mountain-Land," "Orchard-Land," "River-Land," "Forest-
+Land," and "Garden-Land." They, in turn, are as different from his novels
+in fancy and conception as each of his novels from the other.
+
+Mr. Chambers is a born optimist. The labor of writing is a natural
+enjoyment to him. In reading anything he has written, one is at once
+impressed with the ease with which it moves along. There is no straining
+after effects, no affectations, no hysteria; but always there is a
+personality, an individuality that appeals to the best side of the
+reader's nature and somehow builds up a personal relation between him and
+the author. Perhaps it is this consummate skill, this remarkable ability
+to win the reader that has enabled Mr. Chambers to increase his audience
+year after year, until it now numbers millions; and it is only just that
+critics should, as they frequently do, proclaim him "the most popular
+writer in the country."
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN MOUSE***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 10441.txt or 10441.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
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