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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12482 ***
+
+THE METTLE OF THE PASTURE
+
+BY
+
+JAMES LANE ALLEN
+
+Author of "The Choir Invisible," "A Kentucky Cardinal," etc., etc.
+
+New York, 1903
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To My Sister
+
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST
+
+I
+
+She did not wish any supper and she sank forgetfully back into the
+stately oak chair.  One of her hands lay palm upward on her white
+lap; in the other, which drooped over the arm of the chair, she
+clasped a young rose dark red amid its leaves--an inverted torch of
+love.
+
+Old-fashioned glass doors behind her reached from a high ceiling to
+the floor; they had been thrown open and the curtains looped apart.
+Stone steps outside led downward to the turf in the rear of the
+house.  This turf covered a lawn unroughened by plant or weed; but
+over it at majestic intervals grew clumps of gray pines and
+dim-blue, ever wintry firs.  Beyond lawn and evergreens a flower
+garden bloomed; and beyond the high fence enclosing this, tree-tops
+and house-tops of the town could be seen; and beyond these--away in
+the west--the sky was naming now with the falling sun.
+
+A few bars of dusty gold hung poised across the darkening spaces of
+the supper room.  Ripples of the evening air, entering through the
+windows, flowed over her, lifting the thick curling locks at the
+nape of her neck, creeping forward over her shoulders and passing
+along her round arms under the thin fabric of her sleeves.
+
+They aroused her, these vanishing beams of the day, these arriving
+breezes of the night; they became secret invitations to escape from
+the house into the privacy of the garden, where she could be alone
+with thoughts of her great happiness now fast approaching.
+
+A servant entered noiselessly, bringing a silver bowl of frozen
+cream.  Beside this, at the head of the table before her
+grandmother, he placed scarlet strawberries gathered that morning
+under white dews.  She availed herself of the slight interruption
+and rose with an apology; but even when love bade her go, love also
+bade her linger; she could scarce bear to be with them, but she
+could scarce bear to be alone.  She paused at her grandmother's
+chair to stroke the dry bronze puffs on her temples--a unique
+impulse; she hesitated compassionately a moment beside her aunt,
+who had never married; then, passing around to the opposite side of
+the table, she took between her palms the sunburnt cheeks of a
+youth, her cousin, and buried her own tingling cheek in his hair.
+Instinct at that moment drew her most to him because he was young
+as she was young, having life and love before him as she had; only,
+for him love stayed far in the future; for her it came to-night.
+
+When she had crossed the room and reached the hall, she paused and
+glanced back, held by the tension of cords which she dreaded to
+break.  She felt that nothing would ever be the same again in the
+home of her childhood.  Until marriage she would remain under its
+dear honored roof, and there would be no outward interruption of
+its familiar routine; but for her all the bonds of life would have
+become loosened from old ties and united in him alone whom this
+evening she was to choose as her lot and destiny.  Under the
+influence of that fresh fondness, therefore, which wells up so
+strangely within us at the thought of parting from home and home
+people, even though we may not greatly care for them, she now stood
+gazing at the picture they formed as though she were already
+calling it back through the distances of memory and the changes of
+future years.
+
+They, too, had shifted their positions and were looking at her with
+one undisguised expression of pride and love; and they smiled as
+she smiled radiantly back at them, waving a last adieu with her
+spray of rose and turning quickly in a dread of foolish tears.
+
+"Isabel."
+
+It was the youthful voice of her grandmother.  She faced them again
+with a little frown of feigned impatience.
+
+"If you are going into the garden, throw something around your
+shoulders."
+
+"Thank you, grandmother; I have my lace."
+
+Crossing the hall, she went into the front parlor, took from a
+damask sofa a rare shawl of white lace and, walking to a mirror,
+threw it over her head, absently noting the effect in profile.  She
+lifted this off and, breaking the rose from part of its stem,
+pinned that on her breast.  Then, stepping aside to one of the
+large lofty windows, she stood there under the droop of the
+curtains, sunk into reverie again and looking out upon the yard and
+the street beyond.
+
+Hardly a sound disturbed the twilight stillness.  A lamplighter
+passed, torching the grim lamps.  A sauntering carrier threw the
+evening newspaper over the gate, with his unintelligible cry.  A
+dog-cart rumbled by, and later, a brougham; people were not yet
+returned from driving on the country turnpikes.  Once, some belated
+girls clattered past on ponies.  But already little children,
+bare-armed, bare-necked, swinging lanterns, and attended by proud
+young mothers, were on their way to a summer-night festival in the
+park.  Up and down the street family groups were forming on the
+verandas.  The red disks of cigars could be seen, and the laughter
+of happy women was wafted across the dividing fences and shrubbery,
+and vines.
+
+Breaking again through her reverie, which seemed to envelop her,
+wherever she went, like a beautiful cloud, she left the window and
+appeared at the front door.  Palms stood on each side of the
+granite steps, and these arched their tropical leaves far over
+toward her quiet feet as she passed down.  Along the pavement were
+set huge green boxes, in which white oleanders grew, and flaming
+pomegranates, and crepe myrtle thickly roofed with pink.  She was
+used to hover about them at this hour, but she strolled past,
+unmindful now, the daily habit obliterated, the dumb little tie
+quite broken.  The twisted newspaper lay white on the shadowed
+pavement before her eyes and she did not see that.  She walked on
+until she reached the gate and, folding her hands about one of the
+brass globes surmounting the iron spikes, leaned over and probed
+with impatient eyes the long dusk of the street; as far as he could
+be seen coming she wished to see him.
+
+It was too early.  So she filled her eyes with pictures of the
+daylight fading over woods and fields far out in the country.  But
+the entire flock of wistful thoughts settled at last about a large
+house situated on a wooded hill some miles from town.  A lawn
+sloped upward to it from the turnpike, and there was a gravelled
+driveway.  She unlatched the gate, approached the house, passed
+through the wide hall, ascended the stairs, stood at the door of
+his room--waiting.  Why did he not come?  How could he linger?
+
+Dreamily she turned back; and following a narrow walk, passed to
+the rear of the house and thence across the lawn of turf toward the
+garden.
+
+A shower had fallen early in the day and the grass had been cut
+afterwards.  Afternoon sunshine had drunk the moisture, leaving the
+fragrance released and floating.  The warmth of the cooling earth
+reached her foot through the sole of her slipper.  On the plume of
+a pine, a bird was sending its last call after the bright hours,
+while out of the firs came the tumult of plainer kinds as they
+mingled for common sleep.  The heavy cry of the bullbat fell from
+far above, and looking up quickly for a sight of his winnowing
+wings under the vast purpling vault she beheld the earliest stars.
+
+Thus, everywhere, under her feet, over her head, and beyond the
+reach of vision, because inhabiting that realm into which the
+spirit alone can send its aspiration and its prayer, was one
+influence, one spell: the warmth of the good wholesome earth, its
+breath of sweetness, its voices of peace and love and rest, the
+majesty of its flashing dome; and holding all these safe as in the
+hollow of a hand the Eternal Guardianship of the world.
+
+As she strolled around the garden under the cloudy flush of the
+evening sky dressed in white, a shawl of white lace over one arm, a
+rose on her breast, she had the exquisiteness of a long past,
+during which women have been chosen in marriage for health and
+beauty and children and the power to charm.  The very curve of her
+neck implied generations of mothers who had valued grace.
+Generations of forefathers had imparted to her walk and bearing
+their courage and their pride.  The precision of the eyebrow, the
+chiselled perfection of the nostril, the loveliness of the short
+red lip; the well-arched feet, small, but sure of themselves; the
+eyes that were kind and truthful and thoughtful; the sheen of her
+hair, the fineness of her skin, her nobly cast figure,--all these
+were evidences of descent from a people, that had reached in her
+the purity, without having lost the vigor, of one of its highest
+types.
+
+She had supposed that when he came the servant would receive him
+and announce his arrival, but in a little while the sound of a step
+on the gravel reached her ear; she paused and listened.  It was
+familiar, but it was unnatural--she remembered this afterwards.
+
+She began to walk away from him, her beautiful head suddenly arched
+far forward, her bosom rising and falling under her clasped hands,
+her eyes filling with wonderful light.  Then regaining composure
+because losing consciousness of herself in the thought of him, she
+turned and with divine simplicity of soul advanced to meet him.
+
+Near the centre of the garden there was an open spot where two
+pathways crossed; and it was here, emerging from the shrubbery,
+that they came in sight of each other.  Neither spoke.  Neither
+made in advance a sign of greeting.  When they were a few yards
+apart she paused, flushing through her whiteness; and he, dropping
+his hat from his hand, stepped quickly forward, gathered her hands
+into his and stood looking down on her in silence.  He was very
+pale and barely controlled himself.
+
+"Isabel!" It was all he could say.
+
+"Rowan!" she answered at length.  She spoke under her breath and
+stood before him with her head drooping, her eyes on the ground.
+Then he released her and she led the way at once out of the garden.
+
+When they had reached the front of the house, sounds of
+conversation on the veranda warned them that there were guests, and
+without concealing their desire to be alone they passed to a rustic
+bench under one of the old trees, standing between the house and
+the street; they were used to sitting there; they had known each
+other all their lives.
+
+A long time they forced themselves to talk of common and trivial
+things, the one great meaning of the hour being avoided by each.
+Meanwhile it was growing very late.  The children had long before
+returned drowsily home held by the hand, their lanterns dropped on
+the way or still clung to, torn and darkened.  No groups laughed on
+the verandas; but gas-jets had been lighted and turned low as
+people undressed for bed.  The guests of the family had gone.  Even
+Isabel's grandmother had not been able further to put away sleep
+from her plotting brain in order to send out to them a final
+inquisitive thought--the last reconnoitring bee of all the
+In-gathered hive.  Now, at length, as absolutely as he could have
+wished, he was alone with her and secure from interruption.
+
+The moon had sunk so low that its rays fell in a silvery stream on
+her white figure; only a waving bough of the tree overhead still
+brushed with shadow her neck and face.  As the evening waned, she
+had less to say to him, growing always more silent in new dignity,
+more mute with happiness.
+
+He pushed himself abruptly away from her side and bending over
+touched his lips reverently to the back of one of her hands, as
+they lay on the shawl in her lap.
+
+"Isabel," and then he hesitated.
+
+"Yes," she answered sweetly.  She paused likewise, requiring
+nothing more; it was enough that he should speak her name.
+
+He changed his position and sat looking ahead.  Presently he began
+again, choosing his words as a man might search among terrible
+weapons for the least deadly.
+
+"When I wrote and asked you to marry me, I said I should come
+to-night and receive your answer from your own lips.  If your
+answer had been different, I should never have spoken to you of my
+past.  It would not have been my duty.  I should not have had the
+right.  I repeat, Isabel, that until you had confessed your love
+for me, I should have had no right to speak to you about my past.
+But now there is something you ought to be told at once."
+
+She glanced up quickly with a rebuking smile.  How could he wander
+so far from the happiness of moments too soon to end?  What was his
+past to her?
+
+He went on more guardedly.
+
+"Ever since I have loved you, I have realized what I should have to
+tell you if you ever returned my love.  Sometimes duty has seemed
+one thing, sometimes another.  This is why I have waited so
+long--more than two years; the way was not clear.  Isabel, it will
+never be clear.  I believe now it is wrong to tell you; I believe
+It is wrong not to tell you.  I have thought and thought--it is
+wrong either way.  But the least wrong to you and to myself--that
+is what I have always tried to see, and as I understand my duty,
+now that you are willing to unite your life with mine, there is
+something you must know."
+
+He added the last words as though he had reached a difficult
+position and were announcing his purpose to hold it.  But he paused
+gloomily again.
+
+She had scarcely heard him through wonderment that he could so
+change at such a moment.  Her happiness began to falter and darken
+like departing sunbeams.  She remained for a space uncertain of
+herself, knowing neither what was needed nor what was best; then
+she spoke with resolute deprecation:
+
+"Why discuss with me your past life?  Have I not known you always?"
+
+These were not the words of girlhood.  She spoke from the emotions
+of womanhood, beginning to-night in the plighting of her troth.
+
+"You have trusted me too much, Isabel."
+
+Repulsed a second time, she now fixed her large eyes upon him with
+surprise.  The next moment she had crossed lightly once more the
+widening chasm.
+
+"Rowan," she said more gravely and with slight reproach, "I have
+not waited so long and then not known the man whom I have chosen."
+
+"Ah," he cried, with a gesture of distress.
+
+Thus they sat: she silent with new thoughts; he speechless with his
+old ones.  Again she was the first to speak.  More deeply moved by
+the sight of his increasing excitement, she took one of his hands
+into both of hers, pressing it with a delicate tenderness.
+
+"What is it that troubles you, Rowan?  Tell me!  It is my duty to
+listen.  I have the right to know."
+
+He shrank from what he had never heard in her voice
+before--disappointment in him.  And it was neither girlhood nor
+womanhood which had spoken now: it was comradeship which is
+possible to girlhood and to womanhood through wifehood alone: she
+was taking their future for granted.  He caught her hand and lifted
+it again and again to his lips; then he turned away from her.
+
+Thus shut out from him again, she sat looking out into the night.
+
+But in a woman's complete love of a man there is something deeper
+than girlhood or womanhood or wifehood: it is the maternal--that
+dependence on his strength when he is well and strong, that passion
+of protection and defence when he is frail or stricken.  Into her
+mood and feeling toward him even the maternal had forced its way.
+She would have found some expression for it but he anticipated her.
+
+"I am thinking of you, of my duty to you, of your happiness."
+
+She realized at last some terrible hidden import in all that he had
+been trying to confess.  A shrouded mysterious Shape of Evil was
+suddenly disclosed as already standing on the threshold of the
+House of Life which they were about to enter together.  The night
+being warm, she had not used her shawl.  Now she threw it over her
+head and gathered the weblike folds tightly under her throat as
+though she were growing cold.  The next instant, with a swift
+movement, she tore it from her head and pushed herself as far as
+possible away from him out into the moonlight; and she sat there
+looking at him, wild with distrust and fear.
+
+He caught sight of her face.
+
+"Oh, I am doing wrong," he cried miserably.  "I must not tell you
+this!"
+
+He sprang up and hurried over to the pavement and began to walk to
+and fro.  He walked to and fro a long time; and after waiting for
+him to return, she came quickly and stood in his path.  But when he
+drew near her he put out his hand.
+
+"I cannot!" he repeated, shaking his head and turning away.
+
+Still she waited, and when he approached and was turning away
+again, she stepped forward and laid on his arm her quivering
+finger-tips.
+
+"You must," she said.  "You _shall_ tell me!" and if there was
+anger in her voice, if there was anguish in it, there was the
+authority likewise of holy and sovereign rights.  But he thrust her
+all but rudely away, and going to the lower end of the pavement,
+walked there backward and forward with his hat pulled low over his
+eyes--walked slowly, always more slowly.  Twice he laid his hand on
+the gate as though he would have passed out.  At last he stopped
+and looked back to where she waited in the light, her face set
+immovably, commandingly, toward him.  Then he came back and stood
+before her.
+
+The moon, now sinking low, shone full on his face, pale, sad, very
+quiet; and into his eyes, mournful as she had never known any eyes
+to be.  He had taken off his hat and held it in his hand, and a
+light wind blew his thick hair about his forehead and temples.
+She, looking at him with senses preternaturally aroused, afterwards
+remembered all this.
+
+Before he began to speak he saw rush over her face a look of final
+entreaty that he would not strike her too cruel a blow.  This, when
+he had ceased speaking, was succeeded by the expression of one who
+has received a shock beyond all imagination.  Thus they stood
+looking into each other's eyes; then she shrank back and started
+toward the house.
+
+He sprang after her.
+
+"You are leaving me!" he cried horribly.
+
+She walked straight on, neither quickening nor slackening her pace
+nor swerving, although his body began unsteadily to intercept hers.
+
+He kept beside her.
+
+"Don't!  Isabel!" he prayed out of his agony.  "Don't leave me like
+this--!"
+
+She walked on and reached the steps of the veranda.  Crying out in
+his longing he threw his arms around her and held her close.
+
+"You must not! You shall not!  Do you know what you are doing,
+Isabel?"
+
+She made not the least reply, not the least effort to extricate
+herself.  But she closed her eyes and shuddered and twisted her
+body away from him as a bird of the air bends its neck and head as
+far as possible from a repulsive captor; and like the heart of such
+a bird, he could feel the throbbing of her heart.
+
+Her mute submission to his violence stung him: he let her go.  She
+spread out her arms as though in a rising flight of her nature and
+the shawl, tossed backward from her shoulders, fell to the ground:
+it was as if she cast off the garment he had touched.  Then she
+went quickly up the steps.  Before she could reach the door he
+confronted her again; he pressed his back against it.  She
+stretched out her hand and rang the bell.  He stepped aside very
+quickly--proudly.  She entered, closing and locking noiselessly the
+door that no sound might reach the servant she had summoned.  As
+she did so she heard him try the knob and call to her in an
+undertone of last reproach and last entreaty:
+
+"_Isabel!--Isabel!--Isabel_!"
+
+Hurrying through the hall, she ran silently up the stairs to her
+room and shut herself in.
+
+Her first feeling was joy that she was there safe from him and from
+every one else for the night.  Her instant need was to be alone.
+It was this feeling also that caused her to go on tiptoe around the
+room and draw down the blinds, as though the glimmering windows
+were large eyes peering at her with intrusive wounding stare.  Then
+taking her position close to a front window, she listened.  He was
+walking slowly backward and forward on the pavement reluctantly,
+doubtfully; finally he passed through the gate.  As it clanged
+heavily behind him, Isabel pressed her hands convulsively to her
+heart as though it also had gates which had closed, never to reopen.
+
+Then she lighted the gas-jets beside the bureau and when she caught
+sight of herself the thought came how unchanged she looked.  She
+stood there, just as she had stood before going down to supper,
+nowhere a sign of all the deep displacement and destruction that
+had gone on within.
+
+But she said to herself that what he had told her would reveal
+itself in time.  It would lie in the first furrows deepening down
+her cheeks; it would be the earliest frost of years upon her hair.
+
+A long while she sat on the edge of the couch in the middle of the
+room under the brilliant gaslight, her hands forgotten in her lap,
+her brows arched high, her eyes on the floor.  Then her head
+beginning to ache, a new sensation for her, she thought she should
+bind a wet handkerchief to it as she had often done for her aunt;
+but the water which the maid had placed in the room had become
+warm.  She must go down to the ewer in the hall.  As she did so,
+she recollected her shawl.
+
+It was lying on the wet grass where it had fallen.  There was a
+half-framed accusing thought that he might have gone for it; but
+she put the thought away; the time had passed for courtesies from
+him.  When she stooped for the shawl, an owl flew viciously at her,
+snapping its bill close to her face and stirring the air with its
+wings.  Unnerved, she ran back into the porch, but stopped there
+ashamed and looking kindly toward the tree in which it made its
+home.
+
+An old vine of darkest green had wreathed itself about the pillars
+of the veranda on that side; and it was at a frame-like opening in
+the massive foliage of this that the upper part of her pure white
+figure now stood revealed in the last low, silvery, mystical light.
+The sinking of the moon was like a great death on the horizon,
+leaving the pall of darkness, the void of infinite loss.
+
+She hung upon this far spectacle of nature with sad intensity,
+figuring from it some counterpart of the tragedy taking place
+within her own mind.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Isabel slept soundly, the regular habit of healthy years being too
+firmly entrenched to give way at once.  Meanwhile deep changes were
+wrought out in her.
+
+When we fall asleep, we do not lay aside the thoughts of the day,
+as the hand its physical work; nor upon awakening return to the
+activity of these as it to the renewal of its toil, finding them
+undisturbed.  Our most piercing insight yields no deeper conception
+of life than that of perpetual building and unbuilding; and during
+what we call our rest, it is often most active in executing its
+inscrutable will.  All along the dark chimneys of the brain,
+clinging like myriads of swallows deep-buried and slumbrous in
+quiet and in soot, are the countless thoughts which lately winged
+the wide heaven of conscious day.  Alike through dreaming and
+through dreamless hours Life moves among these, handling and
+considering each of the unredeemable multitude; and when morning
+light strikes the dark chimneys again and they rush forth, some
+that entered young have matured; some of the old have become
+infirm; many of which have dropped in singly issue as companies;
+and young broods flutter forth, unaccountable nestlings of a night,
+which were not in yesterday's blue at all.  Then there are the
+missing--those that went in with the rest at nightfall but were
+struck from the walls forever.  So all are altered, for while we
+have slept we have still been subject to that on-moving energy of
+the world which incessantly renews us yet transmutes us--double
+mystery of our permanence and our change.
+
+It was thus that nature dealt with Isabel on this night: hours of
+swift difficult transition from her former life to that upon which
+she was now to enter.  She fell asleep overwhelmed amid the ruins
+of the old; she awoke already engaged with the duties of the new.
+At sundown she was a girl who had never confessed her love; at
+sunrise she was a woman who had discarded the man she had just
+accepted.  Rising at once and dressing with despatch, she entered
+upon preparations for completing her spiritual separation from
+Rowan in every material way.
+
+The books he had lent her--these she made ready to return this
+morning.  Other things, also, trifles in themselves but until now
+so freighted with significance.  Then his letters and notes, how
+many, how many they were!  Thus ever about her rooms she moved on
+this mournful occupation until the last thing had been disposed of
+as either to be sent back or to be destroyed.
+
+And then while Isabel waited for breakfast to be announced, always
+she was realizing how familiar seemed Rowan's terrible confession,
+already lying far from her across the fields of memory--with a path
+worn deep between it and herself as though she had been traversing
+the distance for years; so old can sorrow grow during a little
+sleep.  When she went down they were seated as she had left them
+the evening before, grandmother, aunt, cousin; and they looked up
+with the same pride and fondness.  But affection has so different a
+quality in the morning.  Then the full soundless rides which come
+in at nightfall have receded; and in their stead is the glittering
+beach with thin waves that give no rest to the ear or to the
+shore--thin noisy edge of the deeps of the soul.
+
+This fresh morning mood now ruled them; no such wholesome relief
+had come to her.  So that their laughter and high spirits jarred
+upon her strangely.  She had said to herself upon leaving them the
+evening before that never again could they be the same to her or
+she the same to them.  But then she had expected to return isolated
+by incommunicable happiness; now she had returned isolated by
+incommunicable grief.  Nevertheless she glided Into her seat with
+feigned cheerfulness, taking a natural part in their conversation;
+and she rose at last, smiling with the rest.
+
+But she immediately quitted the house, eager to be out of doors
+surrounded by things that she loved but that could not observe her
+or question her in return--alone with things that know not evil.
+
+These were the last days of May.  The rush of Summer had already
+carried it far northward over the boundaries of Spring, and on this
+Sunday morning it filled the grounds of Isabel's home with early
+warmth.  Quickened by the heat, summoned by the blue, drenched with
+showers and dews, all things which have been made repositories of
+the great presence of Life were engaged in realizing the utmost
+that it meant to them.
+
+It was in the midst of this splendor of light and air, fragrance,
+colors, shapes, movements, melodies and joys that Isabel, the
+loftiest receptacle of life among them all, soon sat in a secluded
+spot, motionless and listless with her unstanched and desperate
+wound.  Everything seemed happy but herself; the very brilliancy of
+the day only deepened the shadow under which she brooded.  As she
+had slipped away from the house, she would soon have escaped from
+the garden had there been any further retreat.
+
+It was not necessary long to wait for one.  Borne across the brown
+roofs and red chimneys of the town and exploding in the crystal air
+above her head like balls of mellow music, came the sounds of the
+first church bells, the bells of Christ Church.
+
+They had never conveyed other meaning to her than that proclaimed
+by the town clock: they sounded the hour.  She had been too
+untroubled during her young life to understand their aged argument
+and invitation.
+
+Held In the arms of her father, when a babe, she had been duly
+christened.  His death had occurred soon afterwards, then her
+mother's.  Under the nurture of a grandmother to whom religion was
+a convenience and social form, she had received the strictest
+ceremonial but in no wise any spiritual training.  The first
+conscious awakening of this beautiful unearthly sense had not taken
+place until the night of her confirmation--a wet April evening when
+the early green of the earth was bowed to the ground, and the
+lilies-of-the-valley in the yard had chilled her fingers as she had
+plucked them (chosen flower of her consecration); she and they but
+rising alike into their higher lives out of the same mysterious
+Mother.
+
+That night she had knelt among the others at the chancel and the
+bishop who had been a friend of her father's, having approached her
+in the long line of young and old, had laid his hands the more
+softly for his memories upon her brow with the impersonal prayer:
+
+"_Defend, O Lord, this thy child with thy heavenly grace, that she
+may continue thine forever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit
+more and more, until she come unto thy Everlasting Kingdom_."
+
+For days afterwards a steady radiance seemed to Isabel to rest upon
+her wherever she went, shed straight from Eternity.  She had
+avoided her grandmother, secluded herself from the closest
+companions, been very thoughtful.
+
+Years had elapsed since.  But no experience of the soul is ever
+wasted or effaceable; and as the sound of the bells now reached her
+across the garden, they reawoke the spiritual impulses which had
+stirred within her at confirmation.  First heard whispering then,
+the sacred annunciation now more eloquently urged that in her
+church, the hour of real need being come, she would find refuge,
+help, more than earthly counsellor.
+
+She returned unobserved to the house and after quick simple
+preparation, was on her way.
+
+When she slipped shrinkingly into her pew, scarce any one had
+arrived.  Several women in mourning were there and two or three
+aged men.  It is the sorrowful and the old who head the human host
+in its march toward Paradise: Youth and Happiness loiter far behind
+and are satisfied with the earth.  Isabel looked around with a
+poignant realization of the broken company over into which she had
+so swiftly crossed.
+
+She had never before been in the church when it was empty.  How
+hushed and solemn it waited in its noonday twilight--the Divine
+already there, faithful keeper of the ancient compact; the human
+not yet arrived.  Here indeed was the refuge she had craved; here
+the wounded eye of the soul could open unhurt and unafraid; and she
+sank to her knees with a quick prayer of the heart, scarce of the
+lips, for Isabel knew nothing about prayer in her own words--that
+she might have peace of mind during these guarded hours: there
+would be so much time afterwards in which to remember--so many
+years in which to remember!
+
+How still it was!  At first she started at every sound: the barely
+audible opening and shutting of a pew door by some careful hand;
+the grating of wheels on the cobblestones outside as a carriage was
+driven to the entrance; the love-calls of sparrows building in the
+climbing oak around the Gothic windows.
+
+Soon, however, her ear became sealed to all outward disturbance.
+She had fled to the church, driven by many young impulses, but
+among them was the keen hope that her new Sorrow, which had begun
+to follow her everywhere since she awoke, would wait outside when
+she entered those doors: so dark a spirit would surely not stalk
+behind her into the very splendor of the Spotless.  But as she now
+let her eyes wander down the isle to the chancel railing where she
+had knelt at confirmation, where bridal couples knelt in receiving
+the benediction, Isabel felt that this new Care faced her from
+there as from its appointed shrine; she even fancied that in effect
+it addressed to her a solemn warning:
+
+"Isabel, think not to escape me in this place!  It is here that
+Rowan must seem to you most unworthy and most false; to have
+wronged you most cruelly.  For it was here, at this altar, that you
+had expected to kneel beside him and be blessed in your marriage.
+In years to come, sitting where you now sit, you may live to see
+him kneel here with another, making her his wife.  But for you,
+Isabel, this spot must ever mean the renunciation of marriage, the
+bier of love.  Then do not think to escape me here, me, who am
+Remembrance."
+
+And Isabel, as though a command had been laid upon her, with her
+eyes fixed on the altar over which the lights of the stained glass
+windows were joyously playing, gave herself up to memories of all
+the innocent years that she had known Rowan and of the blind years
+that she had loved him.
+
+She was not herself aware that marriage was the only sacrament of
+religion that had ever possessed interest for her.  Recollection
+told her no story of how even as a child she had liked to go to the
+crowded church with other children and watch the procession of the
+brides--all mysterious under their white veils, and following one
+and another so closely during springs and autumns that in truth
+they were almost a procession.  Or with what excitement she had
+watched each walk out, leaning on the arm of the man she had chosen
+and henceforth to be called his in ail things to the end while the
+loud crash of the wedding march closed their separate pasts with a
+single melody.
+
+But there were mothers in the church who, attracted by the child's
+expression, would say to each other a little sadly perhaps, that
+love and marriage were destined to be the one overshadowing or
+overshining experience in life to this most human and poetic soul.
+
+After she had learned of Rowan's love for her and had begun to
+return his love, the altar had thenceforth become the more personal
+symbol of their destined happiness.  Every marriage that she
+witnessed bound her more sacredly to him.  Only a few months before
+this, at the wedding of the Osborns--Kate being her closest friend,
+and George Osborn being Rowan's--he and she had been the only
+attendants; and she knew how many persons in the church were
+thinking that they might be the next to plight their vows; with
+crimsoning cheeks she had thought it herself.
+
+Now there returned before Isabel's eyes the once radiant procession
+of the brides--but how changed!  And bitter questioning she
+addressed to each!  Had any such confession been made to any one of
+them--either before marriage or afterwards--by the man she had
+loved?  Was it for some such reason that one had been content to
+fold her hands over her breast before the birth of her child?  Was
+this why another lived on, sad young wife, motherless?  Was this
+why in the town there were women who refused to marry at all?  So
+does a little knowledge of evil move backward and darken for us
+even the bright years in which it had no place.
+
+The congregation were assembling rapidly.  Among those who passed
+further down were several of the girls of Isabel's set.  How fresh
+and sweet they looked as they drifted gracefully down the aisles
+this summer morning!  How light-hearted!  How far away from her in
+her new wretchedness!  Some, after they were seated, glanced back
+with a smile.  She avoided their eyes.
+
+A little later the Osborns entered, the bride and groom of a few
+months before.  Their pew was immediately in front of hers.  Kate
+wore mourning for her mother.  As she seated herself, she lifted
+her veil halfway, turned and slipped a hand over the pew into
+Isabel's.  The tremulous pressure of the fingers spoke of present
+trouble; and as Isabel returned it with a quick response of her
+own, a tear fell from the hidden eyes.
+
+The young groom's eyes were also red and swollen, but for other
+reasons; and he sat in the opposite end of the pew as far as
+possible from his wife's side.  When she a few moments later leaned
+toward him with timidity and hesitation, offering him an open
+prayer-book, he took it coldly and laid it between them on the
+cushion.  Isabel shuddered: her new knowledge of evil so cruelly
+opened her eyes to the full understanding of so much.
+
+Little rime was left for sympathy with Kate.  Nearer the pulpit was
+another pew from which her thoughts had never been wholly
+withdrawn.  She had watched it with the fascination of abhorrence;
+and once, feeling that she could not bear to see him come in with
+his mother and younger brother, she had started to leave the
+church.  But just then her grandmother had bustled richly in,
+followed by her aunt; and more powerful with Isabel already than
+any other feeling was the wish to bury her secret--Rowan's
+secret--in the deepest vault of consciousness, to seal it up
+forever from the knowledge of the world.
+
+The next moment what she so dreaded took place.  He walked quietly
+down the aisle as usual, opened the pew for his mother and brother
+with the same courtesy, and the three bent their heads together in
+prayer.
+
+"Grandmother," she whispered quickly, "will you let me pass!  I am
+not very well, I think I shall go home."
+
+Her grandmother, not heeding and with her eyes fixed upon the same
+pew, whispered in return;
+
+"The Merediths are here," and continued her satisfying scrutiny of
+persons seated around.
+
+Isabel herself had no sooner suffered the words to escape than she
+regretted them.  Resolved to control herself from this time on, she
+unclasped her prayer-book, found the appointed reading, and
+directed her thoughts to the service soon to begin.
+
+It was part of the confession of David that reached her, sounding
+across how many centuries.  Wrung from him who had been a young man
+himself and knew what a young man is.  With time enough afterwards
+to think of this as soldier, priest, prophet, care-worn king, and
+fallible judge over men--with time enough to think of what his days
+of nature had been when he tended sheep grazing the pastures of
+Bethlehem or abided solitary with the flock by night, lowly
+despised work, under the herded stars.  Thus converting a young
+man's memories into an older man's remorses.
+
+As she began to read, the first outcry gripped and cramped her
+heart like physical pain; where all her life she had been repeating
+mere words, she now with eyes tragically opened discerned forbidden
+meanings:
+
+"_Thou art about my path and about my bed . . .  the darkness is no
+darkness to thee. . . .  Thine eyes did see my substance being yet
+imperfect . . .  look well if there be any wickedness in me; and
+lead me in the way everlasting . . .  haste thee unto me . . .
+when I cry unto thee.  O let not my heart be inclined to an evil
+thing_."
+
+She was startled by a general movement throughout the congregation.
+The minister had advanced to the reading desk and begun to read:
+
+"_I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him: Father, I
+have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to
+be called thy son_."
+
+Ages stretched their human wastes between these words of the New
+Testament and those other words of the Old; but the parable of
+Christ really finished the prayer of David: in each there was the
+same young prodigal--the ever-falling youth of humanity.
+
+Another moment and the whole congregation knelt and began the
+confession.  Isabel also from long custom sank upon her knees and
+started to repeat the words, "We have erred and strayed from thy
+ways like lost sheep."  Then she stopped.  She declined to make
+that confession with Rowan or to join in any service that he shared
+and appropriated.
+
+The Commandments now remained and for the first time she shrank
+from them as being so awful and so near.  All our lives we placidly
+say over to ourselves that man is mortal; but not until death
+knocks at the threshold and enters do we realize the terrors of our
+mortality.  All our lives we repeat with dull indifference that man
+is erring; but only when the soul most loved and trusted has gone
+astray, do we begin to realize the tragedy of human imperfection.
+So Isabel had been used to go through the service, with bowed head
+murmuring at each response, "_Lord have mercy upon us and incline
+our hearts to keep this law_."
+
+But the laws themselves had been no more to her than pious archaic
+statements, as far removed as the cherubim, the candlesticks and
+the cedar of Solomon's temple.  If her thoughts had been forced to
+the subject, she would have perhaps admitted the necessity of these
+rules for men and women ages ago.  Some one of them might have
+meant much to a girl in those dim days: to Rebecca pondering who
+knows what temptation at the well; to Ruth tempted who knows how in
+the corn and thinking of Boaz and the barn; to Judith plotting in
+the camp; to Jephtha's daughter out on the wailing mountains.
+
+But to-day, sitting in an Episcopal church in the closing years of
+the nineteenth century, holding a copy of those old laws, and
+thinking of Rowan as the breaker of the greatest of them, Isabel
+for the first time awoke to realization of how close they are
+still--those voices from the far land of Shinar; how all the men
+and women around her in that church still waged their moral battles
+over those few texts of righteousness; how the sad and sublime
+wandering caravans of the whole race forever pitch their nightly
+tents beneath that same mountain of command.
+
+Thick and low sounded the response of the worshippers.  She could
+hear her grandmother's sonorous voice, a mingling of worldly
+triumph and indifference; her aunt's plaintive and aggrieved.  She
+could hear Kate's needy and wounded.  In imagination she could hear
+his proud, noble mother's; his younger brother's.  Against the
+sound of his responses she closed all hearing; and there low on her
+knees, in the ear of Heaven itself, she recorded against him her
+unforgiveness and her dismissal forever.
+
+An organ melody followed, thrillingly sweet; and borne outward on
+it the beseeching of the All-Merciful:
+
+  "'Art thou weary, art thou languid,
+    Art thou sore distressed?
+  Come to me!' saith one; 'and, coming,
+    Be at rest!'"
+
+It was this hymn that brought her in a passion to her feet.
+
+With whatsoever other feelings she had sought the church, it was at
+least with the hope that it had a message for her.  She had indeed
+listened to a personal message, but it was a message delivered to
+the wrong person; for at every stage of the worship she, the
+innocent, had been forgotten and slighted; Rowan, the guilty, had
+been considered and comforted.  David had his like in mind and
+besought pardon for him; the prophet of old knew of a case like his
+and blessed him; the apostle centuries afterward looked on and did
+not condemn; Christ himself had in a way told the multitude the
+same story that Rowan had told her,--counselling forgiveness.  The
+very hymns of the church were on Rowan's side--every one gone in
+search of the wanderer.  For on this day Religion, universal mother
+of needy souls and a minister of all comforts, was in the mood to
+deal only with youth and human frailty.
+
+She rebelled.  It was like commanding her to dishonor a woman's
+strongest and purest instincts.  It called upon her to sympathize
+with the evil that had blighted her life.  And Rowan himself!--in
+her anger and suffering she could think of him in no other way than
+as enjoying this immortal chorus of anxiety on his account; as
+hearing it all with complacency and self-approval.  It had to her
+distorted imagination the effect of offering a reward to him for
+having sinned; he would have received no such attention had he
+remained innocent.
+
+With one act of complete revulsion she spurned it all: the moral
+casuistry that beguiled him, the church that cloaked him; spurned
+psalm and prophet and apostle, Christ and parable and song.
+
+"Grandmother," she whispered, "I shall not wait for the sermon."
+
+A moment later she issued from the church doors and took her way
+slowly homeward through the deserted streets, under the lonely blue
+of the unanswering sky.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The Conyers homestead was situated in a quiet street on the
+southern edge of the town.  All the houses in that block had been
+built by people of English descent near the close of the eighteenth
+or at the beginning of the nineteenth century.  Each was set apart
+from each by lawns, yards and gardens, and further screened by
+shrubs and vines in accordance with old English custom. Where they
+grew had once been the heart of a wilderness; and above each house
+stood a few old forest trees, indifferent guardsmen of the camping
+generations.
+
+The architects had given to the buildings good strong characters;
+the family living in each for a hundred years or more had long
+since imparted reputation.  Out of the windows girlish brides had
+looked on reddening springs and whitening winters until they had
+become silver-haired grandmothers themselves; then had looked no
+more; and succeeding eyes had watched the swift pageants of the
+earth, and the swifter pageants of mortal hope and passion.  Out of
+the front doors, sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons had gone away
+to the cotton and sugar and rice plantations of the South, to new
+farm lands of the West, to the professions in cities of the North.
+The mirrors within held long vistas of wavering forms and vanishing
+faces; against the walls of the rooms had beaten unremembered tides
+of strong and of gentle voices.  In the parlors what scenes of
+lights and music, sheen of satins, flashing of gems; in the dining
+rooms what feastings as in hale England, with all the robust humors
+of the warm land, of the warm heart.
+
+Near the middle of the block and shaded by forest trees, stood with
+its heirlooms and treasures the home of Isabel's grandmother. Known
+to be heiress to this though rich in her own right was Isabel
+herself, that grandmother's idol, the only one of its beautiful
+women remaining yet to be married; and to celebrate with
+magnificence in this house Isabel's marriage to Rowan Meredith had
+long been planned by the grandmother as the last scene of her own
+splendid social drama: having achieved that, she felt she should be
+willing to retire from the stage--and to play only behind the
+curtain.
+
+It was the middle of the afternoon of the same Sunday.  In the
+parlors extending along the eastern side of the house there was a
+single sound: the audible but healthful breathing of a sleeper
+lying on a sofa in the coolest corner.  It was Isabel's grandmother
+nearing the end of her customary nap.
+
+Sometimes there are households in which two members suggest the
+single canvas of a mediaeval painter, depicting scenes that
+represent a higher and a lower world: above may be peaks, clouds,
+sublimity, the Transfiguration; underneath, the pursuits and
+passions of local worldly life--some story of loaves and fishes and
+of a being possessed by a devil.  Isabel and her grandmother were
+related as parts of some such painting: the grandmother was the
+bottom of the canvas.
+
+In a little while she awoke and uncoiling her figure, rolled softly
+over on her back and stretched like some drowsy feline of the
+jungle; then sitting up with lithe grace she looked down at the
+print of her head on the pillow and deftly smoothed it out.  The
+action was characteristic: she was careful to hide the traces of
+her behavior, and the habit was so strong that it extended to
+things innocent as slumber.  Letting her hands drop to the sofa,
+she yawned and shook her head from side to side with that short
+laugh by which we express amusement at our own comfort and well-
+being.
+
+Beside the sofa, toe by toe and heel by heel, sat her slippers--the
+pads of this leopardess of the parlors.  She peered over and worked
+her nimble feet into these.  On a little table at the end of the
+sofa lay her glasses, her fan, and a small bell.  She passed her
+fingers along her temples in search of small disorders in the scant
+tufts of her hair, put on her glasses, and took the fan.  Then she
+glided across the room to one of the front windows, sat down and
+raised the blind a few inches in order to peep out: so the
+well-fed, well-fanged leopardess with lowered head gazes idly
+through her green leaves.
+
+It was very hot.  With her nostrils close to the opening In the
+shutters, she inhaled the heated air of the yard of drying grass.
+On the white window-sill just outside, a bronze wasp was whirling
+excitedly, that cautious stinger which never arrives until summer
+is sure.  The oleanders in the big green tubs looked wilted though
+abundantly watered that morning.
+
+She shot a furtive glance at the doors and windows of the houses
+across the street.  All were closed; and she formed her own
+pictures of how people inside were sleeping, lounging, idly reading
+until evening coolness should invite them again to the verandas and
+the streets.
+
+No one passed but gay strolling negroes. She was seventy years old,
+but her interest in life was insatiable; and it was in part,
+perhaps, the secret of her amazing vitality and youthfulness that
+her surroundings never bored her; she derived instant pleasure from
+the nearest spectacle, always exercising her powers humorously upon
+the world, never upon herself.  For lack of other entertainment she
+now fell upon these vulnerable figures, and began to criticise and
+to laugh at them: she did not have to descend far to reach this
+level.  Her undimmed eyes swept everything--walk, imitative
+manners, imitative dress.
+
+Suddenly she withdrew her face from the blinds; young Meredith had
+entered the gate and was coming up the pavement.  If anything could
+greatly have increased her happiness at this moment it would have
+been the sight of him.  He had been with Isabel until late the
+night before; he had attended morning service and afterward gone
+home with his mother and brother (she had watched the carriage as
+it rolled away down the street); he had returned at this unusual
+hour.  Such eagerness had her approval; and coupling it with
+Isabel's demeanor upon leaving the table the previous evening,
+never before so radiant with love, she felt that she had ground for
+believing the final ambition of her life near its fulfilment.
+
+As he advanced, the worldly passions other nature--the jungle
+passions--she had no others--saluted him with enthusiasm.  His head
+and neck and bearing, stature and figure, family and family
+history, house and lands--she inventoried them all once more and
+discovered no lack.   When he had rung the bell, she leaned back;
+in her chair and eavesdropped with sparkling eyes.
+
+"Is Miss Conyers at home?"
+
+The maid replied apologetically:
+
+"She wished to be excused to-day, Mr. Meredith."
+
+A short silence followed.  Then he spoke as a man long conscious of
+a peculiar footing:
+
+"Will you tell her Mr. Meredith would like to see her," and without
+waiting to be invited he walked into the library across the hall.
+
+She heard the maid go upstairs with hesitating step.
+
+Some time passed before she came down. She brought a note and
+handed it to him, saying with some embarrassment:
+
+"She asked me to give you this note, Mr. Meredith."
+
+Listening with sudden tenseness of attention, Mrs. Conyers heard
+him draw the sheet from the envelope and a moment later crush it.
+
+She placed her eyes against the shutters and watched him as he
+walked away; then she leaned back in her chair, thoughtful and
+surprised.  What was the meaning of this? The events of the day
+were rapidly reviewed: that Isabel had not spoken with her after
+breakfast; that she had gone to service at an unusual hour and had
+left the church before the sermon; that she had effaced herself at
+dinner and at once thereafter had gone up to her rooms, where she
+still remained.
+
+Returning to the sofa she lay down, having first rung her bell.
+When the maid appeared, she rubbed her eyelids and sat sleepily up
+as though just awakened: she remembered that she had eavesdropped,
+and the maid must be persuaded that she had not.  Guilt is a bad
+logician.
+
+"Where is your Miss Isabel?"
+
+"She is in her room, Miss Henrietta."
+
+"Go up and tell her that I say come down into the parlors: it is
+cooler down here. And ask her whether she'd like some sherbet.  And
+bring me some--bring it before you go."
+
+A few moments later the maid reentered with the sherbet.  She
+lifted the cut-glass dish from the silver waiter with soft purrings
+of the palate, and began to attack the minute snow mountain around
+the base and up the sides with eager jabs and stabs, depositing the
+spoonfuls upon a tongue as fresh as a child's.  Momentarily she
+forgot even her annoyance; food instantly absorbed and placated her
+as it does the carnivora.
+
+The maid reentered.
+
+"She says she doesn't wish any sherbet, Miss Henrietta."
+
+"Did she say she would come down?"
+
+"She did not say, Miss Henrietta."
+
+"Go back and tell her I'd like to see her: ask her to come down
+into the parlors." Then she hurried hack to the sherbet.  She
+wanted her granddaughter, but she wanted that first.
+
+Her thoughts ascended meantime to Isabel in the room above.  She
+finished the sherbet. She waited.  Impatience darkened to
+uneasiness and anger.  Still she waited; and her finger nails began
+to scratch audibly at the mahogany of her chair and a light to burn
+in the tawny eyes.
+
+
+In the room overhead Isabel's thoughts all this time were
+descending to her grandmother.  Before the message was delivered
+it had been her intention to go down.  Once she had even reached
+the head of the staircase; but then had faltered and shrunk
+back. When the message came, it rendered her less inclined to
+risk the interview. Coming at such an hour, that message was
+suspicious. She, moreover, naturally had learned to dread her
+grandmother's words when they looked most innocent.  Thus she,
+too, waited--lacking the resolution to descend.
+
+As she walked homeward from church she realized that she must take
+steps at once to discard Rowan as the duty of her social position.
+And here tangible perplexities instantly wove themselves across her
+path. Conscience had promptly arraigned him at the altar of
+religion.  It was easy to condemn him there.  And no one had the
+right to question that arraignment and that condemnation.  But
+public severance of all relations with him in her social world--how
+should she accomplish that and withhold her justification?
+
+Her own kindred would wish to understand the reason.  The branches
+of these scattered far and near were prominent each in its sphere,
+and all were intimately bound together by the one passion of
+clannish allegiance to the family past.  She knew that Rowan's
+attentions had continued so long and had been so marked, that
+her grandmother had accepted marriage between them as a foregone
+conclusion, and in letters had disseminated these prophecies
+through the family connection.  Other letters had even come back
+to Isabel, containing evidence only too plain that Rowan had
+been discussed and accepted in domestic councils.  Against all
+inward protests of delicacy, she had been forced to receive
+congratulations that in this marriage she would preserve the
+traditions of the family by bringing into it a man of good blood
+and of unspotted name; the two idols of all the far separated
+hearthstones.
+
+To the pride of all these relatives she added her own pride--the
+highest.  She was the last of the women in the direct line yet
+unwedded, and she was sensitive that her choice should not in honor
+and in worth fall short of the alliances that had preceded hers.
+Involved in this sense of pride she felt that she owed a duty to
+the generations who had borne her family name in this country and
+to the still earlier generations who had given it distinction in
+England--land of her womanly ideals.  To discard now without a word
+of explanation the man whose suit she had long been understood to
+favor would create wide disappointment and provoke keen question.
+
+Further difficulties confronted her from Rowan's side.  His own
+family and kindred were people strong and not to be trifled with,
+proud and conservative like her own. Corresponding resentments
+would be aroused among them, questions would be asked that had no
+answers.  She felt that her life in its most private and sacred
+relation would be publicly arraigned and have open judgment passed
+upon it by conflicting interests and passions--and that the mystery
+which contained her justification must also forever conceal it.
+
+Nevertheless Rowan must be discarded; she must act quickly and for
+the best.
+
+On the very threshold one painful necessity faced her: the reserve
+of years must be laid aside and her grandmother admitted to
+confidence in her plans.  Anything that she might do could not
+escape those watchful eyes long since grown impatient. Moreover
+despite differences of character, she and her grandmother had
+always lived together, and they must now stand together before
+their world in regard to this step.
+
+
+"Did you wish to see me about anything, grandmother?"
+
+Mrs. Conyers had not heard Isabel's quiet entrance.  She was at the
+window still: she turned softly in her chair and looked across the
+darkened room to where Isabel sat facing her--a barely discernible
+white figure.
+
+From any other member other family she would roughly have demanded
+the explanation she desired.  She was the mother of strong men
+(they were living far from her now), and even in his manhood no one
+of them had ever crossed her will without bearing away the scars of
+her anger, and always of her revenge.  But before this grandchild,
+whom she had reared from infancy, she felt the brute cowardice
+which is often the only tribute that a debased nature can pay to
+the incorruptible.  Her love must have its basis in some abject
+emotion: it took its origin from fear.
+
+An unforeseen incident, occurring when Isabel was yet a child and
+all but daily putting forth new growths of nature, rendered very
+clear even then the developing antagonism and prospective
+relationship of these two characters.  In a company of ladies the
+grandmother, drawing the conversation to herself, remarked with a
+suggestive laugh that as there were no men present she would tell a
+certain story.  "Grandmother," interposed Isabel, vaguely startled,
+"please do not say anything that you would not say before a man;"
+and for an instant, amid the hush, the child and the woman looked
+at each other like two repellent intelligences, accidentally
+meeting out of the heavens and the pit.
+
+This had been the first of a long series of antagonism and recoils,
+and as the child had matured, the purity and loftiness of her
+nature had by this very contact grown chilled toward austerity.
+Thus nature lends a gradual protective hardening to a tender
+surface during abrasion with a coarser thing.  It left Isabel more
+reserved with her grandmother than with any one else of all the
+persons who entered into her life.
+
+For this reason Mrs. Conyers now foresaw that this interview would
+be specially difficult.  She had never enjoyed Isabel's confidence
+in regard to her love affairs--and the girl had had her share of
+these; every attempt to gain it had been met by rebuffs so
+courteous but decisive that they had always wounded her pride and
+sometimes had lashed her to secret fury.
+
+
+"Did you wish to see me about anything, grandmother?"
+
+The reply came very quickly: "I wanted to know whether you were
+well."
+
+"I am perfectly well.  Why did you think of asking?"
+
+"You did not seem well in church."
+
+"I had forgotten.  I was not well in church."
+
+Mrs. Conyers bent over and drew a chair in front of her own.  She
+wished to watch Isabel's face.  She had been a close student of
+women's faces--and of many men's.
+
+"Sit here.  There is a breeze through the window."
+
+"Thank you.  I'd rather sit here."
+
+Another pause ensued.
+
+"Did you ever know the last of May to be so hot?"
+
+"I cannot remember now."
+
+"Can you imagine any one calling on such an afternoon?"
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"I am glad no one has been here.  While I was asleep I thought I
+heard the bell."
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"You were wise not to stay for the sermon."  Mrs. Conyers' voice
+trembled with anger as she passed on and on, seeking a penetrable
+point for conversation.  "I do not believe in using the church to
+teach young men that they should blame their fathers for their own
+misdeeds.  If I have done any good in this world, I do not expect
+my father and mother to be rewarded for it in the next; if I have
+done wrong, I do not expect my children to be punished.  I shall
+claim the reward and I shall stand the punishment, and that is the
+end of it.  Teaching young men to blame their parents because they
+are prodigals is nonsense, and injurious nonsense.  I hope you do
+not imagine," she said, with a stroke of characteristic coarseness,
+"that you get any of your faults from me."
+
+"I have never held you responsible, grandmother."
+
+Mrs. Conyers could wait no longer.
+
+"Isabel," she asked sharply, "why did you not see Rowan when he
+called a few minutes ago?"
+
+"Grandmother, you know that I do not answer such questions."
+
+How often in years gone by such had been Isabel's answer!  The
+grandmother awaited it now.  To her surprise Isabel after some
+moments of hesitation replied without resentment:
+
+"I did not wish to see him."
+
+There was a momentary pause; then this unexpected weakness was met
+with a blow.
+
+"You were eager enough to see him last night."
+
+"I can only hope," murmured Isabel aloud though wholly to herself,
+"that I did not make this plain to him."
+
+"But what has happened since?"
+
+Nothing was said for a while.  The two women had been unable to see
+each other clearly.  A moment later Isabel crossed the room quickly
+and taking the chair in front of her grandmother, searched that
+treacherous face imploringly for something better in it than she
+had ever seen there.  Could she trust the untrustworthy?  Would
+falseness itself for once be true?
+
+"Grandmother," she said, and her voice betrayed how she shrank from
+her own words, "before you sent for me I was about to come down.  I
+wished to speak with you about a very delicate matter, a very
+serious matter.  You have often reproached me for not taking you
+into my confidence.  I am going to give you my confidence now."
+
+At any other moment the distrust and indignity contained in the
+tone of this avowal would not have escaped Mrs. Conyers. But
+surprise riveted her attention. Isabel gave her no time further:
+
+"A thing has occurred in regard to which we must act together for
+our own sakes--on account of the servants in the house--on account
+of our friends, so that there may be no gossip, no scandal."
+
+Nothing at times so startles us as our own words.  As the girl
+uttered the word "scandal," she rose frightened as though it faced
+her and began to walk excitedly backward and forward.  Scandal had
+never touched her life.  She had never talked scandal; had never
+thought scandal. Dwelling under the same roof with it as the master
+passion of a life and forced to encounter it in so many repulsive
+ways, she had needed little virtue to regard it with abhorrence.
+
+Now she perceived that it might be perilously near herself.  When
+all questions were asked and no reasons were given, would not the
+seeds of gossip fly and sprout and bear their kinds about her path:
+and the truth could never be told.  She must walk on through the
+years, possibly misjudged, giving no sign.
+
+After a while she returned to her seat.
+
+"You must promise me one thing," she said with white and trembling
+lips.  "I give you my confidence as far as I can; beyond that I
+will not go.  And you shall not ask.  You are not to try to find
+out from me or any one else more than I tell you.  You must give me
+your word of honor!"
+
+She bent forward and looked her grandmother wretchedly in the eyes.
+
+Mrs. Conyers pushed her chair back as though a hand had struck her
+rudely in the face.
+
+"Isabel," she cried, "do you forget to whom you are speaking?"
+
+"Ah, grandmother," exclaimed Isabel, reckless of her words by
+reason of suffering, "it is too late for us to be sensitive about
+our characters."
+
+Mrs. Conyers rose with insulted pride: "Do not come to me with your
+confidence until you can give it."
+
+Isabel recrossed the room and sank into the seat she had quitted.
+Mrs. Conyers remained standing a moment and furtively resumed hers.
+
+Whatever her failings had been--one might well say her
+crimes--Isabel had always treated her from the level of her own
+high nature.  But Mrs. Conyers had accepted this dutiful demeanor
+of the years as a tribute to her own virtues.  Now that Isabel, the
+one person whose respect she most desired, had openly avowed deep
+distrust of her, the shock was as real as anything life could have
+dealt.
+
+She glanced narrowly at Isabel: the girl had forgotten her.
+
+Mrs. Conyers could shift as the wind shifts; and one of her
+characteristic resources in life had been to conquer by feigning
+defeat: she often scaled her mountains by seeming to take a path
+which led to the valleys.  She now crossed over and sat down with a
+peace-making laugh.  She attempted to take Isabel's hand, but it
+was quickly withdrawn.  Fearing that this movement indicated a
+receding confidence Mrs. Conyers ignored the rebuff and pressed her
+inquiry in a new, entirely practical, and pleasant tone:
+
+"What is the meaning of all this, Isabel?"
+
+Isabel turned upon her again a silent, searching, wretched look of
+appeal.
+
+Mrs. Conyers realized that it could not be ignored: "You know that
+I promise anything.  What did I ever refuse you?"
+
+Isabel sat up but still remained silent. Mrs. Conyers noted the
+indecision and shrugged her shoulders with a careless dismissal of
+the whole subject:
+
+"Let us drop the subject, then.  Do you think it will rain?"
+
+"Grandmother, Rowan must not come here any more."  Isabel stopped
+abruptly. "That is all."
+
+. . . "I merely wanted you to understand this at once.  We must not
+invite him here any more."
+
+. . . "If we meet him at the houses of our friends, we must do what
+we can not to be discourteous to them if he is their guest."
+
+. . . "If we meet Rowan alone anywhere, we must let him know that
+he is not on the list of our acquaintances any longer.  That is
+all."
+
+Isabel wrung her hands.
+
+Mrs. Conyers had more than one of the traits of the jungle: she
+knew when to lie silent and how to wait.  She waited longer now,
+but Isabel had relapsed into her own thoughts.  For her the
+interview was at an end; to Mrs. Conyers it was beginning. Isabel's
+words and manner had revealed a situation far more serious than she
+had believed to exist.  A sense of personal slights and wounds gave
+way to apprehension.  The need of the moment was not passion and
+resentment, but tact and coolness and apparent unconcern.
+
+"What is the meaning of this, Isabel?" She spoke in a tone of frank
+and cordial interest as though the way were clear at last for the
+establishment of complete confidence between them.
+
+"Grandmother, did you not give me your word?" said Isabel, sternly.
+Mrs. Conyers grew indignant: "But remember in what a light you
+place me!  I did not expect you to require me to be unreasonable
+and unjust. Do you really wish me to be kept in the dark in a
+matter like this?  Must I refuse to speak to Rowan and have no
+reason? Close the house to him and not know why? Cut him in public
+without his having offended me?  If he should ask why I treat him
+in this way, what am I to tell him?"
+
+"He will never ask," said Isabel with mournful abstraction.
+
+"But tell _me_ why you wish me to act so strangely."
+
+"Believe that I have reasons."
+
+"But ought I not to know what these reasons are if I must act upon
+them as though they were my own?"
+
+Isabel saw the stirrings of a mind that brushed away honor as an
+obstacle and that was not to be quieted until it had been
+satisfied.  She sank back into her chair, saying very simply with
+deep disappointment and with deeper sorrow:
+
+"Ah, I might have known!"
+
+Mrs. Conyers pressed forward with gathering determination:
+
+"What happened last night?"
+
+"I might have known that it was of no use," repeated Isabel.
+
+Mrs. Conyers waited several moments and then suddenly changing her
+course feigned the dismissal of the whole subject: "I shall pay no
+attention to this.  I shall continue to treat Rowan as I have
+always treated him."
+
+Isabel started up: "Grandmother, if you do, you will regret it."
+Her voice rang clear with hidden meaning and with hidden warning.
+
+It fell upon the ear of the other with threatening import.  For her
+there seemed to be in it indeed the ruin of a cherished plan, the
+loss of years of hope and waiting. Before such a possibility tact
+and coolness and apparent unconcern were swept away by passion,
+brutal and unreckoning: "Do you mean that you have refused Rowan?
+Or have you found out at last that he has no intention of marrying
+you--has never had any?"
+
+Isabel rose: "Excuse me," she said proudly and turned away.  She
+reached the door and pausing there put out one of her hands against
+the lintel as if with weakness and raised the other to her forehead
+as though with bewilderment and indecision.
+
+Then she came unsteadily back, sank upon her knees, and hid her
+face in her grandmother's lap, murmuring through her fingers: "I
+have been rude to you, grandmother!  Forgive me!  I do not know
+what I have been saying.  But any little trouble between us is
+nothing, nothing! And do as I beg you--let this be sacred and
+secret!  And leave everything to me!"
+
+She crept closer and lifting her face looked up into her
+grandmother's.  She shrank back shuddering from what she saw there,
+burying her face in her hands; then rising she hurried from the
+room,
+
+Mrs. Conyers sat motionless.
+
+Was it true then that the desire and the work of years for this
+marriage had come to nothing?  And was it true that this
+grandchild, for whom she had planned and plotted, did not even
+respect her and could tell her so to her face?
+
+Those insulting words rang in her ears still: "_You must give me
+your word of honor . . . it is too late to be sensitive about our
+characters_."
+
+She sat perfectly still: and in the parlors there might have been
+heard at intervals the scratching of her sharp finger nails against
+the wood of the chair.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The hot day ended.  Toward sunset a thunder-shower drenched the
+earth, and the night had begun cool and refreshing.
+
+Mrs. Conyers was sitting on the front veranda, waiting for
+her regular Sunday evening visitor.  She was no longer the
+self-revealed woman of the afternoon, but seemingly an affable,
+harmless old lady of the night on the boundary of her social world.
+She was dressed with unfailing: elegance--and her taste lavished
+itself especially on black silk and the richest lace.  The shade of
+heliotrope satin harmonized with the yellowish folds of her hair.
+Her small, warm, unwrinkled hands were without rings, being too
+delicately beautiful.  In one she held a tiny fan, white and soft
+like the wing of a moth; on her lap lay a handkerchief as light as
+smoke or a web of gossamer.
+
+She rocked softly.  She unfolded and folded the night-moth fan
+softly.  She touched the handkerchief to her rosy youthful lips
+softly.  The south wind blew in her face softly.  Everything about
+her was softness, all her movements were delicate and refined.
+Even the early soft beauty of her figure was not yet lost.  (When a
+girl of nineteen, she had measured herself by the proportions of
+the ideal Venus; and the ordeal had left her with a girdle of
+golden reflections.)
+
+But if some limner had been told the whole truth of what she was
+and been requested to imagine a fitting body for such a soul, he
+would never have painted Mrs. Conyers as she looked.  Nature is not
+frank in her characterizations, lest we remain infants in
+discernment.  She allows foul to appear fair, and bids us become
+educated in the hardy virtues of insight and prudence.  Education
+as yet had advanced but little; and the deepest students in the
+botany of women have been able to describe so few kinds that no
+man, walking through the perfumed enchanted wood, knows at what
+moment he may step upon or take hold of some unknown deadly variety.
+
+As the moments passed, she stopped rocking and peered toward the
+front gate under the lamp-post, saying to herself:
+
+"He is late."
+
+At last the gate was gently opened and gently shut.
+
+"Ah," she cried, leaning back in her chair smiling and satisfied.
+Then she sat up rigid.  A change passed over her such as comes over
+a bird of prey when it draws its feathers in flat against its body
+to lessen friction in the swoop.  She unconsciously closed the
+little fan, the little handkerchief disappeared somewhere.
+
+As the gate had opened and closed, on the bricks of the pavement
+was heard only the tap of his stout walking-stick; for he was gouty
+and wore loose low shoes of the softest calfskin, and these made no
+noise except the slurring sound of slippers.
+
+Once he stopped, and planting his cane far out in the grass,
+reached stiffly over and with undisguised ejaculations of
+discomfort snipped off a piece of heliotrope in one of the tubs of
+oleander.   He shook away the raindrops and drew it through his
+buttonhole, and she could hear his low "Ah! ah!  ah!" as he thrust
+his nose down into it.
+
+"There's nothing like it," he said aloud as though he had
+consenting listeners, "it outsmells creation."
+
+He stopped at another tub of flowers where a humming-bird moth was
+gathering honey and jabbed his stick sharply at it, taking care
+that the stick did not reach perilously near.
+
+"Get away, sir," he said; "you've had enough, sir.  Get away, sir."
+
+Having reached a gravel walk that diverged from the pavement, he
+turned off and went over to a rose-bush and walked around tapping
+the roses on their heads as he counted them--cloth-of-gold roses.
+"Very well done," he said, "a large family--a good sign."
+
+Thus he loitered along his way with leisure to enjoy all the chance
+trifles that gladdened it; for he was one of the old who return at
+the end of life to the simple innocent things that pleased them as
+children.
+
+She had risen and advanced to the edge of the veranda.
+
+"Did you come to see me or did you come to see my flowers?" she
+called out charmingly.
+
+"I came to see the flowers, madam," he called back.  "Most of all,
+the century plant: how is she?"
+
+She laughed delightedly: "Still harping on my age, I see."
+
+"Still harping, but harping your praises.  Century plants are not
+necessarily old: they are all young at the beginning!  I merely
+meant you'd be blooming at a hundred."
+
+"You are a sly old fox," she retorted with a spirit.  "You give a
+woman a dig on her age and then try to make her think it a
+compliment."
+
+"I gave myself a dig that time: the remark had to be excavated," he
+said aloud but as though confidentially to himself.  Open
+disrespect marked his speech and manner with her always; and sooner
+or later she exacted full punishment.
+
+Meantime he had reached the steps.  There he stopped and taking off
+his straw hat looked up and shook it reproachfully at the heavens.
+
+"What a night, what a night!" he exclaimed.  "And what an injustice
+to a man wading up to his knees in life's winters."
+
+"How do you do," she said impatiently, always finding it hard to
+put up with his lingerings and delays.  "Are you coming in?"
+
+"Thank you, I believe I am.  But no, wait.  I'll not come in until
+I have made a speech.  It never occurred to me before and it will
+never again.  It's now or never.
+
+"The life of man should last a single year.  He should have one
+spring for birth and childhood, for play and growth, for the ending
+of his dreams and the beginning of his love.  One summer for strife
+and toil and passion.  One autumn in which to gather the fruits of
+his deeds and to live upon them, be they sweet or bitter.  One
+winter in which to come to an end and wrap himself with resignation
+in the snows of nature.  Thus he should never know the pain of
+seeing spring return when there was nothing within himself to bud
+or be sown.  Summer would never rage and he have no conflicts nor
+passions.  Autumn would not pass and he with idle hands neither
+give nor gather.  And winter should not end without extinguishing
+his tormenting fires, and leaving him the peace of eternal cold."
+
+"Really," she cried, "I have never heard anything as fine as that
+since I used to write compositions at boarding-school."
+
+"It may be part of one of mine!" he replied.  "We forget ourselves,
+you know, and then we think we are original."
+
+"Second childhood," she suggested.  "Are you really coming in?"
+
+"I am, madam," he replied.  "And guided by your suggestion, I come
+as a second child."
+
+When he had reached the top step, he laid his hat and cane on the
+porch and took her hands in his--pressing them abstemiously.
+
+"Excuse me if I do not press harder," he said, lowering his voice
+as though he fancied they might be overheard.  "I know you are
+sensitive in these little matters; but while I dislike to appear
+lukewarm, really, you know it is too late to be ardent," and he
+looked at her ardently.
+
+She twisted her fingers out of his with coy shame.
+
+"What an old fox," she repeated gayly.
+
+"Well, you know what goes with the fox--the foxess, or the foxina."
+
+She had placed his chair not quite beside hers yet designedly near,
+where the light of the chandelier in the hall would fall out upon
+him and passers could see that he was there: she liked to have him
+appear devoted.  For his part he was too little devoted to care
+whether he sat far or near, in front or behind.  As the light
+streamed out upon him, it illumined his noble head of soft, silvery
+hair, which fell over his ears and forehead, forgotten and
+disordered, like a romping boy's.  His complexion was ruddy--too
+ruddy with high living; his clean-shaven face beautiful with
+candor, gayety, and sweetness; and his eyes, the eyes of a kind
+heart--saddened.  He had on a big loose shirt collar such as men
+wore in Thackeray's time and a snow-white lawn tie.  In the bosom
+of his broad-pleated shirt, made glossy with paraffin starch, there
+was set an old-fashioned cluster-diamond stud--so enormous that it
+looked like a large family of young diamonds in a golden nest.
+
+As he took his seat, he planted his big gold-headed ebony cane
+between his knees, put his hat on the head of his cane, gave it a
+twirl, and looking over sidewise at her, smiled with an equal
+mixture of real liking and settled abhorrence.
+
+For a good many years these two had been--not friends: she was
+incapable of so true a passion; he was too capable to misapply it
+so unerringly.  Their association had assumed the character of one
+of those belated intimacies, which sometimes spring up in the lives
+of aged men and women when each wants companionship but has been
+left companionless.
+
+Time was when he could not have believed that any tie whatsoever
+would ever exist between them.  Her first husband had been his
+first law partner; and from what he had been forced to observe
+concerning his partner's fireside wretchedness during his few years
+of married life, he had learned to fear and to hate her.  With his
+quick temper and honest way he made no pretence of hiding his
+feeling--declined her invitations--cut her openly in society--and
+said why.  When his partner died, not killed indeed but
+broken-spirited, he spoke his mind on the subject more publicly and
+plainly still.
+
+She brewed the poison of revenge and waited.
+
+A year or two later when his engagement was announced her opportunity
+came.  In a single day it was done--so quietly, so perfectly, that
+no one knew by whom.  Scandal was set running--Scandal, which no
+pursuing messengers of truth and justice can ever overtake and drag
+backward along its path.  His engagement was broken; she whom he was
+to wed in time married one of his friends; and for years his own life
+all but went to pieces.
+
+Time is naught, existence a span.  One evening when she was old
+Mrs. Conyers, and he old Judge Morris, she sixty and he sixty-five,
+they met at an evening party.  In all those years he had never
+spoken to her, nurturing his original dislike and rather suspecting
+that it was she who had so ruined him.  But on this night there had
+been a great supper and with him a great supper was a great
+weakness: there had been wine, and wine was not a weakness at all,
+but a glass merely made him more than happy, more than kind.  Soon
+after supper therefore he was strolling through the emptied rooms
+in a rather lonesome way, his face like a red moon in a fog,
+beseeching only that it might shed its rays impartially on any
+approachable darkness.
+
+Men with wives and children can well afford to turn hard cold faces
+to the outside world: the warmth and tenderness of which they are
+capable they can exercise within their own restricted enclosures.
+No doubt some of them consciously enjoy the contrast in their two
+selves--the one as seen abroad and the other as understood at home.
+But a wifeless, childless man--wandering at large on the heart's
+bleak common--has much the same reason to smile on all that he has
+to smile on any: there is no domestic enclosure for him: his
+affections must embrace humanity.
+
+As he strolled through the rooms, then, in his appealing way,
+seeking whom he could attach himself to, he came upon her seated in
+a doorway connecting two rooms.  She sat alone on a short sofa,
+possibly by design, her train so arranged that he must step over it
+if he advanced--the only being in the world that he hated.  In the
+embarrassment of turning his back upon her or of trampling her
+train, he hesitated; smiling with lowered eyelids she motioned him
+to a seat by her side.
+
+"What a vivacious, agreeable old woman," he soliloquized with
+enthusiasm as he was driven home that night, sitting in the middle
+of the carriage cushions with one arm swung impartially through the
+strap on each side.  "And she has invited me to Sunday evening
+supper.  Me!--after all these years--in that house!  I'll not go."
+
+But he went.
+
+"I'll not go again," he declared as he reached home that night and
+thought it over.  "She is a bad woman."
+
+But the following Sunday evening he reached for his hat and cane:
+"I must go somewhere," he complained resentfully.  "The saints of
+my generation are enjoying the saint's rest.  Nobody is left but a
+few long-lived sinners, of whom I am a great part.  They are the
+best I can find, and I suppose they are the best I deserve."
+
+Those who live long miss many.  Without exception his former
+associates at the bar had been summoned to appear before the Judge
+who accepts no bribe.
+
+The ablest of the middle-aged lawyers often hurried over to consult
+him in difficult cases.  All of them could occasionally listen
+while he, praiser of a bygone time, recalled the great period of
+practice when he was the favorite criminal lawyer of the first
+families, defending their sons against the commonwealth which he
+always insisted was the greater criminal.   The young men about
+town knew him and were ready to chat with him on street
+corners--but never very long at a time.  In his old law offices he
+could spend part of every day, guiding or guying his nephew Barbee,
+who had just begun to practice.  But when all his social resources
+were reckoned, his days contained great voids and his nights were
+lonelier still.  The society of women remained a necessity of his
+life; and the only woman in town, always bright, always full of
+ideas, and always glad to see him (the main difficulty) was Mrs.
+Conyers.
+
+So that for years now he had been going regularly on Sunday
+evenings.  He kept up apologies to his conscience regularly also;
+but it must have become clear that his conscience was not a fire to
+make him boil; it was merely a few coals to keep him bubbling.
+
+In this acceptance of her at the end of life there was of course
+mournful evidence of his own deterioration.  During the years
+between being a young man and being an old one he had so far
+descended toward her level, that upon renewing acquaintance with
+her he actually thought that she had improved.
+
+Youth with its white-flaming ideals is the great separator; by
+middle age most of us have become so shaken down, on life's rough
+road, to a certain equality of bearing and forbearing, that
+miscellaneous comradeship becomes easy and rather comforting; while
+extremely aged people are as compatible and as miserable as
+disabled old eagles, grouped with a few inches of each other's
+beaks and claws on the sleek perches of a cage.
+
+This evening therefore, as he took his seat and looked across at
+her, so richly dressed, so youthful, soft, and rosy, he all but
+thanked heaven out loud that she was at home.
+
+"Madam," he cried, "you are a wonderful and bewitching old
+lady"--it was on the tip of his tongue to say "beldam."
+
+"I know it," she replied briskly, "have you been so long in finding
+it out?"
+
+"It is a fresh discovery every time I come."
+
+"Then you forget me in the meanwhile."
+
+"I never forget you unless I am thinking of Miss Isabel.  How is
+she?"
+
+"Not well."
+
+"Then I'm not well! No one is well!  Everybody must suffer if she
+is suffering.  The universe sympathizes."
+
+"She is not ill.  She is in trouble."
+
+"But she must not be in trouble!  She has done nothing to be in
+trouble about.  Who troubles her?  What troubles her?"
+
+"She will not tell."
+
+"Ah!" he cried, checking himself gravely and dropping the subject.
+
+She noted the decisive change of tone: it was not by this direct
+route that she would be able to enter his confidence.
+
+"What did you think of the sermon this morning?"
+
+"The sermon on the prodigal?  Well, it is too late for such sermons
+to be levelled at me; and I never listen to those aimed at other
+people."
+
+"At what other people do you suppose this one could have been
+directed?"  She asked the question most carelessly, lifting her
+imponderable handkerchief and letting it drop into her lap as a
+sign of how little her interest weighed.
+
+"It is not my duty to judge."
+
+"We cannot help our thoughts, you know."
+
+"I think we can, madam; and I also think we can hold our tongues,"
+and he laughed at her very good-naturedly.  "Sometimes we can even
+help to hold other people's--if they are long."
+
+"Oh, what a rude speech to a lady!" she exclaimed gallantly.  "Did
+you see the Osborns at church?  And did you notice him?  What an
+unhappy marriage!  He is breaking Kate's heart.  And to think that
+his character--or the lack of it--should have been discovered only
+when it was too late!  How can you men so cloak yourselves before
+marriage?  Why not tell women the truth then instead of leaving
+them to find it out afterward?  Are he and Rowan as good friends as
+ever?"  The question was asked with the air of guilelessness.
+
+"I know nothing about that," he replied dryly.  "I never knew Rowan
+to drop his friends because they had failings: it would break up
+all friendships, I imagine."
+
+"Well, I cannot help _my_ thoughts, and I think George Osborn was
+the prodigal aimed at in the sermon.  Everybody thought so."
+
+"How does she know what everybody thought?" commented the Judge to
+himself.  He tapped the porch nervously with his cane, sniffed his
+heliotrope and said irrelevantly:
+
+"Ah me, what a beautiful night!  What a beautiful night!"
+
+The implied rebuff provoked her.  Irritation winged a venomous
+little shaft:
+
+"At least no woman has ever held _you_ responsible for her
+unhappiness."
+
+"You are quite right, madam," he replied, "the only irreproachable
+husband in this world is the man who has no wife."
+
+"By the way," she continued, "in all these years you have not told
+me why you never married.  Come now, confess!"
+
+How well she knew!  How often as she had driven through the streets
+and observed him sitting alone in the door of his office or walking
+aimlessly about, she had leaned back and laughed.
+
+"Madam," he replied, for he did not like the question, "neither
+have you ever told me why you married three times.  Come now,
+confess."
+
+It would soon be time for him to leave; and still she had not
+gained her point.
+
+"Rowan was here this afternoon," she remarked carelessly.  He was
+sitting so that the light fell sidewise on his face.  She noted how
+alert it became, but he said nothing.
+
+"Isabel refused to see him."
+
+He wheeled round and faced her with pain and surprise.
+
+"Refused to see him!"
+
+"She has told me since that she never intends to see him."
+
+"Never intends to see Rowan again!" he repeated the incredible
+words, "not see Rowan again!"
+
+"She says we are to drop him from the list of our acquaintances."
+
+"Ah!" he cried with impetuous sadness, "they must not quarrel!
+They _must_ not!"
+
+"But they _have_ quarrelled," she replied, revealing her own
+anxiety.  "Now they must be reconciled.   That is why I come to
+you.  I am Isabel's guardian; you were Rowan's.  Each of us wishes
+this marriage.  Isabel loves Rowan.  I know that; therefore it is
+not her fault.  Therefore it is Rowan's fault.  Therefore he has
+said something or he has done something to offend her deeply.
+Therefore if you do not know what this Is, you must find out.  And
+you must come and tell me.  May I depend upon you?"
+
+He had become grave.  At length he said: "I shall go straight to
+Rowan and ask him."
+
+"No!" she cried, laying her hand heavily on his arm, "Isabel bound
+me to secrecy.  She does not wish this to be known."
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, angry at being entrapped into a broken
+confidence, "then Miss Isabel binds me also: I shall honor her
+wish," and he rose.
+
+She kept her seat but yawned so that he might notice it.  "You are
+not going?"
+
+"Yes, I am going.  I have stayed too long already.  Good night!
+Good night!"  He spoke curtly over his shoulders as he hurried down
+the steps.
+
+She had forgotten him before he reached the street, having no need
+just then to keep him longer in mind.  She had threshed out the one
+grain of wheat, the single compact little truth, that she wanted.
+This was the certainty that Judge Morris, who was the old family
+lawyer of the Merediths, and had been Rowan's guardian, and had
+indeed known him intimately from childhood, was in ignorance of any
+reason for the present trouble; otherwise he would not have said
+that he should go to Rowan and ask the explanation.  She knew him
+to be incapable of duplicity; in truth she rather despised him
+because he had never cultivated a taste for the delights and
+resources of hypocrisy.
+
+Her next step must be to talk at once with the other person vitally
+interested--Rowan's mother.  She felt no especial admiration for
+that grave, earnest, and rather sombre lady; but neither did she
+feel admiration for her sterling knife and fork: still she made
+them serviceable for the ulterior ends of being.
+
+Her plan then embraced a visit to Mrs. Meredith in the morning with
+the view of discovering whether she was aware of the estrangement,
+and if aware whether she would in any unintentional way throw light
+upon the cause of it.  Moreover--and this was kept clearly in
+view--there would be the chance of meeting Rowan himself, whom she
+also determined to see as soon as possible: she might find him at
+home, or she might encounter him on the road or riding over his
+farm.  But this visit must be made without Isabel's knowledge.  It
+must further be made to appear incidental to Mrs. Meredith
+herself---or to Rowan.  She arranged therefore with that tortuous
+and superfluous calculation of which hypocrisy is such a
+master--and mistress--that she would at breakfast, in Isabel's
+presence, order the carriage, and announce her intention of going
+out to the farm of Ambrose Webb.  Ambrose Webb was a close neighbor
+of the Merediths.  He owned a small estate, most of which was good
+grass-land that was usually rented for pasture.  She had for years
+kept her cows there when dry.  This arrangement furnished her the
+opportunity for more trips to the farm than interest in her dairy
+warranted; it made her Mrs. Meredith's most frequent incidental
+visitor.
+
+Having thus determined upon her immediate course for the prompt
+unravelling of this mysterious matter, she dismissed it from her
+mind, passed into her bedroom and was soon asleep: a smile played
+over the sweet old face.
+
+
+The Judge walked slowly across the town in the moonlight.
+
+It was his rule to get home to his rooms by ten o'clock; and people
+living on the several streets leading that way were used to hearing
+him come tapping along before that hour.  If they sat in their
+doorways and the night was dark, they gave him a pleasant greeting
+through the darkness; if there was a moon or if he could be seen
+under a lamp post, they added smiles.  No one loved him supremely,
+but every one liked him a little--on the whole, a stable state for
+a man.  For his part he accosted every one that he could see in a
+bright cheery way and with a quick inquiring glance as though every
+heart had its trouble and needed just a little kindness.  He was
+reasonably sure that the old had their troubles already and that
+the children would have theirs some day; so that it was merely the
+difference between sympathizing with the present and sympathizing
+with the future.  As he careened along night after night, then,
+friendly little gusts of salutation blew the desolate drifting
+figure over the homeward course.
+
+His rooms were near the heart of the town, In a shady street well
+filled with law offices: these were of red brick with green
+shutters--green when not white with dust.  The fire department was
+in the same block, though he himself did not need to be safeguarded
+from conflagrations: the fires which had always troubled him could
+not have been reached with ladder and hose.  There were two or
+three livery stables also, the chairs of which he patronized
+liberally, but not the vehicles.  And there was a grocery, where he
+sometimes bought crystallized citron and Brazil nuts, a curious
+kind of condiment of his own devising: a pound of citron to a pound
+of nuts, if all were sound.  He used to keep little brown paper
+bags of these locked in his drawer with legal papers and munched
+them sometimes while preparing murder cases.
+
+At the upper corner of the block, opposite each other, were a
+saloon and the jail, two establishments which contributed little to
+each other's support, though well inclined to do so.  The law
+offices seemed of old to have started in a compact procession for
+the jail, but at a certain point to have paused with the
+understanding that none should seek undue advantage by greater
+proximity.  Issuing from this street at one end and turning to the
+left, you came to the courthouse--the bar of chancery; issuing from
+it at the other end and turning to the right, you came to the
+hotel--the bar of corn.  The lawyers were usually solicitors at
+large and impartial practitioners at each bar.  In the court room
+they sometimes tried to prove an alibi for their clients; at the
+hotel they often succeeded in proving one for themselves.
+
+These law offices were raised a foot or two above the level of the
+street.  The front rooms could be used for clients who were so
+important that they should be seen; the back rooms were for such as
+brought business, but not necessarily fame.  Driving through this
+street, the wives of the lawyers could lean forward in their
+carriages and if their husbands were busy, they could smile and
+bow; if their husbands were idle, they could look straight ahead.
+
+He passed under the shadow of the old court-house where in his
+prime he had fought his legal battles against the commonwealth.  He
+had been a great lawyer and he knew it (if he had married he might
+have been Chief Justice).  Then he turned the corner and entered
+the street of jurisprudence and the gaol.  About midway he reached
+the staircase opening from the sidewalk; to his rooms above.
+
+He was not poor and he could have lived richly had he wished.  But
+when a man does not marry there are so many other things that he
+never espouses; and he was not wedded to luxury.  As he lighted the
+chandelier over the centre-table in his sitting room, the light
+revealed an establishment every article of which, if it had no
+virtues, at least possessed habits: certainly everything had its
+own way.  He put his hat and cane on the table, not caring to go
+back to the hatrack in his little hall, and seated himself in his
+olive morocco chair.  As he did so, everything in the room--the
+chairs, the curtains, the rugs, the card-table, the punch-bowl, the
+other walking-sticks, and the rubbers and umbrellas---seemed to say
+in an affectionate chorus: "Well, now that you are in safe for the
+night, we feel relieved.  So good night and pleasant dreams to you,
+for we are going to sleep;" and to sleep they went.
+
+The gas alone flared up and said, "I'll stay up with him."
+
+He drew out and wiped his glasses and reached for the local Sunday
+paper, his Sunday evening Bible.  He had read it in the morning,
+but he always gleaned at night: he met so many of his friends by
+reading their advertisements.  But to-night he spread it across his
+knees and turning to the table lifted the top of a box of cigars,
+an orderly responsive family; the paper slipped to the floor and
+lay forgotten behind his heels.
+
+He leaned back in the chair with his cigar in his mouth and his
+eyes directed toward the opposite wall, where in an oval frame hung
+the life-size portrait of an old bulldog.  The eyes were blue and
+watery and as full of suffering as a seats; from the extremity of
+the lower jaw a tooth stood up like a shoemaker's peg; and over the
+entire face was stamped the majesty, the patience, and the manly
+woes of a nature that had lived deeply and too long.  The Judge's
+eyes rested on this comrade face.
+
+The events of the day had left him troubled.  Any sermon on the
+prodigal always touches men; even if it does not prick their
+memories, it can always stir their imaginations.  Whenever he heard
+one, his mind went back to the years when she who afterwards became
+Rowan's mother had cast him off, so settling life for him.  For
+after that experience he had put away the thought of marriage.  "To
+be so treated once is enough," he had said sternly and proudly.
+True, in after years she had come back to him as far as friendship
+could bring her back, since she was then the wife of another; but
+every year of knowing her thus had only served to deepen the sense
+of his loss.  He had long since fallen into the habit of thinking
+this over of Sunday evenings before going to bed, and as the end of
+life closed in upon him, he dwelt upon it more and more.
+
+These familiar thoughts swarmed back to-night, but with them were
+mingled new depressing ones.  Nothing now perhaps could have caused
+him such distress as the thought that Rowan and Isabel would never
+marry.  All the love that he had any right to pour into any life,
+he had always poured with passionate and useless yearnings into
+Rowan's--son, of the only woman he had ever loved--the boy that
+should have been his own.
+
+There came an interruption.  A light quick step was heard mounting
+the stairs.  A latch key was impatiently inserted in the hall door.
+A bamboo cane was dropped loudly into the holder of the hat-rack; a
+soft hat was thrown down carelessly somewhere--it sounded like a
+wet mop flung into a corner; and there entered a young man
+straight, slender, keen-faced, with red hair, a freckled skin,
+large thin red ears, and a strong red mouth.  As he stepped forward
+into the light, he paused, parting the haircut of his eyes and
+blinking.
+
+"Good evening, uncle," he said in a shrill key.
+
+"Well, sir."
+
+Barbee looked the Judge carefully over; he took the Judge's hat and
+cane from the table and hung them in the hall; he walked over and
+picked up the newspaper from between the Judge's legs and placed it
+at his elbow; he set the ash tray near the edge of the table within
+easy reach of the cigar.  Then he threw himself into a chair across
+the room, lighted a cigarette, blew the smoke toward the ceiling
+like the steam of a little whistle signalling to stop work.
+
+"Well, uncle," he said in a tone in which a lawyer might announce
+to his partner the settlement of a long-disputed point, "Marguerite
+is in love with me!"
+
+The Judge smoked on, his eyes resting on the wall.
+
+"Yes, sir; in love with me.  The truth had to come out sometime,
+and it came out to-night.  And now the joy of life is gone for me!
+As soon as a woman falls in love with a man, his peace is at an
+end.  But I am determined that it shall not interfere with my
+practice."
+
+"What practice?"
+
+"The practice of my profession, sir!  The profession of yourself
+and of the great men of the past: such places have to be filled."
+
+"Filled, but not filled with the same thing."
+
+"You should have seen the other hapless wretches there to-night!
+Pining for a smile!  Moths begging the candle to scorch them!  And
+the candle was as cold as the north star and as distant."
+
+Barbee rose and took a turn across the room and returning to his
+chair stood before it.
+
+"If Marguerite had only waited, had concealed herself a little
+longer!  Why did she not keep me in doubt until I had won some
+great case!  Think of a scene like this: a crowded court room some
+afternoon; people outside the doors and windows craning their necks
+to see and hear me; the judge nervous and excited; the members of
+the bar beside themselves with jealousy as I arise and confront the
+criminal and jury.  Marguerite is seated just behind the jury; I
+know why she chose that seat: she wished to study me to the best
+advantage.  I try to catch her eye; she will not look at me.  For
+three hours my eloquence storms.  The judge acknowledges to a tear,
+the jurors reach for their handkerchiefs, the people in the court
+room sob like the skies of autumn.  As I finish, the accused arises
+and addresses the court: 'May it please your honor, in the face of
+such a masterly prosecution, I can no longer pretend to be
+innocent.  Sir (addressing me), I congratulate you upon your
+magnificent service to the commonwealth.  Gentlemen of the jury,
+you need not retire to bring in any verdict: I bring it in myself,
+I am guilty, and my only wish is to be hanged.  I suggest that you
+have it done at once in order that nothing may mar the success of
+this occasion!'  That night Marguerite sends for me: that would
+have been the time for declaration!  I have a notion that if I can
+extricate myself without wounding this poor little innocent, to
+forswear matrimony and march on to fame."
+
+"March on to bed."
+
+"Marguerite is going to give a ball, uncle, a brilliant ball merely
+to celebrate this irrepressible efflux and panorama of her
+emotions.  Watch me at that ball, uncle!  Mark the rising Romeo of
+the firm when Marguerite, the youthful Juliet of this town--"
+
+A hand waved him quietly toward his bedroom.
+
+"Well, good night, sir, good night.  When the lark sings at
+heaven's gate I'll greet thee, uncle.  My poor Marguerite!--Good
+night, uncle, good night."
+
+He was only nineteen.
+
+The Judge returned to his thoughts.
+
+He must have thought a long time: the clock not far away struck
+twelve.  He took off his glasses, putting them negligently on the
+edge of the ash tray which tipped over beneath their weight and
+fell to the floor: he picked up his glasses, but let the ashes lie.
+Then he stooped down to take off his shoes, not without sounds of
+bodily discomfort.
+
+Aroused by these sounds or for other reasons not to be discovered,
+there emerged from under a table on which was piled "The Lives of
+the Chief Justices" a bulldog, cylindrical and rigid with years.
+Having reached a decorous position before the Judge, by the slow
+action of the necessary machinery he lowered the posterior end of
+the cylinder to the floor and watched him.
+
+"Well, did I get them off about right?"
+
+The dog with a private glance of sympathy up into the Judge's face
+returned to his black goatskin rug under the Chief Justices; and
+the Judge, turning off the burners in the chandelier and striking a
+match, groped his way in his sock feet to his bedroom--to the bed
+with its one pillow.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Out in the country next morning it was not yet break of dawn.  The
+stars, thickly flung about, were flashing low and yellow as at
+midnight, but on the horizon the great change had begun.  Not with
+colors of rose or pearl but as the mysterious foreknowledge of the
+morning, when a vast swift herald rushes up from the east and
+sweeps onward across high space, bidding the earth be in readiness
+for the drama of the sun.
+
+The land, heavy with life, lay wrapped in silence, steeped in rest.
+Not a bird in wet hedge or evergreen had drawn nimble head from
+nimble wing.  In meadow and pasture fold and herd had sunk down
+satisfied.  A black brook brawling through a distant wood sounded
+loud in the stillness.  Under the forest trees around the home of
+the Merediths only drops of dew might have been heard splashing
+downward from leaf to leaf.  In the house all slept.  The mind,
+wakefullest of happy or of suffering things, had lost consciousness
+of joy and care save as these had been crowded down into the
+chamber which lies beneath our sleep, whence they made themselves
+audible through the thin flooring as the noise of dreams.
+
+Among the parts of the day during which man may match the elements
+of the world within him to the world without--his songs with its
+sunrises, toil with noontide, prayer with nightfall, slumber with
+dark--there is one to stir within him the greatest sense of
+responsibility: the hour of dawn.
+
+If he awaken then and be alone, he is earliest to enter the silent
+empty theatre of the earth where the human drama is soon to
+recommence.  Not a mummer has stalked forth; not an auditor sits
+waiting.  He himself, as one of the characters in this ancient
+miracle play of nature, pauses at the point of separation between
+all that he has enacted and all that he will enact.  Yesterday he
+was in the thick of action.  Between then and now lies the night,
+stretching like a bar of verdure across wearying sands.  In that
+verdure he has rested; he has drunk forgetfulness and self-renewal
+from those deep wells of sleep.  Soon the play will be ordered on
+again and he must take his place for parts that are new and
+confusing to all.  The servitors of the morning have entered and
+hung wall and ceiling with gorgeous draperies; the dust has been
+sprinkled; fresh airs are blowing; and there is music, the living
+orchestra of the living earth.  Well for the waker then if he can
+look back upon the role he has played with a quiet conscience, and
+as naturally as the earth greets the sun step forth upon the stage
+to continue or to end his brief part in the long drama of destiny.
+
+The horizon had hardly begun to turn red when a young man,
+stretched on his bed by an open window, awoke from troubled sleep.
+He lay for a few moments without moving, then he sat up on the edge
+of the bed.  His hands rested listlessly on his kneecaps and his
+eyes were fixed on the sky-line crimsoning above his distant woods.
+
+After a while he went over and sat at one of the windows, his eyes
+still fixed on the path of the coming sun; and a great tragedy of
+men sat there within him: the tragedy that has wandered long and
+that wanders ever, showing its face in all lands, retaining its
+youth in all ages; the tragedy of love that heeds not law, and the
+tragedy of law forever punishing heedless love.
+
+Gradually the sounds of life began.  From the shrubs under his
+window, from the orchard and the wet weeds of fence corners, the
+birds reentered upon their lives.  Far off in the meadows the
+cattle rose from their warm dry places, stretched themselves and
+awoke the echoes of the wide rolling land with peaceful lowing.  A
+brood mare in a grazing lot sent forth her quick nostril call to
+the foal capering too wildly about her, and nozzled it with
+rebuking affection.  On the rosy hillsides white lambs were leaping
+and bleating, or running down out of sight under the white sea-fog
+of the valleys.  A milk cart rattled along the turnpike toward the
+town.
+
+It had become broad day.
+
+He started up and crossed the hall to the bedroom opposite, and
+stood looking down at his younger brother.  How quiet Dent's sleep
+was; how clear the current of his life had run and would run
+always!  No tragedy would ever separate him and the woman he loved.
+
+When he went downstairs the perfect orderliness of his mother's
+housekeeping had been before him.  Doors and windows had been
+opened to the morning freshness, sweeping and dusting had been
+done, not a servant was in sight.  His setters lay waiting on the
+porch and as he stepped out they hurried up with glistening eyes
+and soft barkings and followed him as he passed around to the barn.
+Work was in progress there: the play of currycombs, the whirl of
+the cutting-box, the noise of the mangers, the bellowing of calves,
+the rich streamy sounds of the milking.  He called his men to him
+one after another, laying out the work of the day.
+
+When he returned to the house he saw his mother walking on the
+front pavement; she held flowers freshly plucked for the breakfast
+table: a woman of large mould, grave, proud, noble; an ideal of her
+place and time.
+
+"Is the lord of the manor ready for his breakfast?" she asked as
+she came forward, smiling.
+
+"I am ready, mother," he replied without smiling, touching his lips
+to her cheek.
+
+She linked her arm in his as they ascended the steps.  At the top
+she drew him gently around until they faced the landscape rolling
+wide before them.
+
+"It is so beautiful!" she exclaimed with a deep narrow love of her
+land.  "I never see it without thinking of it as it will be years
+hence.  I can see you riding over it then and your children playing
+around the house and some one sitting here where we stand, watching
+them at their play and watching you in the distance at your work.
+But I have been waiting a long time for her to take my place--and
+to take her own," and she leaned heavily on his arm as a sign of
+her dependence but out of weakness also (for she did not tell him
+all).  "I am impatient to hear the voice of your children, Rowan.
+Do you never wish to hear them yourself?"
+
+As they stood silent, footsteps approached through the hall and
+turning they saw Dent with a book in his hand.
+
+"Are you grand people never coming to breakfast?" he asked,
+frowning with pretended impatience, "so that a laboring man may go
+to his work?"
+
+He was of short but well-knit figure.  Spectacles and a thoughtful
+face of great refinement gave him the student's stamp.  His
+undergraduate course at college would end in a few weeks.
+Postgraduate work was to begin during the summer.  An assistant
+professorship, then a full professorship--these were successive
+stations already marked by him on the clear track of life; and he
+was now moving toward them with straight and steady aim.  Sometimes
+we encounter personalities which seem to move through the discords
+of this life as though guided by laws of harmony; they know neither
+outward check nor inward swerving, and are endowed with that
+peaceful passion for toil which does the world's work and is one of
+the marks of genius.
+
+He was one of these--a growth of the new time not comprehended by
+his mother.  She could neither understand it nor him.  The pain
+which this had given him at first he had soon outgrown; and what
+might have been a tragedy to another nature melted away in the
+steady sunlight of his entire reasonableness.  Perhaps he realized
+that the scientific son can never be the idol of a household until
+he is born of scientific parents.
+
+As mother and elder son now turned to greet him, the mother was not
+herself aware that she still leaned upon the arm of Rowan and that
+Dent walked into the breakfast room alone.
+
+Less than usual was said during the meal.  They were a reserved
+household, inclined to the small nobilities of silence.  (It is
+questionable whether talkative families ever have much to say.)
+This morning each had especial reason for self-communing.
+
+When they had finished breakfast and came out into the hall.  Dent
+paused at one of the parlor doors.
+
+"Mother" he said simply, "come into the parlor a moment, will you?
+And Rowan, I should like to see you also."
+
+They followed him with surprise and all seated themselves.
+
+"Mother," he said, addressing Her with a clear beautiful light in
+his gray eyes, yet not without the reserve which he always felt and
+always inspired, "I wish to tell you that I am engaged to Pansy
+Vaughan.  And to tell you also, Rowan.  You know that I finish
+college this year; she does also.  We came to an understanding
+yesterday afternoon and I wish you both to know it at once.  We
+expect to be married in the autumn as soon as I am of age and a man
+in my own right.  Mother, Pansy is coming to see you; and Rowan, I
+hope you will go to see Pansy.  Both of you will like her and be
+proud of her when you know her."
+
+He rose as though he had rounded his communication to a perfect
+shape.  "Now I must get to my work.  Good morning," and with a
+smile for each he walked quietly out of the room.  He knew that he
+could not expect their congratulations at that moment and that
+further conference would be awkward for all.  He could merely tell
+them the truth and leave the rest to the argument of time.
+
+
+"But I cannot believe it, Rowan!  I cannot!"
+
+Mrs. Meredith sat regarding' her elder son with incredulity and
+distress.  The shock of the news was for certain reasons even
+greater to him; so that he could not yet command himself
+sufficiently to comfort her.  After a few moments she resumed: "I
+did not know that Dent had begun to think about girls.  He never
+said so.  He has never cared for society.  He has seemed absorbed
+in his studies.  And now--Dent in love.  Dent engaged, Dent to be
+married in the autumn--why, Rowan, am I dreaming, am I in my
+senses?  And to this girl!  She has entrapped him--poor, innocent,
+unsuspecting Dent!  My poor, little, short-sighted bookworm."
+Tears sprang to her eyes, but she laughed also.  She had a mother's
+hope that this trouble would turn to comedy.  She went on quickly:
+"Did you know anything about this?  Has he ever spoken to you about
+it?"
+
+"No, I am just as much surprised.  But then Dent never speaks in
+advance."
+
+She looked at him a little timidly: "I thought perhaps it was this
+that has been troubling you.  You have been trying to hide it from
+me."
+
+He dropped his eyes quickly and made no reply.
+
+"And do you suppose he is in earnest, Rowan?"
+
+"He would never jest on such a subject."
+
+"I mean, do you think he knows his own mind?"
+
+"He always does."
+
+"But would he marry against my wishes?"
+
+"He takes it for granted that you will be pleased: he said so."
+
+"But how can he think I'll be pleased?  I have never spoken to this
+girl in my life.  I have never seen her except when we have passed
+them on the turnpike.  I never spoke to her father but once and
+that was years ago when he came here one cold winter afternoon to
+buy a shock of fodder from your father."
+
+She was a white character; but even the whiteness of ermine gains
+by being necked with blackness.  "How can he treat me with so
+little consideration?  It is just as if he had said: 'Good morning,
+mother.  I am going to disgrace the family by my marriage, but I
+know you will be delighted---good morning.'"
+
+"You forget that Dent does not think he will disgrace the family.
+He said you would be proud of her."
+
+"Well, when the day comes for me to be proud of this, there will
+not be much left to be ashamed of.  Rowan, for once I shall
+interfere."
+
+"How can you interfere?"
+
+"Then you must: you are his guardian."
+
+"I shall not be his guardian by the autumn.  Dent has arranged this
+perfectly, mother, as he always arranges everything."
+
+She returned to her point.  "But he _must_ be kept from making such
+a mistake!  Talk to him as a man.  Advise him, show him that he
+will tie a millstone around his neck, ruin his whole life.  I am
+willing to leave myself out and to forget what is due me, what is
+due you, what is due the memory of his father and of my father: for
+his own sake he must not marry this girl."
+
+He shook his head slowly.  "It is settled, mother," he added
+consolingly, "and I have so much confidence in Dent that I believe
+what he says: we shall be proud of her when we know her."
+
+She sat awhile in despair.  Then she said with fresh access of
+conviction: "This is what comes of so much science: it always tends
+to make a man common in his social tastes.  You need not smile at
+me in that pitying way, for it is true: it destroys aristocratic
+feeling; and there is more need of aristocratic feeling in a
+democracy than anywhere else: because it is the only thing that can
+be aristocratic.  That is what science has done for Dent!  And this
+girl I--the public school has tried to make her uncommon, and the
+Girl's College has attempted, to make her more uncommon; and now I
+suppose she actually thinks she _is_ uncommon: otherwise she would
+never have imagined that she could marry a son of mine.  Smile on,
+I know I amuse you!  You think I am not abreast of the times.  I am
+glad I am not.  I prefer my own.  Dent should have studied for the
+church--with his love of books, and his splendid mind, and his
+grave, beautiful character.  Then he would never have thought of
+marrying beneath him socially; he would have realized that if he
+did, he could never rise.  Once in the church and with the right
+kind of wife, he might some day have become a bishop: I have always
+wanted a bishop in the family.  But he set his heart upon a
+professorship, and I suppose a professor does not have to be
+particular about whom he marries."
+
+"A professor has to be particular only to please himself--and the
+woman.  His choice is not regulated by salaries and congregations."
+
+She returned to her point: "You breed fine cattle and fine sheep,
+and you try to improve the strain of your setters.  You know how
+you do it.  What right has Dent to injure his children in the race
+for life by giving them an inferior mother?  Are not children to be
+as much regarded in their rights of descent as rams and poodles?"
+
+"You forget that the first families in all civilizations have kept
+themselves alive and at the summit by intermarriage with good,
+clean, rich blood of people whom they have considered beneath them."
+
+"But certainly my family is not among these.  It is certainly alive
+and it is certainly not dying out.  I cannot discuss the subject
+with you, if you once begin that argument.  Are you going to call
+on her?"
+
+"Certainly.  It was Dent's wish and it is right that I should."
+
+"Then I think I shall go with you, Rowan.  Dent said she was coming
+to see me; but I think I should rather go to see her.  Whenever I
+wished to leave, I could get away, but if she came here, I
+couldn't."
+
+"When should you like to go?"
+
+"Oh, don't hurry me! I shall need time--a great deal of time!  Do
+you suppose they have a parlor?  I am afraid I shall not shine in
+the kitchen in comparison with the tins."
+
+She had a wry face; then her brow cleared and she added with relief:
+
+"But I must put this whole trouble out of my mind at present!  It
+is too close to me, I cannot even see it.  I shall call on the girl
+with you and then I shall talk quietly with Dent.  Until then I
+must try to forget it.  Besides, I got up this morning with
+something else on my mind.  It is not Dent's unwisdom that
+distresses me."
+
+Her tone indicated that she had passed to a more important topic.
+If any one had told her that her sons were not equally dear, the
+wound of such injustice would never have healed.  In all that she
+could do for both there had never been maternal discrimination; but
+the heart of a woman cannot help feeling things that the heart of a
+mother does not; and she discriminated as a woman.  This was
+evident now as she waived her young son's affairs.
+
+"It is not Dent that I have been thinking of this morning," she
+repeated.  "Why is it not you that come to tell me of your
+engagement?  Why have you not set Dent an example as to the kind of
+woman he ought to marry?  How many more years must he and I wait?"
+
+They were seated opposite each other.  He was ready for riding out
+on the farm, his hat on his crossed knees, gloves and whip in hand.
+Her heart yearned over him as he pulled at his gloves, his head
+dropped forward so that his face was hidden.
+
+"Now that the subject has come up in this unexpected way, I want to
+tell you how long I have wished to see you married.  I have never
+spoken because my idea is that a mother should not advise unless
+she believes it necessary.  And in your case it has not been
+necessary.  I have known your choice, and long before it became
+yours, it became mine.  She is my ideal among them all.  I know
+women, Rowan, and I know she is worthy of you and I could not say
+more.  She is-high-minded and that quality is so rare in either
+sex.  Without it what is any wife worth to a high-minded man?  And
+I have watched her.  With all her pride and modesty I have
+discovered her secret--she loves you.  Then why have you waited?
+Why do you still wait?"
+
+He did not answer and she continued with deeper feeling:
+
+"Life is so uncertain to all of us and of course to me!  I want to
+see you wedded to her, see her brought here as mistress of this
+house, and live to hear the laughter of your children."  She
+finished with solemn emotion: "It has been my prayer, Rowan."
+
+She became silent with her recollections of her own early life for
+a moment and then resumed:
+
+"Nothing ever makes up for the loss of such years--the first years
+of happy marriage.  If we have had these, no matter what happens
+afterward, we have not lived for nothing.  It becomes easier for us
+to be kind and good afterward, to take an interest in life, to
+believe in our fellow-creatures, and in God."
+
+He sprang up.
+
+"Mother, I cannot speak with you about this now."  He turned
+quickly and stood with his back to her, looking out of doors; and
+he spoke over his shoulder and his voice was broken: "You have had
+one disappointment this morning: it is enough.  But do not think of
+my marrying--of my ever marrying.  Dent must take my place at the
+head of the house.  It is all over with me!  But I cannot speak
+with you about this now," and he started quickly to leave the
+parlors.  She rose and put her arm around his waist, walking beside
+him.
+
+"You do not mind my speaking to, you about this, Rowan?" she said,
+sore at having touched some trouble which she felt that he had long
+been hiding from her, and with full respect for the privacies of
+his life.
+
+"No, no, no!" he cried, choking with emotion.  "Ah, mother,
+mother!"--and he gently disengaged himself from her arms.
+
+She watched him as he rode out of sight.  Then she returned and sat
+in the chair which he had, quitted, folding her hands in her lap.
+
+For her it was one of the moments when we are reminded that our
+lives are not in our keeping, and that whatsoever is to befall us
+originates in sources beyond our power.  Our wills may indeed reach
+the length of our arms or as far as our voices can penetrate space;
+but without us and within us moves one universe that saves us or
+ruins us only for its own purposes; and we are no more free amid
+its laws than the leaves of the forest are free to decide their own
+shapes and season of unfolding, to order the showers by which they
+are to be nourished and the storms which shall scatter them at last.
+
+Above every other she had cherished the wish for a marriage between
+Rowan and Isabel Conyers; now for reasons unknown to her it seemed
+that this desire was never to be realized.  She did not know the
+meaning of what Rowan had just said to her; but she did not doubt
+there was meaning behind it, grave meaning.  Her next most serious
+concern would have been that in time Dent likewise should choose a
+wife wisely; now he had announced to her his intention to wed
+prematurely and most foolishly; she could not altogether shake off
+the conviction that he would do what he had said he should.
+
+As for Dent it was well-nigh the first anxiety that he had ever
+caused her.  If her affection for him was less poignant, being
+tenderness stored rather than tenderness exercised, this resulted
+from the very absence of his demand for it.  He had always needed
+her so little, had always needed every one so little, unfolding his
+life from the first and drawing from the impersonal universe
+whatever it required with the quietude and efficiency of a
+prospering plant.  She lacked imagination, or she might have
+thought of Dent as a filial sunflower, which turned the blossom of
+its life always faithfully and beautifully toward her, but stood
+rooted in the soil of knowledge that she could not supply.
+
+What she had always believed she could see in him was the
+perpetuation under a new form of his father and the men of his
+father's line.
+
+These had for generations been grave mental workers: ministers,
+lawyers, professors in theological seminaries; narrow-minded,
+strong-minded; upright, unbending; black-browed, black-coated; with
+a passion always for dealing in justice and dealing out justice,
+human or heavenly; most of all, gratified when in theological
+seminaries, when they could assert themselves as inerrant
+interpreters of the Most High.  The portraits of two of them hung
+in the dining room now, placed there as if to watch the table and
+see that grace was never left unsaid, that there be no levity at
+meat nor heresy taken in with the pudding.  Other portraits were
+also in other rooms--they always had themselves painted for
+posterity, seldom or never their wives.
+
+Some of the books they had written were in the library, lucid
+explanations of the First Cause and of how the Judge of all the
+earth should be looked at from without and from within.  Some that
+they had most loved to read were likewise there: "Pollock's Course
+of Time"; the slow outpourings of Young, sad sectary; Milton, with
+the passages on Hell approvingly underscored--not as great poetry,
+but as great doctrine; nowhere in the bookcases a sign of the
+"Areopagitica," of "Comus," and "L'Allegro"; but most prominent the
+writings of Jonathan Edwards, hoarsest of the whole flock of New
+World theological ravens.
+
+Her marriage into this family had caused universal surprise.  It
+had followed closely upon the scandals in regard to the wild young
+Ravenel Morris, the man she loved, the man she had promised to
+marry.  These scandals had driven her to the opposite extreme from
+her first choice by one of life's familiar reactions; and in her
+wounded flight she had thrown herself into the arms of a man whom
+people called irreproachable.  He was a grave lawyer, one of the
+best of his kind; nevertheless he and she, when joined for the one
+voyage of two human spirits, were like a funeral barge lashed to
+some dancing boat, golden-oared, white-sailed, decked with flowers.
+Hope at the helm and Pleasure at the prow.
+
+For she herself had sprung from a radically different stock: from
+sanguine, hot-blooded men; congressmen shaping the worldly history
+of their fellow-beings and leaving the non-worldly to take care of
+itself; soldiers illustrious in the army and navy; hale country
+gentlemen who took the lead in the country's hardy sports and
+pleasures; all sowing their wild oats early in life with hands that
+no power could stay; not always living to reap, but always leaving
+enough reaping to be done by the sad innocent who never sow;
+fathers of large families; and even when breaking the hearts of
+their wives, never losing their love; for with their large open
+frailties being men without crime and cowardice, tyrannies,
+meannesses.
+
+With these two unlike hereditary strains before her she had, during
+the years, slowly devised the maternal philosophy of her sons.
+
+Out of those grave mental workers had come Dent--her student.  She
+loved to believe that in the making of him her own blood asserted
+itself by drawing him away from the tyrannical interpretation of
+God to the neutral investigation of the earth, from black theology
+to sunlit science--so leaving him at work and at peace, the
+ancestral antagonisms becoming neutralized by being blended.
+
+But Rowan! while he was yet a little fellow, and she and her young
+husband would sit watching him at play, characteristics revealed
+themselves which led her to shake her head rebukingly and say: "He
+gets these traits from you."  At other times contradictory
+characteristics appeared and the father, looking silently at her,
+would in effect inquire: "Whence does he derive these?"  On both
+accounts she began to look with apprehension toward this son's
+maturing years.  And always, as the years passed, evidence was
+forced more plainly upon her that in him the two natures he
+inherited were antagonistic still; each alternately uppermost; both
+in unceasing warfare; thus endowing him with a double nature which
+might in time lead him to a double life.  So that even then she had
+begun to take upon herself the burden of dreading lest she should
+not only be the mother of his life, but the mother of his
+tragedies.  She went over this again and again: "Am I to be the
+mother of his tragedies?"
+
+As she sat this young summer morning after he had left her so
+strangely, all at once the world became autumn to her remembrance.
+
+An autumn morning: the rays of the sun shining upon the silvery
+mists swathing the trees outside, upon the wet and many-colored
+leaves; a little frost on the dark grass here and there; the first
+fires lighted within; the carriage already waiting at the door; the
+breakfast hurriedly choked down--in silence; the mournful noise of
+his trunk being brought downstairs--his first trunk.  Then the
+going out upon the veranda and the saying good-by to him; and
+then--the carriage disappearing in the silver mists, with a few red
+and yellow leaves whirled high from the wheels.
+
+That was the last of the first Rowan,--youth at the threshold of
+manhood.  Now off for college, to his university in New England.
+As his father and she stood side by side (he being too frail to
+take that chill morning ride with his son) he waved his hand
+protectingly after him, crying out: "He is a good boy."  And
+she, having some wide vision of other mothers of the land who
+during these same autumn days were bidding God-speed to their
+idols--picked youth of the republic--she with some wide vision of
+this large fact stood a proud mother among them all, feeling sure
+that he would take foremost place in his college for good honest
+work and for high character and gentle manners and gallant
+bearing--with not a dark spot in him.
+
+It was toward the close of the first session, after she had learned
+the one kind of letter he always wrote, that his letters changed.
+She could not have explained how they were changed, could not have
+held the pages up to the inspection of any one else and have said,
+"See! it is here."  But she knew it was there, and it stayed there.
+She waited for his father to notice it; but if he ever noticed it,
+he never told her: nor did she ever confide her discovery to him.
+
+When vacation came, it brought a request from Rowan that he might
+be allowed to spend the summer with college friends farther
+north--camping, fishing, hunting, sailing, seeing more of his
+country.  His father's consent was more ready than her own.  The
+second session passed and with the second vacation the request was
+renewed.  "Why does he not come home?  Why does he not wish to come
+home?" she said, wandering restlessly over the house with his
+letter in her hands; going up to his bedroom and sitting down in
+the silence of it and looking at his bed--which seemed so strangely
+white that day--looking at all the preparations she had made for
+his comfort.  "Why does he not come?"
+
+Near the close of the third session he came quickly enough,
+summoned by his father's short fatal illness.
+
+Some time passed before she observed anything in him but natural
+changes after so long an absence and grief over his great loss.  He
+shut himself in his room for some days, having it out alone with
+himself, a young man's first solemn accounting to a father who has
+become a memory.  Gradually there began to emerge his new care of
+her, and tenderness, a boy's no more.  And he stepped forward
+easily into his place as the head of affairs, as his brother's
+guardian.  But as time wore on and she grew used to him as so much
+older in mere course of nature, and as graver by his loss and his
+fresh responsibilities, she made allowances for all these and
+brushed them away and beheld constantly beneath them that other
+change.
+
+Often while she sat near him when they were reading, she would look
+up and note that unaware a shadow had stolen out on his face.  She
+studied that shadow.  And one consolation she drew: that whatsoever
+the cause, it was nothing by which he felt dishonored.  At such
+moments her love broke over him with intolerable longings.  She
+remembered things that her mother had told her about her father;
+she recalled the lives of her brothers, his uncles.  She yearned to
+say: "What is it, Rowan?  You can tell me anything, anything.  I
+know so much more than you believe."
+
+But some restraint dissuaded her from bridging that reserve.  She
+may have had the feeling that she spared him a good deal by her not
+knowing.
+
+For more than a year after his return he had kept aloof from
+society--going into town only when business demanded, and accepting
+no invitations to the gayeties of the neighborhood.  He liked
+rather to have his friends come out to stay with him: sometimes he
+was off with them for days during the fishing and hunting seasons.
+Care of the farm and its stock occupied a good deal of his leisure,
+and there were times when he worked hard in the fields--she thought
+so unnecessarily.  Incessant activity of some kind had become his
+craving--the only ease.
+
+She became uneasy, she disapproved.  For a while she allowed things
+to have their way, but later she interfered--though as always with
+her silent strength and irresistible gentleness.  Making no comment
+upon his changed habits and altered tastes, giving no sign of her
+own purposes, she began the second year of his home-coming to
+accept invitations for herself and formally reentered her social
+world; reassumed her own leadership there; demanded him as her
+escort; often filled the house with young guests; made it for his
+generation what the home of her girlhood had been to her--in all
+sacrificing for him the gravity and love of seclusion which had
+settled over her during the solemn years, years which she knew to
+be parts of a still more solemn future.
+
+She succeeded.  She saw him again more nearly what he had been
+before the college days--more nearly developing that type of life
+which belonged to him and to his position.
+
+Finally she saw him in love as she wished; and at this point she
+gradually withdrew from society again, feeling that he needed her
+no more.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The noise of wheels on the gravel driveway of the lawn brought the
+reflections of Mrs. Meredith to an abrupt close.  The sound was
+extremely unpleasant to her; she did not feel in a mood to
+entertain callers this morning.  Rising with regret, she looked
+out.  The brougham of Mrs. Conyers, flashing in the sun, was being
+driven toward the house--was being driven rapidly, as though speed
+meant an urgency.
+
+If Mrs. Meredith desired no visitor at all, she particularly
+disliked the appearance of this one.  Rowan's words to her were
+full of meaning that she did not understand; but they rendered it
+clear at least that his love affair had been interrupted, if not
+been ended.  She could not believe this due to any fault of his;
+and friendly relations with the Conyers family was for her
+instantly at an end with any wrong done to him.
+
+She summoned a maid and instructed her regarding the room in which
+the visitor was to be received (not in the parlors; they were too
+full of solemn memories this morning).  Then she passed down the
+long hall to her bedchamber.
+
+The intimacy between these ladies was susceptible of exact
+analysis; every element comprising it could have been valued as
+upon a quantitative scale.  It did not involve any of those
+incalculable forces which constitute friendship--a noble mystery
+remaining forever beyond unravelling.
+
+They found the first basis of their intimacy in a common wish for
+the union of their offsprings.  This subject had never been
+mentioned between them.  Mrs. Conyers would have discussed it had
+she dared; but she knew at least the attitude of the other.
+Furthermore, Mrs. Meredith brought to this association a beautiful
+weakness: she was endowed with all but preternatural insight into
+what is fine in human nature, but had slight power of discovering
+what is base; she seemed endowed with far-sightedness in high,
+clear, luminous atmospheres, but was short-sighted in moral
+twilights.  She was, therefore, no judge of the character of her
+intimate.  As for that lady's reputation, this was well known to
+her; but she screened herself against this reputation behind what
+she believed to be her own personal discovery of unsuspected
+virtues in the misjudged.  She probably experienced as much pride
+in publicly declaring the misjudged a better woman than she was
+reputed, as that lady would have felt in secretly declaring her to
+be a worse one.
+
+On the part of Mrs. Conyers, the motives which she brought to the
+association presented nothing that must be captured and brought
+down from the heights, she was usually to be explained by mining
+rather than mounting.  Whatever else she might not have been, she
+was always ore; never rainbows.
+
+Throughout bird and animal and insect life there runs what is
+recognized as the law of protective assimilation.  It represents
+the necessity under which a creature lives to pretend to be
+something else as a condition of continuing to be itself.  The
+rose-colored flamingo, curving its long neck in volutions that
+suggest the petals of a corolla, burying its head under its wing
+and lifting one leg out of sight, becomes a rank, marvellous
+flower, blooming on too slight a stalk in its marshes.  An insect
+turns itself into one of the dried twigs of a dead stick.  On the
+margin of a shadowed pool the frog is hued like moss--greenness
+beside greenness.  Mrs. Conyers availed herself of a kind of
+protective assimilation when she exposed herself to the environment
+of Mrs. Meredith, adopting devices by which she would be taken for
+any object in nature but herself.  Two familiar devices were
+applied to her habiliments and her conversations.  Mrs. Meredith
+always dressed well to the natural limit of her bountiful years;
+Mrs. Conyers usually dressed more than well and more than a
+generation behind hers.  On occasions when she visited Rowan's
+unconcealed mother, she allowed time to make regarding herself
+almost an honest declaration.  Ordinarily she Was a rose nearly
+ready to drop, which is bound with a thread of its own color to
+look as much as possible like a bud that is nearly ready to open.
+
+Her conversations were even more assiduously tinged and fashioned
+by the needs of accommodation.  Sometimes she sat in Mrs.
+Meredith's parlors as a soul sick of the world's vanities, an urban
+spirit that hungered for country righteousness.  During a walk one
+day through the gardens she paused under the boughs of a weeping
+willow and recited, "Cromwell, I charge thee fling away ambition--"
+She uniformly imparted to Mrs. Meredith the assurance that with her
+alone she could lay aside all disguises.
+
+This morning she alighted from her carriage at the end of the
+pavement behind some tall evergreens.  As she walked toward the
+house, though absorbed with a serious purpose, she continued to be
+as observant of everything as usual.  Had an eye been observant of
+her, it would have been noticed that Mrs. Conyers in all her
+self-concealment did not conceal one thing--her walk.  This one
+element of her conduct had its curious psychology.  She had never
+been able to forget that certain scandals set going many years
+before, had altered the course of Mrs. Meredith's life and of the
+lives of some others.  After a lapse of so long a time she had no
+fear now that she should be discovered.  Nevertheless it was
+impossible for her ever to approach this house without "coming
+delicately."  She "came delicately" in the same sense that Agag,
+king of Amalek, walked when he was on his way to Saul, who was
+about to hew him to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.
+
+She approached the house now, observant of everything as she
+tripped.  Had a shutter been hung awry; if a window shade had been
+drawn too low or a pane of glass had not sparkled, or there had
+been loose paper on the ground or moulted feathers on the bricks,
+she would have discovered this with the victorious satisfaction of
+finding fault.  But orderliness prevailed.  No; the mat at the
+front door had been displaced by Rowan's foot as he had hurried
+from the house.  (The impulse was irresistible: she adjusted it
+with her toe and planted herself on it with a sense of triumph.)
+
+As she took out her own and Isabel's cards, she turned and looked
+out across the old estate.  This was the home she had designed for
+Isabel: the land, the house, the silver, the glass, the memories,
+the distinction--they must all be Isabel's.
+
+Some time passed before Mrs. Meredith appeared.  Always a woman of
+dignity and reserve, she had never before in her life perhaps worn
+a demeanor so dignified and reserved.  Her nature called for peace;
+but if Rowan had been wronged, then there was no peace--and a
+sacred war is a cruel one.  The instant that the two ladies
+confronted each other, each realized that each concealed something
+from the other.  This discovery instantly made Mrs. Meredith cooler
+still; it rendered Mrs. Conyers more cordial.
+
+"Isabel regretted that she could not come."
+
+"I am sorry."  The tone called for the dismissal of the subject.
+
+"This is scarcely a visit to you," Mrs. Conyers went on; "I have
+been paying one of my usual pastoral calls: I have been to Ambrose
+Webb's to see if my cows are ready to return to town.  Strawberries
+are ripe and strawberries call for more cream, and more cream calls
+for more calves, and more calves call for--well, we have all heard
+them!  I do not understand how a man who looks like Ambrose can so
+stimulate cattle.  Of course my cows are not as fine and fat as
+Rowan's--that is not to be expected.  The country is looking very
+beautiful.  I never come for a drive without regretting that I live
+in town."  (She would have found the country intolerable for the
+same reason that causes criminals to flock to cities.)
+
+Constraint deepened as the visit was prolonged.  Mrs. Conyers
+begged Mrs. Meredith for a recipe that she knew to be bad; and when
+Mrs. Meredith had left the room for it, she rose and looked eagerly
+out of the windows for any sign of Rowan.  When Mrs. Meredith
+returned, for the same reason she asked to be taken into the
+garden, which was in its splendor of bloom.  Mrs. Meredith culled
+for her a few of the most resplendent blossoms--she could not have
+offered to any one anything less.  Mrs. Conyers was careful not to
+pin any one of these on; she had discovered that she possessed a
+peculiarity known to some florists and concealed by those women who
+suffer from it--that flowers soon wilt when worn by them.
+
+Meanwhile as they walked she talked of flowers, of housekeeping;
+she discussed Marguerite's coming ball and Dent's brilliant
+graduation.  She enlarged upon this, praising Dent to the
+disparagement of her own grandson Victor, now in retreat from
+college on account of an injury received as centre-rush in his
+football team.  Victor, she protested, was above education; his
+college was a kind of dormitory to athletics.
+
+When we are most earnest ourselves, we are surest to feel the lack
+of earnestness in others; sincerity stirred to the depths will
+tolerate nothing less.  It thus becomes a new test of a companion.
+So a weak solution may not reveal a poison when a strong one will.
+Mrs. Meredith felt this morning as never before the real nature of
+the woman over whom for years she had tried to throw a concealing
+charity; and Mrs. Conyers saw as never before in what an impossible
+soil she had tried to plant poison oak and call it castle ivy.
+
+The ladies parted with coldness.  When she was once more seated in
+her carriage, Mrs. Conyers thrust her head through the window and
+told the coachman to drive slowly.  She tossed the recipe into a
+pine tree and took in her head.  Then she caught hold of a brown
+silk cord attached to a little brown silk curtain in the front of
+the brougham opposite her face.  It sprang aside, revealing a
+little toilette mirror.  On the cushion beside her lay something
+under a spread newspaper.  She quickly drew off her sombre visiting
+gloves; and lifting the newspaper, revealed under it a fresh pair
+of gloves, pearl-colored.  She worked her tinted hands nimbly into
+these.  Then she took out a rose-colored scarf or shawl as light as
+a summer cloud.  This she threw round her shoulders; it added no
+warmth, it added color, meaning.  There were a few other youthward
+changes and additions; and then the brown silk curtain closed over
+the mirror.
+
+Another woman leaned back in a corner of the brougham.  By a trick
+of the face she had juggled away a generation of her years.  The
+hands were moved backward on the horologe of mortality as we move
+backward the pointers on the dial of a clock: her face ticked at
+the hour of two in the afternoon of life instead of half-past five.
+
+There was still time enough left to be malicious.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+One morning about a week later she entered her carriage and was
+driven rapidly away.  A soft-faced, middle-aged woman with gray
+ringlets and nervous eyes stepped timorously upon the veranda and
+watched her departure with an expression of relief--Miss Harriet
+Crane, the unredeemed daughter of the household.
+
+She had been the only fruit of her mother's first marriage and she
+still remained attached to the parental stem despite the most
+vigorous wavings and shakings of that stem to shed its own product.
+Nearly fifty years of wintry neglect and summer scorching had not
+availed to disjoin Harriet from organic dependence upon her mother.
+And of all conceivable failings in a child of hers that mother
+could have found none so hard to forgive as the failure to attract
+a man in a world full of men nearly all bent upon being attracted.
+
+It was by no choice of Harriet's that she was born of a woman who
+valued children as a kind of social collateral, high-class
+investments to mature after long periods with at least reasonable
+profits for the original investors.  Nor was it by any volition of
+hers that she had commended herself to her mother in the beginning
+by being a beautiful and healthful child: initial pledge that she
+could be relied upon to turn out lucrative in the end.  The parent
+herself was secretly astounded that she had given birth to a child
+of so seraphic a disposition.
+
+Trouble and disappointment began with education, for education is
+long stout resistance.  You cannot polish highly a stone that is
+not hard enough to resist being highly polished.  Harriet's soft
+nature gave way before the advance of the serried phalanxes of
+knowledge: learning passed her by; and she like the many "passed
+through school."
+
+By this time her mother had grown alarmed and she brought Harriet
+out prematurely, that she might be wedded before, so to speak, she
+was discovered.  Meantime Mrs. Crane herself had married a second
+and a third time, with daughters by the last husband who were
+little younger than her eldest; and she laughingly protested that
+nothing is more confusing to a woman than to have in the house
+children by two husbands.  Hence further reason for desiring
+immediate nuptials: she could remove from the parlors the trace of
+bi-marital collaboration.
+
+At first only the most brilliant matches were planned for Harriet;
+these one by one unaccountably came to naught.  Later the mother
+began to fall back: upon those young men who should be glad to
+embrace such an opportunity; but these less desirable young men
+failed to take that peculiar view of their destinies.  In the
+meanwhile the Misses Conyers had come on as debutantes and were
+soon bespoken.  At the marriage of the youngest, Harriet's mother
+had her act as first bridesmaid and dressed her, already fading, as
+though she were the very spirit of April.
+
+The other sisters were long since gone, scattered north and south
+with half-grown families; and the big house was almost empty save
+when they came in troops to visit it.
+
+Harriet's downward career as an article of human merchandise had
+passed through what are perhaps not wholly unrecognizable stages.
+At first she had been displayed near the entrance for immediate
+purchase by the unwary.  Then she had been marked down as something
+that might be secured at a reduced price; but intending buyers
+preferred to pay more.  By and by even this label was taken off and
+she became a remnant of stock for which there was no convenient
+space--being moved from shelf to shelf, always a little more
+shop-worn, a little more out of style.  What was really needed was
+an auction.
+
+Mrs. Conyers did not take much to heart the teachings of her Bible;
+but it had at least defined for her one point of view: all
+creatures worth saving had been saved in pairs.
+
+Bitter as were those years for Harriet, others more humiliating
+followed.  The maternal attempts having been discontinued, she,
+desperate with slights and insults, had put forth some efforts of
+her own.  But it was as though one had been placed in a boat
+without oars and told to row for life: the little boat under the
+influence of cosmic tides had merely drifted into shallows and now
+lay there--forgotten.
+
+This morning as she sat idly rocking on the veranda, she felt that
+negative happiness which consists in the disappearance of a
+positively disagreeable thing.  Then she began to study how she
+should spend the forenoon most agreeably.  Isabel was upstairs; she
+would have been perfectly satisfied to talk with her; but for
+several mornings Isabel had shown unmistakable preference to be let
+alone; and in the school of life Harriet had attained the highest
+proficiency in one branch of knowledge at least--never to get in
+anybody's way.  Victor Fielding lay under the trees with a pipe and
+a book, but she never ventured near him.
+
+So Harriet bethought herself of a certain friend of hers on the
+other side of town, Miss Anna Hardage, who lived with her brother,
+Professor Hardage--two people to trust.
+
+She put on her hat which unfortunately she had chosen to trim
+herself, tied a white veil across the upper part of her face and
+got out her second-best pair of gloves: Harriet kept her best
+gloves for her enemies.  In the front yard she pulled a handful of
+white lilacs (there was some defect here or she would never have
+carried white lilacs in soiled white gloves); and passed out of the
+gate.  Her eyes were lighted up with anticipations, but ill must
+have overtaken her in transit; for when she was seated with Miss
+Anna in a little side porch looking out on the little green yard,
+they were dimmed with tears.
+
+"The same old story," she complained vehemently.  "The same
+ridicule that has been dinned into my ears since I was a child."
+
+"Ah, now, somebody has been teasing her about being an old maid,"
+said Miss Anna to herself, recognizing the signs.
+
+"This world is a very unprincipled place to live in," continued
+Harriet, her rage curdling into philosophy.
+
+"Ah, but it is the best there is just yet," maintained Miss Anna,
+stoutly.  "By and by we may all be able to do better--those of us
+who get the chance."
+
+"What shall I care then?" said Harriet, scouting eternity as a
+palliative of contemporary woes.
+
+"Wait! you are tired and you have lost your temper from thirst:
+children always do.  I'll bring something to cure you, fresh from
+the country, fresh from Ambrose Webb's farm.  Besides, you have a
+dark shade of the blues, my dear; and this remedy is capital for
+the blues.  You have but to sip a glass slowly--and where are
+they?"  And she hastened into the house.
+
+She returned with two glasses of cool buttermilk.
+
+The words and the deed were characteristic of one of the most
+wholesome women that ever helped to straighten out a crooked and to
+cool a feverish world.  Miss Anna's very appearance allayed
+irritation and became a provocation to good health, to good sense.
+Her mission in life seemed not so much to distribute honey as to
+sprinkle salt, to render things salubrious, to enable them to keep
+their tonic naturalness.  Not within the range of womankind could
+so marked a contrast have been found for Harriet as in this maiden
+lady of her own age, who was her most patient friend and who
+supported her clinging nature (which still could not resist the
+attempt to bloom) as an autumn cornstalk supports a frost-nipped
+morning-glory.
+
+If words of love had ever been whispered into Miss Anna's ear, no
+human being knew it now: but perhaps her heart also had its under
+chamber sealed with tears.  Women not even behind her back jested
+at her spinsterhood; and when that is true, a miracle takes place
+indeed.  No doubt Miss Anna was a miracle, not belonging to any
+country, race, or age; being one of those offerings to the world
+which nature now and then draws from the deeps of womanhood: a pure
+gift of God.
+
+The two old maids drained their rectifying beverage in the shady
+porch.  Whether from Miss Anna's faith in it or from the simple
+health-giving of her presence, Harriet passed through a process of
+healing; and as she handed back the empty glass, she smiled
+gratefully into Miss Anna's sparkling brown eyes.  Nature had been
+merciful to her in this, that she was as easily healed as wounded.
+She now returned to the subject which had so irritated her, as we
+rub pleasantly a spot from which a thorn has been extracted.
+
+"What do I care?" she said, straightening her hat as if to complete
+her recovery.  "But if there is one thing that can make me angry,
+Anna, it is the middle-aged, able-bodied unmarried men of this
+town.  They are perfectly, _perfectly_ contemptible."
+
+"Oh, come now!" cried Miss Anna, "I am too old to talk about such
+silly things myself; but what does a woman care whether she is
+married or not if she has had offers?  And you have had plenty of
+good offers, my dear."
+
+"No, I haven't!" said Harriet, who would tell the truth about this
+rankling misfortune.
+
+"Well, then, it was because the men knew you wouldn't have them."
+
+"No, it wasn't!" said Harriet, "it was because they knew I would."
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Miss Anna, impatiently.  "You mustn't try to palm
+off so much mock modesty on me, Harriet."
+
+"Ah, I am too old to fib about it, Anna!  I leave _that_ to my many
+sisters in misfortune."
+
+Harriet looked at her friend's work curiously: she was darning
+Professor Hardage's socks.
+
+"Why do you do that, Anna?  Socks are dirt cheap.  You might as
+well go out into the country and darn sheep."
+
+"Ah, you have never had a brother--my brother! so you cannot
+understand.  I can feel his heels pressing against my stitches when
+he is walking a mile away.   And I know whenever his fingers touch
+the buttons I have put back.  Besides, don't you like to see people
+make bad things good, and things with holes in them whole again?
+Why, that is half the work of the world, Harriet!  It is not his
+feet that make these holes," continued Miss Anna, nicely, "it is
+his shoes, his big, coarse shoes.  And his clothes wear out so
+soon.  He has a tailor who misfits him so exactly from year to year
+that there is never the slightest deviation in the botch.  I know
+beforehand exactly where all the creases will begin.  So I darn and
+mend.  The idea of his big, soft, strong feet making holes in
+anything! but, then, you have never tucked him in bed at night, my
+dear, so you know nothing about his feet."
+
+"Not I!" said Harriet, embarrassed but not shocked.
+
+Miss Anna continued fondly in a lowered voice: "You should have
+heard him the other day when he pulled open a drawer: 'Why, Anna,'
+he cried, 'where on earth did I get all these new socks?  The
+pair I left in here must have been alive: they've bred like
+rabbits.'--'Why, you've forgotten,' I said.  'It's your birthday;
+and I have made you over, so that you are as good as new--_me_!'"
+
+"I never have to be reminded of my birthday," remarked Harriet,
+reflectively.  "Anna, do you know that I have lived about
+one-eighth of the time since Columbus discovered America: doesn't
+that sound awful!"
+
+"Ah, but you don't look it," said Miss Anna, artistically, "and
+that's the main object."
+
+"Oh, I don't feel it," retorted Harriet, "and that's the main
+object too.  I'm as young as I ever was when I'm away from home;
+but I declare, Anna, there are times when my mother can make me
+feel I'm about the oldest thing alive."
+
+"Oh, come now! you mustn't begin to talk that way, or I'll have to
+give you more of the antidote.  You are threatened with a relapse."
+
+"No more," ordered Harriet with a forbidding hand, "and I repeat
+what I said.  Of course you know I never gossip, Anna; but when I
+talk to you, I do not feel as though I were talking to anybody."
+
+"Why, of course not," said Miss Anna, trying to make the most of
+the compliment, "I am nobody at all, just a mere nonentity,
+Harriet."
+
+"Anna," said Harriet, after a pause of unusual length, "if it had
+not been for my mother, I should have been married long ago.
+Thousands of worse-looking women, and of actually worse women,
+marry every year in this world and marry reasonably well.  It was
+because she tried to marry me off: that was the bottom of the
+deviltry--the men saw through her."
+
+"I am afraid they did," admitted Miss Anna, affably, looking down
+into a hole.
+
+"Of course I know I am not brilliant," conceded Harriet, "but then
+I am never commonplace."
+
+"I should like to catch any one saying such a thing."
+
+"Even if I were, commonplace women always make the best wives: do
+they not?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask that question in this porch," exclaimed Miss Anna a
+little resentfully.  "What do I know about it!"
+
+"My mother thinks I am a weak woman," continued Harriet, musingly.
+"If my day ever comes, she will know that I am, strong, Anna,
+_strong_."
+
+"Ah, now, you must forgive your mother," cried Miss Anna, having
+reached a familiar turn in this familiar dialogue.  "Whatever she
+did, she did for the best.  Certainly it was no fault of yours.
+But you could get married to-morrow if you wished and you know it,
+Harriet." (Miss Anna offered up the usual little prayer to be
+forgiven.)
+
+The balm of those words worked through Harriet's veins like a
+poison of joy.  So long as a single human being expresses faith in
+us, what matters an unbelieving world?  Harriet regularly visited
+Miss Anna to hear these maddening syllables.  She called for them
+as for the refilling of a prescription, which she preferred to get
+fresh every time rather than take home once for all and use as
+directed.
+
+Among a primitive folk who seemed to have more moral troubles than
+any other and to feel greater need of dismissing them by artificial
+means, there grew up the custom of using a curious expedient.  They
+chose a beast of the field and upon its head symbolically piled all
+the moral hard-headedness of the several tribes; after which the
+unoffending brute was banished to the wilderness and the guilty
+multitude felt relieved.  However crude that ancient method of
+transferring mental and moral burdens, it had at least this
+redeeming feature: the early Hebrews heaped their sins upon a
+creature which they did not care for and sent it away.  In modern
+times we pile our burdens upon our dearest fellow-creatures and
+keep them permanently near us for further use.  What human being
+but has some other upon whom he nightly hangs his troubles as he
+hangs his different garments upon hooks and nails in the walls
+around him?  Have we ever suspected that when once the habit of
+transferring our troubles has become pleasant to us, we thereafter
+hunt for troubles in order that we may have them to transfer, that
+we magnify the little ones in order to win the credit of having
+large ones, and that we are wonderfully refreshed by making other
+people despondent about us?  Mercifully those upon whom the burdens
+are hung often become the better for their loads; they may not live
+so long, but they are more useful.  Thus in turn the weak develop
+the strong.
+
+For years Miss Anna had sacrificially demeaned herself in the
+service of Harriet, who would now have felt herself a recreant
+friend unless she had promptly detailed every annoyance of her
+life.  She would go home, having left behind her the infinite
+little swarm of stinging things--having transferred them to the
+head of Miss Anna, around which they buzzed until they died.
+
+There was this further peculiarity in Harriet's visits: that the
+most important moments were the last; Just as a doctor, after he
+has listened to the old story of his patient's symptoms, and has
+prescribed and bandaged and patted and soothed, and has reached the
+door, turns, and noting a light in the patient's eye hears him make
+a remark which shows that all the time he has really been thinking
+about something else.
+
+Harriet now showed what was at the bottom of her own mind this
+morning:
+
+"What I came to tell you about, Anna, is that for a week life at
+home has been unendurable.  There is some trouble, some terrible
+trouble; and no matter what goes wrong, my mother always holds me
+responsible.  Positively there are times when I wonder whether I,
+without my knowing it, may not be the Origin of Evil."
+
+Miss Anna made no comment, having closed the personal subject, and
+Harriet continued:
+
+"It has scarcely been possible for me to stay in the house.
+Fortunately mother has been there very little herself.  She goes
+and goes and drives and drives.  Strange things have been
+happening.  You know that Judge Morris has not missed coming on
+Sunday evening for years.  Last night mother sat on the veranda
+waiting for him and he did not come.  I know, for I watched.  What
+have I to do but watch other people's affairs?--I have none of my
+own.  I believe the trouble is all between Isabel and Rowan."
+
+Miss Anna dropped her work and looked at Harriet with sudden
+gravity.
+
+"I can give you no idea of the real situation because it is very
+dramatic; and you know, Anna, I am not dramatic: I am merely
+historical: I tell my little tales.  But at any rate Rowan has not
+been at the house for a week.  He called last Sunday afternoon and
+Isabel refused to see him.  I know; because what have I to do but
+to interest myself in people who have affairs of interest?  Then
+Isabel had his picture in her room: it has been taken down.  She
+had some of his books: they are gone.  The house has virtually been
+closed to company.  Isabel has excused herself to callers.  Mother
+was to give a tea; the invitations were cancelled.  At table Isabel
+and mother barely speak; but when I am not near, they talk a great
+deal to each other.  And Isabel walks and walks and walks--in the
+garden, in her rooms.  I have waked up two or three times at night
+and have seen her sitting at her window.  She has always been very
+kind to me, Anna," Harriet's voice faltered, "she and you: and I
+cannot bear to see her so unhappy.  You would never believe that a
+few days would make such a change in her.  The other morning I went
+up to her room with a little bunch of violets which I had gathered
+for her myself.  When she opened the door, I saw that she was
+packing her trunks.  And the dress she had ordered for Marguerite's
+ball was lying on the bed ready to be put in.  As I gave her the
+flowers she stood looking at them a long time; then she kissed me
+without a word and quickly closed the door."
+
+
+When Harriet had gone.  Miss Anna sat awhile in her porch with a
+troubled face.  Then she went softly into the library, the windows
+of which opened out upon the porch.  Professor Hardage was standing
+on a short step-ladder before a bookcase, having just completed the
+arrangement of the top shelf.
+
+"Are you never going to get down?" she asked, looking up at him
+fondly.
+
+He closed the book with a snap and a sigh and descended.  Her
+anxious look recalled his attention,
+
+"Did I not hear Harriet harrowing you up again with her troubles?"
+he asked.  "You poor, kind soul that try to bear everybody's!"
+
+"Never mind about what I bear!  What can you bear for dinner?"
+
+"It is an outrage, Anna!  What right has she to make herself
+happier by making you miserable, lengthening her life by shortening
+yours?  For these worries always clip the thread of life at the
+end: that is where all the small debts are collected as one."
+
+"Now you must not be down on Harriet!  It makes her happier; and as
+to the end of my life, I shall be there to attend to that."
+
+"Suppose I moved away with you to some other college entirely out
+of her reach?"
+
+"I shall not suppose it because you will never do it.  If you did,
+Harriet would simply find somebody else to confide in; she _must_
+tell _everything_ to _somebody_.  But if she told any one else, a
+good many of these stories would be all over town.  She tells me
+and they get no further."
+
+"What right have you to listen to scandal in order to suppress it?"
+
+"I don't even listen always: I merely stop the stream at its
+source."
+
+"I object to your offering your mind as the banks to such a stream.
+Still I'm glad that I live near the banks," and he kissed his hand
+to her.
+
+"When one woman tells another anything and the other woman does not
+tell, remember it is not scandal--it is confidence."
+
+"Then there is no such thing as confidence," he replied, laughing.
+
+He turned toward his shelves.
+
+"Now do rest," she pleaded, "you look worn out."
+
+She had a secret notion that books instead of putting life into
+people took it out of them.  At best they performed the function of
+grindstones: they made you sharper, but they made you thinner--gave
+you more edge and left you less substance.
+
+"I wish every one of those books had a lock and I had the bunch of
+keys."
+
+"Each has a lock and key; but the key cannot be put into your
+pocket, Anna, my dear; it is the unlocking mind.  And you are not
+to speak of books as a collection of locks and keys; they make up
+the living tree of knowledge, though of course there is very little
+of the tree in this particular bookcase."
+
+"I don't see any of it," she remarked with wholesome literalness.
+
+"Well, here at the bottom are lexicons--think of them as roots and
+soil.  Above them lie maps and atlases: consider them the surface.
+Then all books are history of course.  But here is a great central
+trunk rising out of the surface which is called History in
+especial.  On each side of that, running to the right and to the
+left, are main branches.  Here for instance is the large limb of
+Philosophy--a very weighty limb indeed.  Here is the branch of
+Criticism.  Here is a bough consisting principally of leaves on
+which live unnamed venomous little insects that poison them and die
+on them: their appointed place in creation."
+
+"And so there is no positive fruit anywhere," she insisted with her
+practical taste for the substantial.
+
+"It is all food, Anna, edible and nourishing to different mouths
+and stomachs.  Some very great men have lived on the roots of
+knowledge, the simplest roots.  And here is poetry for dates and
+wild honey; and novels for cocoanuts and mushrooms.  And here is
+Religion: that is for manna."
+
+"What is at the very top?"
+
+His eyes rested upon the highest row of books.
+
+"These are some of the loftiest growths, new buds of the mind
+opening toward the unknown.  Each in its way shows the best that
+man, the earth-animal, has been able to accomplish.  Here is a
+little volume for instance which tells what he ought to be--and
+never is.  This small volume deals with the noblest ideals of the
+greatest civilizations.  Here is what one of the finest of the
+world's teachers had to say about justice.  Aspiration is at that
+end.  This little book is on the sad loveliness of Greek girls; and
+the volume beside it is about the brief human chaplets that Horace
+and some other Romans wore--and then trod on.  Thus the long story
+of light and shadow girdles the globe.  If you were nothing but a
+spirit, Anna, and could float in here some night, perhaps you would
+see a mysterious radiance streaming upward from this shelf of books
+like the northern lights from behind the world--starting no one
+knows where, sweeping away we know not whither--search-light of the
+mortal, turned on dark eternity."
+
+She stood a little behind him and watched him in silence, hiding
+her tenderness.
+
+"If I were a book," she said thoughtlessly, "where should I be?"
+
+He drew the fingers of one hand lingeringly across the New
+Testament.
+
+"Ah, now don't do that," she cried, "or you shall have no dinner.
+Here, turn round! look at the dust! look at this cravat on one end!
+look at these hands!  March upstairs."
+
+He laid his head over against hers.
+
+"Stand up!" she exclaimed, and ran out of the room.
+
+Some minutes later she came back and took a seat near the door.
+There was flour on her elbow; and she held a spoon in her hand.
+
+"Now you look like yourself," she said, regarding him with approval
+as he sat reading before the bookcase.  "I started to tell you what
+Harriet told me."
+
+He looked over the top of his book at her.
+
+"I thought you said you stopped the stream at its source.  Now you
+propose to let it run down to me--or up to me: how do you know it
+will not run past me?"
+
+"Now don't talk in that way," she said, "this is something you will
+want to know," and she related what Harriet had chronicled.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+When she had left the room, he put back into its place the volume
+he was reading: its power over him was gone.  All the voices of all
+his books, speaking to him from lands and ages, grew simultaneously
+hushed.  He crossed the library to a front window opening upon the
+narrow rocky street and sat with his elbow on the window-sill, the
+large fingers of one large hand unconsciously searching his
+brow--that habit of men of thoughtful years, the smoothing out of
+the inner problems.
+
+The home of Professor Hardage was not in one of the best parts of
+the town.  There was no wealth here, no society as it impressively
+calls itself; there were merely well-to-do human beings of ordinary
+intelligence and of kindly and unkindly natures.  The houses,
+constructed of frame or of brick, were crowded wall against wall
+along the sidewalk; in the rear were little gardens of flowers and
+of vegetables.  The street itself was well shaded; and one forest
+tree, the roots of which bulged up through the mossy bricks of the
+pavement, hung its boughs before his windows.  Throughout life he
+had found so many companions in the world outside of mere people,
+and this tree was one.  From the month of leaves to the month of no
+leaves--the period of long hot vacations--when his eyes were tired
+and his brain and heart a little tired also, many a time it
+refreshed him by all that it was and all that it stood for--this
+green tent of the woods arching itself before his treasured
+shelves.  In it for him were thoughts of cool solitudes and of
+far-away greenness; with tormenting visions also of old lands, the
+crystal-aired, purpling mountains of which, and valleys full of
+fable, he was used to trace out upon the map, but knew that he
+should never see or press with responsive feet.
+
+For travel was impossible to him.  Part of his small salary went to
+the family of a brother; part disappeared each year in the buying
+of books--at once his need and his passion; there were the expenses
+of living; and Miss Anna always exacted appropriations.
+
+"I know we have not much, but then my little boys and girls have
+nothing; and the poor must help the poorer."
+
+"Very well," he would reply, "but some day you will be a beggar
+yourself, Anna."
+
+"Oh, well then, if I am, I do not doubt that I shall be a thrifty
+old mendicant.  And I'll beg for _you_!  So don't you be uneasy;
+and give me what I want."
+
+She always looked like a middle-aged Madonna in the garb of a
+housekeeper.  Indeed, he was wont to call her the Madonna of the
+Dishes; but at these times, and in truth for all deeper ways, he
+thought of her as the Madonna of the Motherless.  Nevertheless he
+was resolute that out of this many-portioned salary something must
+yet be saved.
+
+"The time will come," he threatened, "when some younger man will
+want my professorship--and will deserve it.  I shall either be put
+out or I shall go out; and then--decrepitude, uselessness, penury,
+unless something has been hoarded.  So, Anna, out of the frail
+uncertain little basketful of the apples of life which the college
+authorities present to me once a year, we must save a few for what
+may prove a long hard winter."
+
+Professor Hardage was a man somewhat past fifty, of ordinary
+stature and heavy figure, topped with an immense head.  His was not
+what we call rather vaguely the American face.  In Germany had he
+been seen issuing from the lecture rooms of a university, he would
+have been thought at home and his general status had been assumed:
+there being that about him which bespoke the scholar, one of those
+quiet self-effacing minds that have long since passed with entire
+humility into the service of vast themes.  In social life the
+character of a noble master will in time stamp itself upon the look
+and manners of a domestic; and in time the student acquires the
+lofty hall-mark of what he serves.
+
+It was this perhaps that immediately distinguished him and set him
+apart in every company.  The appreciative observer said at once:
+"Here is a man who may not himself be great; but he is at least
+great enough to understand greatness; he is used to greatness."
+
+As so often is the case with the strong American, he was
+self-made--that glory of our boasting.  But we sometimes forget
+that an early life of hardship, while it may bring out what is best
+in a man, so often wastes up his strength and burns his ambition to
+ashes in the fierce fight against odds too great.  So that the
+powers which should have carried him far carry him only a little
+distance or leave him standing exhausted where he began.
+
+When Alfred Hardage was eighteen, he had turned his eyes toward a
+professorship in one of the great universities of his country;
+before he was thirty he had won a professorship in the small but
+respectable college of his native town; and now, when past fifty,
+he had never won anything more.  For him ambition was like the
+deserted martin box in the corner of his yard: returning summers
+brought no more birds.  Had his abilities been even more
+extraordinary, the result could not have been far otherwise.  He
+had been compelled to forego for himself as a student the highest
+university training, and afterward to win such position as the
+world accorded him without the prestige of study abroad.
+
+It became his duty in his place to teach the Greek language and its
+literature; sometimes were added classes in Latin.  This was the
+easier problem.  The more difficult problem grew out of the demand,
+that he should live intimately in a world of much littleness and
+not himself become little; feel interested in trivial minds at
+street corners, yet remain companion and critic of some of the
+greatest intellects of human kind; contend with occasional malice
+and jealousy in the college faculty, yet hold himself above these
+carrion passions; retain his intellectual manhood, yet have his
+courses of study narrowed and made superficial for him; be free yet
+submit to be patronized by some of his fellow-citizens, because
+they did him the honor to employ him for so much as a year as sage
+and moral exampler to their sons.
+
+Usually one of two fates overtakes the obscure professional scholar
+in this country: either he shrinks to the dimensions of a true
+villager and deserts the vastness of his library; or he repudiates
+the village and becomes a cosmopolitan recluse--lonely toiler among
+his books.  Few possess the breadth and equipoise which will enable
+them to pass from day to day along mental paths, which have the
+Forum of Augustus or the Groves of the Academy at one end and the
+babbling square of a modern town at the other; remaining equally at
+home amid ancient ideals and everyday realities.
+
+It was the fate of the recluse that threatened him.  He had been
+born with the scholar's temperament--this furnished the direction;
+before he had reached the age of twenty-five he had lost his wife
+and two sons--that furrowed the tendency.  During the years
+immediately following he had tried to fill an immense void of the
+heart with immense labors of the intellect.  The void remained; yet
+undoubtedly compensation for loneliness had been found in the
+fixing of his affections upon what can never die--the inexhaustible
+delight of learning.
+
+Thus the life of the book-worm awaited him but for an interference
+excellent and salutary and irresistible.  This was the constant
+companionship of a sister whose nature enabled her to find its
+complete universe in the only world that she had ever known: she
+walking ever broad-minded through the narrowness of her little
+town; remaining white though often threading its soiling ways; and
+from every life which touched hers, however crippled and confined,
+extracting its significance instead of its insignificance, shy
+harmonies instead of the easy discords which can so palpably be
+struck by any passing hand.
+
+It was due to her influence, therefore, that his life achieved the
+twofold development which left him normal in the middle years; the
+fresh pursuing scholar still but a man practically welded to the
+people among whom he lived--receiving their best and giving his
+best.
+
+But we cannot send our hearts out to play at large among our kind,
+without their coming to choose sooner or later playfellows to be
+loved more than the rest.
+
+Two intimacies entered into the life of Professor Hardage.  The
+first of these had been formed many years before with Judge Ravenel
+Morris.  They had discovered each other by drifting as lonely men
+do in the world; each being without family ties, each loving
+literature, each having empty hours.  The bond between them had
+strengthened, until it had become to each a bond of strength
+indeed, mighty and uplifting.
+
+The other intimacy was one of those for which human speech will
+never, perhaps, be called upon to body forth its describing word.
+In the psychology of feeling there are states which we gladly
+choose to leave unlanguaged.  Vast and deep-sounding as is the
+orchestra of words, there are scores which we never fling upon such
+instruments--realities that lie outside the possibility and the
+desirability of utterance as there are rays of the sun that fall
+outside the visible spectrum of solar light.
+
+What description can be given in words of that bond between two,
+when the woman stands near the foot of the upward slope of life,
+and the man is already passing down on the sunset side, with
+lengthening afternoon shadows on the gray of his temples--between
+them the cold separating peaks of a generation?
+
+Such a generation of toiling years separated Professor Hardage from
+Isabel Conyers.  When, at the age of twenty, she returned after
+years of absence in an eastern college--it was a tradition of her
+family that its women should be brilliantly educated--he verged
+upon fifty.  To his youthful desires that interval was nothing; but
+to his disciplined judgment it was everything.
+
+"Even though it could be," he said to himself, "it should not be,
+and therefore it shall not."
+
+His was an idealism that often leaves its holder poor indeed save
+in the possession of its own incorruptible wealth.  No doubt also
+the life-long study of the ideals of classic time came to his
+guidance now with their admonitions of exquisite balance, their
+moderation and essential justness.
+
+But after he had given up all hope of her, he did not hesitate to
+draw her to him in other ways; and there was that which drew her
+unfathomably to him--all the more securely since in her mind there
+was no thought that the bond between them would ever involve the
+possibility of love and marriage.
+
+His library became another home to her.  One winter she read Greek
+with him--authors not in her college course.  Afterward he read
+much more Greek to her.  Then they laid Greek aside, and he took
+her through the history of its literature and through that other
+noble one, its deathless twin.
+
+When she was not actually present, he yet took her with him through
+the wide regions of his studies---set her figure in old Greek
+landscapes and surrounded it with dim shapes of loveliness--saw her
+sometimes as the perfection that went into marble--made her a
+portion of legend and story, linking her with Nausicaa and
+Andromache and the lost others.  Then quitting antiquity with her
+altogether, he passed downward with her into the days of chivalry,
+brought her to Arthur's court, and invested her with one character
+after another, trying her by the ladies of knightly ideals--reading
+her between the lines in all the king's idyls.
+
+But last and best, seeing her in the clear white light of her own
+country and time--as the spirit of American girlhood, pure,
+refined, faultlessly proportioned in mental and physical health,
+full of kindness, full of happiness, made for love, made for
+motherhood.  All this he did in his hopeless and idealizing worship
+of her; and all this and more he hid away: for he too had his crypt.
+
+So watching her and watching vainly over her, he was the first to
+see that she was loved and that her nature was turning away from
+him, from all that he could offer--subdued by that one other call.
+
+"Now, Fates," he said, "by whatsoever names men have blindly prayed
+to you; you that love to strike at perfection, and pass over a
+multitude of the ordinary to reach the rare, stand off for a few
+years!  Let them be happy together in their love, their marriage,
+and their young children.  Let the threads run freely and be
+joyously interwoven.  Have mercy at least for a few years!"
+
+A carriage turned a corner of the street and was driven to the
+door.  Isabel got out, and entered the hall without ringing.
+
+He met her there and as she laid her hands in his without a word,
+he held them and looked at her without a word.  He could scarcely
+believe that in a few days her life could so have drooped as under
+a dreadful blight.
+
+"I have come to say good-by," and with a quiver of the lips she
+turned her face aside and brushed past him, entering the library.
+
+He drew his own chair close to hers when she had seated herself.
+
+"I thought you and your grandmother were going later: is not this
+unexpected?"
+
+"Yes, it is very unexpected."
+
+"But of course she is going with you?"
+
+"No, I am going alone."
+
+"For the summer?"
+
+"Yes, for the summer.  I suppose for a long time."
+
+She continued to sit with her cheek leaning against the back of the
+chair, her eyes directed outward through the windows.  He asked
+reluctantly:
+
+"Is there any trouble?"
+
+"Yes, there is trouble."
+
+"Can you tell me what it is?"
+
+"No, I cannot tell you what it is.  I cannot tell any one what it
+is."
+
+"Is there anything I can do?"
+
+"No, there is nothing you can do.  There is nothing any one can do."
+
+Silence followed for some time.  He smiled at her sadly:
+
+"Shall I tell you what the trouble is?"
+
+"You do not know what it is.  I believe I wish you did know.  But I
+cannot tell you."
+
+"Is it not Rowan?"
+
+She waited awhile without change of posture and answered at length
+without change of tone:
+
+"Yes, it is Rowan."
+
+The stillness of the room became intense and prolonged; the
+rustling of the leaves about the window sounded like noise.
+
+"Are you not going to marry him, Isabel?"
+
+"No, I am not going to marry him.  I am never going to marry him."
+
+She stretched out her hand helplessly to him.  He would not take it
+and it fell to her side: at that moment he did not dare.  But of
+what use is it to have kept faith with high ideals through trying
+years if they do not reward us at last with strength in the crises
+of character?  No doubt they rewarded him now: later he reached
+down and took her hand and held it tenderly.
+
+"You must not go away.  You must be reconciled, to him.  Otherwise
+it will sadden your whole summer.  And it will sadden his."
+
+"Sadden, the whole summer," she repeated, "a summer?  It will
+sadden a life.  If there is eternity, it will sadden eternity."
+
+"Is it so serious?"
+
+"Yes, it is as serious as anything, could be."
+
+After a while she sat up wearily and turned her face to him for the
+first time.
+
+"Cannot you help me?" she asked.  "I do not believe I can bear
+this.  I do not believe I can bear it."
+
+Perhaps it is the doctors who hear that tone oftenest--little
+wonder that they are men so often with sad or with calloused faces.
+
+"What can I do?"
+
+"I do not know what you can do.  But cannot you do something?  You
+were the only person in the world that I could go to.  I did not
+think I could ever come to you; but I had to come.  Help me."
+
+He perceived that commonplace counsel would be better than no
+counsel at all.
+
+"Isabel," he asked, "are you suffering because you have wronged
+Rowan or because you think he has wronged you?"
+
+"No, no, no," she cried, covering her face with her hands, "I have
+not wronged him!  I have not wronged any one!  He has wronged me!"
+
+"Did he ever wrong you before?"
+
+"No, he never wronged me before.  But this covers everything--the
+whole past."
+
+"Have you ever had any great trouble before, Isabel?"
+
+"No, I have never had any great trouble before.  At times in my
+life I may have thought I had, but now I know."
+
+"You do not need to be told that sooner or later all of us have
+troubles that we think we cannot bear."
+
+She shook her head wearily: "It does not do any good to think of
+that!  It does not help me in the least!"
+
+"But it does help if there is any one to whom we can tell our
+troubles."
+
+"I cannot tell mine."
+
+"Cannot you tell me?"
+
+"No, I believe I wish you knew, but I could not tell you.  No, I do
+not even wish you to know."
+
+"Have you seen Kate?"
+
+She covered her face with her hands again: "No, no, no," she cried,
+"not Kate!"  Then she looked up at him with eyes suddenly kindling:
+"Have you heard what Kate's life has been since her marriage?"
+
+"We have all heard, I suppose."
+
+"She has never spoken a word against him--not even to me from whom
+she never had a secret.  How could I go to her about Rowan?  Even
+if she had confided in me, I could not tell her this."
+
+"If you are going away, change of scene will help you to forget it."
+
+"No, it will help me to remember."
+
+"There is prayer, Isabel."
+
+"I know there is prayer.  But prayer does not do any good.  It has
+nothing to do with this."
+
+"Enter as soon as possible into the pleasures of the people you are
+to visit."
+
+"I cannot!  I do not wish for pleasure,"
+
+"Isabel," he said at last, "forgive him."
+
+"I cannot forgive him."
+
+"Have you tried?"
+
+"No, I cannot try.  If I forgave him, it would only be a change in
+me: it would not change him: it would not undo what he has done."
+
+"Do you know the necessity of self-sacrifice?"
+
+"But how can I sacrifice what is best in me without lowering
+myself?  Is it a virtue in a woman to throw away what she holds to
+be as highest?"
+
+"Remember," he said, returning to the point, "that, if you forgive
+him, you become changed yourself.  You no longer see what he has
+done as you see it now.  That is the beauty of forgiveness: it
+enables us better to understand those whom we have forgiven.
+Perhaps it will enable you to put yourself in his place."
+
+She put her hands to her eyes with a shudder: "You do not know what
+you are saying," she cried, and rose.
+
+"Then trust it all to time," he said finally, "that is best!  Time
+alone solves so much.  Wait!  Do not act!  Think and feel as little
+as possible.  Give time its merciful chance.  I'll come to see you."
+
+They had moved toward the door.  She drew off her glove which she
+was putting on and laid her hand once more in his.
+
+"Time can change nothing.  I have decided."
+
+As she was going down the steps to the carriage, she turned and
+came back.
+
+"Do not come to see me!  I shall come to you to say good-by.  It is
+better for you not to come to the house just now.  I might not be
+able to see you."
+
+Isabel had the carriage driven to the Osborns'.
+
+The house was situated in a pleasant street of delightful
+residences.  It had been newly built on an old foundation as a
+bridal present to Kate from her father.  She had furnished it with
+a young wife's pride and delight and she had lined it throughout
+with thoughts of incommunicable tenderness about the life history
+just beginning.  Now, people driving past (and there were few in
+town who did not know) looked at it as already a prison and a doom.
+
+Kate was sitting in the hall with some work in her lap.  Seeing
+Isabel she sprang up and met her at the door, greeting her as
+though she herself were the happiest of wives.
+
+"Do you know how long it has been since you were here?" she
+exclaimed chidingly.  "I had not realized how soon young married
+people can be forgotten and pushed aside."
+
+"Forget you, dearest!  I have never thought of you so much as since
+I was here last."
+
+"Ah," thought Kate to herself, "she has heard.  She has begun to
+feel sorry for me and has begun to stay away as people avoid the
+unhappy."
+
+But the two friends, each smiling into the other's eyes, their arms
+around each other, passed into the parlors.
+
+"Now that you are here at last, I shall keep you," said Kate,
+rising from the seat they had taken.  "I will send the carriage
+home.  George cannot be here to lunch and we shall have it all to
+ourselves as we used to when we were girls together."
+
+"No," exclaimed Isabel, drawing her down into the seat again, "I
+cannot stay.  I had only a few moments and drove by just to speak
+to you, just to tell you how much I love you."
+
+Kate's face changed and she dropped her eyes.  "Is so little of me
+so much nowadays?" she asked, feeling as though the friendship of a
+lifetime were indeed beginning to fail her along with other things.
+
+"No, no, no," cried Isabel.  "I wish we could never be separated."
+
+She rose quickly and went over to the piano and began to turn over
+the music.  "It seems so long since I heard any music.  What has
+become of it?  Has it all gone out of life?   I feel as though
+there were none any more."
+
+Kate came over and looked at one piece of music after another
+irresolutely.
+
+"I have not touched the piano for weeks."
+
+She sat down and her fingers wandered forcedly through a few
+chords.  Isabel stepped quickly to her side and laid restraining
+hands softly upon hers: "No; not to-day."
+
+Kate rose with averted face: "No; not any music to-day!"
+
+The friends returned to their seat, on which Kate left her work.
+She took it up and for a few moments Isabel watched her in silence.
+
+"When did you see Rowan?"
+
+"You know he lives in the country," replied Isabel, with an air of
+defensive gayety.
+
+"And does he never come to town?"
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+Kate took this seriously and her head sank lower over her work:
+"Ah," she thought to herself, "she will not confide in me any
+longer.  She keeps her secrets from me--me who shared them all my
+life."
+
+"What is it you are making?"
+
+Isabel stretched out her hand, but Kate with a cry threw her breast
+downward upon her work.  With laughter they struggled over it; Kate
+released it and Isabel rising held it up before her.  Then she
+allowed it to drop to the floor.
+
+"Isabel!" exclaimed Kate, her face grown cold and hard.  She
+stooped with dignity and picked up the garment.
+
+"Oh, forgive me," implored Isabel, throwing her arms around her
+neck.  "I did not know what I was doing!" and she buried her face
+on the young wife's shoulder.  "I was thinking of myself: I cannot
+tell you why!"
+
+Kate released herself gently.  Her face remained grave.  She had
+felt the first wound of motherhood: it could not be healed at once.
+The friends could not look at each other.  Isabel began to draw on
+her gloves and Kate did not seek to keep her longer.
+
+"I must go.  Dear friend, have you forgiven me?  I cannot tell you
+what was in my heart.  Some day you will understand.  Try to
+forgive till you do understand."
+
+Kate's mouth trembled: "Isabel, why are you so changed toward me?"
+
+"Ah, I have not changed toward you!  I shall never change toward
+you!"
+
+"Are you too happy to care for me any longer?"
+
+"Ah, Kate, I am not too happy for anything.  Some day you will
+understand."
+
+She leaned far out and waved her hand as she drove away, and then
+she threw herself back into the carriage.  "Dear injured friend!
+Brave loyal woman'" she cried, "the men we loved have ruined both
+our lives; and we who never had a secret from each other meet and
+part as hypocrites to shield them.  Drive home," she said to the
+driver.  "If any one motions to stop, pay no attention.  Drive
+fast."
+
+Mrs. Osborn watched the carriage out of sight and then walked
+slowly back to her work.  She folded the soft white fabric over the
+cushions and then laid her cheek against it and gave it its first
+christening--the christening of tears.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The court-house clock in the centre of the town clanged the hour of
+ten--hammered it out lavishly and cheerily as a lusty blacksmith
+strikes with prodigal arm his customary anvil.  Another clock in a
+dignified church tower also struck ten, but with far greater
+solemnity, as though reminding the town clock that time is not to
+be measured out to man as a mere matter of business, but intoned
+savingly and warningly as the chief commodity of salvation.  Then
+another clock: in a more attenuated cobwebbed steeple also struck
+ten, reaffirming the gloomy view of its resounding brother and
+insisting that the town clock had treated the subject with sinful
+levity.
+
+Nevertheless the town clock seemed to have the best of the argument
+on this particular day; for the sun was shining, cool, breezes were
+blowing, and the streets were thronged with people intent on making
+bargains.  Possibly the most appalling idea in most men's notions
+of eternity is the dread that there will be no more bargaining
+there.
+
+A bird's-eye view of the little town as it lay outspread on its
+high fertile plateau, surrounded by green woods and waving fields,
+would have revealed near one edge of it a large verdurous spot
+which looked like an overrun oasis.  This oasis was enclosed by a
+high fence on the inside of which ran a hedge of lilacs, privet,
+and osage orange.  Somewhere in it was an old one-story manor
+house of rambling ells and verandas.  Elsewhere was a little
+summer-house, rose-covered; still elsewhere an arbor vine-hung; at
+various other places secluded nooks with seats, where the bushes
+could hide you and not hear you--a virtue quite above anything
+human.   Marguerite lived in this labyrinth.
+
+As the dissenting clocks finished striking, had you been standing
+outside the fence near a little side gate used by grocers' and
+bakers' carts, you might have seen Marguerite herself.  There came
+a soft push against the gate from within; and as it swung part of
+the way open, you might have observed that the push was delivered
+by the toe of a little foot.  A second push sent it still farther.
+Then there was a pause and then it flew open and stayed open.  At
+first there appeared what looked like an inverted snowy flagstaff
+but turned out to be a long, closed white parasol; then Marguerite
+herself appeared, bending her head low under the privet leaves and
+holding her skirts close in, so that they might not be touched by
+the whitewash on each edge.  Once outside, she straightened herself
+up with the lithe grace of a young willow, released her skirts, and
+balancing herself on the point of her parasol, closed the gate with
+her toe: she was too dainty to touch it.
+
+The sun shone hot and Marguerite quickly raised her parasol.  It
+made you think of some silken white myriad-fluted mushroom of the
+dark May woods; and Marguerite did not so much seem to have come
+out of the house as out of the garden--to have slept there on its
+green moss with the new moon on her eyelids--indeed to have been
+born there, in some wise compounded of violets and hyacinths; and
+as the finishing touch to have had squeezed into her nature a few
+drops of wildwood spritishness.
+
+She started toward the town with a movement somewhat like that of a
+tall thin lily stalk swayed by zephyrs--with a lilt, a cadence, an
+ever changing rhythm of joy: plain walking on the solid earth was
+not for her.  At friendly houses along the way she peeped into open
+windows, calling to friends; she stooped over baby carriages on the
+sidewalk, noting but not measuring their mysteries; she bowed to
+the right and to the left at passing carriages; and people leaned
+far out to bow and smile at her.  Her passage through the town was
+somewhat like that of a butterfly crossing a field.
+
+"Will he be there?" she asked.  "I did not tell him I was coming,
+but he heard me say I should be there at half-past ten o'clock.  It
+is his duty to notice my least remark."
+
+When she reached her destination, the old town library, she mounted
+the lowest step and glanced rather guiltily up and down the street.
+Three ladies were going up and two men were going down: no one was
+coming toward Marguerite.
+
+"Now, why is he not here?  He shall be punished for this."
+
+She paced slowly backward and forward yet a little while.  Then she
+started resolutely in the direction of a street where most of the
+law offices were situated.  Turning a corner, she came full upon
+Judge, Morris.
+
+"Ah, good morning, good morning," he cried, putting his gold-headed
+cane under his arm and holding out both hands.  "Where did you
+sleep last night?  On rose leaves?"
+
+"I was in grandmother's bed when I left off," said Marguerite,
+looking up at the rim of her hat.
+
+"And where were you when you began again?"
+
+"Still in grandmother's bed.  I think I must have been there all
+the time.  I know all about your old Blackstone and all that kind
+of thing," she continued, glancing at a yellow book under his arm
+and speaking with a threat as though he had adjudged her ignorant.
+
+"Ah, then you will make a good lawyer's wife."
+
+"I supposed I'd make a good wife of any kind.  Are you coming to my
+ball?"
+
+"Well, you know I am too old to make engagements far ahead.  But I
+expect to be there.  If I am not, my ghost shall attend."
+
+"How shall I recognize it?  Does it dance?  I don't want to mistake
+it for Barbee."
+
+"Barbee shall not come if I can keep him at home."
+
+"And why, please?"
+
+"I am afraid he is falling in love with you."
+
+"But why shouldn't he?"
+
+"I don't wish my nephew to be flirted."
+
+"But how do you know I'd flirt him?"
+
+"Ah, I knew your mother when she was young and your grandmother
+when she was young: you're all alike."
+
+"We, are so glad we are," said Marguerite, as she danced away from
+him under her parasol.
+
+Farther down the street she met Professor Hardage.
+
+"I know all about your old Odyssey--your old Horace and all those
+things," she said threateningly.  "I am not as ignorant as you
+think."
+
+"I wish Horace had known you."
+
+"Would it have been nice?"
+
+"He might have written an ode _Ad Margaritam_ instead of _Ad
+Lalagem_."
+
+"Then I might have been able to read it," she said.  "In school I
+couldn't read the other one.  But you mustn't think that I did not
+read a great deal of Latin.  The professor used to say that I read
+my Latin b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l-l-y, but that I didn't get much English
+out of it.  I told him I got as much English out of it as the
+Romans did, and that they certainly ought to have known what it was
+meant for."
+
+"That must have taught him a lesson!"
+
+"Oh, he said I'd do: I was called the girl who read Latin
+perfectly, regardless of English.  And, then, I won a prize for an
+essay on the three most important things that the United States has
+contributed to the civilizations of the Old World.  I said they
+were tobacco, wild turkeys and idle curiosity.  Of course every one
+knew about tobacco and turkeys; but wasn't it clever of me to think
+of idle curiosity?  Now, wasn't it?  I made a long list of things
+and then I selected these from my list."
+
+"I'd like to know what the other things were!"
+
+"Oh, I've forgotten now!  But they were very important at the time.
+Are you coming to my ball?"
+
+"I hope to come."
+
+"And is Miss Anna coming?"
+
+"Miss Anna is coming.  She is coming as a man; and she is going to
+bring a lady."
+
+"How is she going to dress as a man?" said Marguerite, as she
+danced away from him under her parasol.
+
+She strolled slowly on until she reached the street of justice and
+the jail; turning into this, she passed up the side opposite the
+law offices.  Her parasol rested far back on one shoulder; to any
+lateral observer there could have been no mistake regarding the
+face in front of it.  She passed through a group of firemen sitting
+in their shirtsleeves in front of the engine-house, disappeared
+around the corner, and went to a confectioner's.  Presently she
+reentered the street, and this time walked along the side where the
+law offices were grouped.  She disappeared around the corner and
+entered a dry-goods store.  A few moments later she reentered the
+street for the third and last time.  Just as she passed a certain
+law office, she dropped her packages.  No one came out to pick them
+up.  Marguerite did this herself--very slowly.  Still no one
+appeared.  She gave three sharp little raps on the woodwork of the
+door.
+
+From the rear office a red head was thrust suddenly out like a
+surprised woodpecker's.  Barbee hurried to the entrance and looked
+up the street.  He saw a good many people.  He looked down the
+street and noticed a parasol moving away.
+
+"I supposed you were in the courthouse," she said, glancing at him
+with surprise.  "Haven't you any cases?"
+
+"One," he answered, "a case of life and death."
+
+"You need not walk against me, Barbee; I am not a vine to need
+propping.  And you need not walk with me.  I am quite used to
+walking alone: my nurse taught me years ago."
+
+"But now you have to learn _not_ to walk alone, Marguerite."
+
+"It will be very difficult."
+
+"It will be easy when the right man steps forward: am I the right
+man?"
+
+"I am going to the library.  Good morning."
+
+"So am I going to the library."
+
+"Aren't all your authorities in your office?"
+
+"All except one."
+
+They turned into the quiet shady street: they were not the first to
+do this.
+
+When they reached the steps, Marguerite sank down.
+
+"Why do I get so tired when I walk with you, Barbee?  You exhaust
+me _very_ rapidly."
+
+He sat down not very near her, but soon edged a little closer.
+
+Marguerite leaned over and looked intently at his big, thin ear.
+
+"What a lovely red your ear is, seen against a clear sky.  It would
+make a beautiful lamp-shade."
+
+"You may have both of them--and all the fixtures--solid brass--an
+antique some day."
+
+He edged a little closer.
+
+Marguerite coughed and pointed across the street: "Aren't those
+trees beautiful?"
+
+"Oh, don't talk to me about trees!  What do I care about _wood_!
+You're the tree that I want to dig up, and take home, and plant,
+and live under, and be buried by."
+
+"That's a great deal--all in one sentence."
+
+"Are you never going to love me a little, Marguerite?"
+
+"How can I tell?"
+
+"Don't torture me."
+
+"What am I doing?"
+
+"You are not doing anything, that's the trouble.   The other night
+I was sure you loved me."
+
+"I didn't say so."
+
+"But you looked it."
+
+"Then I looked all wrong: I shall change my looks."
+
+"Will you name the day?"
+
+"What day?"
+
+"_The_ day."
+
+"I'll name them all: Monday, Tuesday--"
+
+"Ah, Lord--"
+
+"Barbee, I'm going to sing you a love song--an old, old, old love
+song.  Did you ever hear one?"
+
+"I have been hearing mine for some time."
+
+"This goes back to grandmother's time.  But it's the man's song:
+you ought to be singing it to me."
+
+"I shall continue to sing my own."
+
+Marguerite began to sing close to Barbee's ear:
+
+  "I'll give to you a paper of pins,
+  If that's the way that love begins,
+  If you will marry me, me, me,
+  If you will marry me."
+
+"Pins!" said Barbee; "why, that old-time minstrel must have been
+singing when pins were just invented.  You can have--"
+
+Marguerite quieted him with a finger on his elbow:
+
+  "I'll give to you a dress of red,
+  Bound all around with golden thread,
+  If you will marry me, me, me,
+  If you will marry me."
+
+"How about a dress not simply bound with golden thread but made of
+it, made of nothing else! and then hung all over with golden
+ornaments and the heaviest golden utensils?"
+
+Marguerite sang on:
+
+  "I'll give to you a coach and six,
+  Every horse as black as pitch,
+  If you will marry me, me, me,
+  If you will marry me."
+
+"I'll make it two coaches and twelve white ponies."
+
+Marguerite sang on, this time very tenderly:
+
+  "I'll give to you the key of my heart,
+  That we may love and never part,
+  If you will marry me, me, me,
+  If you will marry me."
+
+"No man can give anything better," said Barbee, moving closer (as
+close as possible) and looking questioningly full into Marguerite's
+eyes.
+
+Marguerite glanced up and down the street.  The moment was
+opportune, the disposition of the universe seemed kind.  The big
+parasol slipped a little lower.
+
+"Marguerite. . .  Please, Marguerite. . .  _Marguerite_."
+
+The parasol was suddenly pulled down low and remained very still a
+moment: then a quiver ran round the fringe.  It was still again,
+and there was another quiver.  It swayed to and fro and round and
+round, and then stood very, very still indeed, and there was a
+violent quiver.
+
+Then Marguerite ran into the library as out of a sudden shower; and
+Barbee with long slow strides returned to his office.
+
+
+"Anna," said Professor Hardage, laying his book across his knee as
+they sat that afternoon in the shady side porch, "I saw Marguerite
+this morning and she sent her compliments.  They were very pretty
+compliments.  I sometimes wonder where Marguerite came from--out of
+what lands she has wandered."
+
+"Well, now that you have stopped reading," said Miss Anna, laying
+down her work and smoothing her brow (she never spoke to him until
+he did stop--perfect woman), "that Is what I have been waiting to
+talk to you about: do you wish to go with Harriet to Marguerite's
+ball?"
+
+"I most certainly do not wish to go with Harriet to Marguerite's
+ball," he said, laughing, "I am going with you."
+
+"Well, you most certainly are not going with me: I am going with
+Harriet."
+
+"Anna!"
+
+"If I do not, who will?  Now what I want you to do is to pay
+Harriet some attention after I arrive with her.  I shall take her
+into supper, because if you took her in, she would never get any.
+But suppose that after supper you strolled carelessly up to us--you
+know how men do--and asked her to take a turn with you."
+
+"What kind of a turn in Heaven's name?"
+
+"Well, suppose you took her out into the yard--to one of those
+little rustic seats of Marguerite's--and sat there with her for
+half an hour--in the darkest place you could possibly find.  And I
+want you to try to hold her hand."
+
+"Why, Anna, what on earth--"
+
+"Now don't you suppose Harriet would let you do it," she said
+indignantly.  "But what I want her to have is the pleasure of
+refusing: it would be such a triumph.  It would make her happy for
+days: it might lengthen her life a little."
+
+"What effect do you suppose it would have on mine?"
+
+His face softened as he mused on the kind of woman his sister was.
+
+"Now don't you try to do anything else," she added severely.  "I
+don't like your expression."
+
+He laughed outright: "What do you suppose I'd do?"
+
+"I don't suppose you'd do anything; but don't you do it!"
+
+Miss Anna's invitation to Harriet had been written some days before.
+
+She had sent down to the book-store for ten cents' worth of tinted
+note paper and to the drugstore for some of Harriet's favorite
+sachet powder.  Then she put a few sheets of the paper in a dinner
+plate and sprinkled the powder over them and set the plate where
+the powder could perfume the paper but not the house.  Miss Anna
+was averse to all odor-bearing things natural or artificial.  The
+perfect triumph of her nose was to perceive absolutely nothing.
+The only trial to her in cooking was the fact that so often she
+could not make things taste good without making them smell good.
+
+In the course of time, bending over a sheet of this note paper,
+with an expression of high nasal disapproval.  Miss Anna had
+written the following note:
+
+"A. Hardage, Esq., presents the compliments of the season to Miss
+Crane and begs the pleasure of her company to the ball.  The
+aforesaid Hardage, on account of long intimacy with the specified
+Crane, hopes that she (Crane) will not object to riding alone at
+night in a one-horse rockaway with no side curtains.  Crane to be
+hugged on the way if Hardage so desires--and Hardage certainly will
+desire.  Hardage and Crane to dance at the ball together while
+their strength lasts."
+
+Having posted this letter, Miss Anna went off to her orphan and
+foundling asylum where she was virgin mother to the motherless,
+drawing the mantle of her spotless life around little waifs
+straying into the world from hidden paths of shame.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+It was past one o'clock on the night of the ball.
+
+When dew and twilight had fallen on the green labyrinths of
+Marguerite's yard, the faintest, slenderest moon might have been
+seen bending over toward the spot out of drapery of violet cloud.
+It descended through the secluded windows of Marguerite's room and
+attended her while she dressed, weaving about her and leaving with
+her the fragrance of its divine youth passing away.  Then it
+withdrew, having appointed a million stars for torches.
+
+Matching the stars were globe-like lamps, all of one color, all
+of one shape, which Marguerite had had swung amid the interlaced
+greenery of trees and vines: as lanterns around the gray bark huts
+of slow-winged owls; as sun-tanned grapes under the arches of the
+vine-covered summer-house; as love's lighthouses above the reefs
+of tumbling rose-bushes: all to illumine the paths which led to
+nooks and seats.  For the night would be very warm; and then
+Marguerite--but was she the only one?
+
+The three Marguerites,--grandmother, mother, and
+daughter,--standing side by side and dressed each like each as
+nearly as was fitting, had awaited their guests.  Three high-born
+fragile natures, solitary each on the stem of its generation; not
+made for blasts and rudeness.  They had received their guests with
+the graciousness of sincere souls and not without antique
+distinction; for in their veins flowed blood which had helped to
+make manners gentle in France centuries ago.
+
+The eldest Marguerite introduced some of her aged friends, who had
+ventured forth to witness the launching of the frail life-boat, to
+the youngest; the youngest Marguerite introduced some of hers to
+the eldest; the Marguerite linked between made some of hers known
+to her mother and to her child.
+
+Mrs. Conyers arrived early, leaning on the arm of her grandson,
+Victor Fielding.  To-night she was ennobled with jewels--the old
+family jewels of her last husband's family, not of her own.
+
+When the three Marguerites beheld her, a shadow fell on their
+faces.  The change was like the assumption of a mask behind which
+they could efface themselves as ladies and receive as hostesses.
+While she lingered, they forebore even to exchange glances lest
+feelings injurious to a guest should be thus revealed: so pure in
+them was the strain of courtesy that went with proffered
+hospitality.  (They were not of the kind who invite you to their
+houses and having you thus in their power try to pierce you with
+little insults which they would never dare offer openly in the
+street: verbal Borgias at their own tables and firesides.)  The
+moment she left them, the three faces became effulgent again.
+
+A little later, strolling across the rooms toward them alone, came
+Judge Morris, a sprig of wet heliotrope in his button-hole, plucked
+from one of Marguerite's plants.  The paraffin starch on his shirt
+front and collar and cuffs gave to them the appearance and
+consistency of celluloid--it being the intention of his old
+laundress to make him indeed the stiffest and most highly polished
+gentleman of his high world.  His noble face as always a sermon on
+kindness, sincerity, and peace; yet having this contradiction, that
+the happier it seemed, the sadder it was to look at: as though all
+his virtues only framed his great wrong; so that the more clearly
+you beheld the bright frame, the more deeply you felt the dark
+picture.
+
+As soon as they discovered him, the Marguerites with a common
+impulse linked their arms endearingly.  Six little white feet came
+regimentally forward; each of six little white hands made
+individual forward movements to be the first to lie within his
+palm; six velvet eyes softened and glistened.
+
+Miss Anna came with Harriet; Professor Hardage came alone;
+Barbee--burgeoning Alcibiades of the ballroom--came with
+Self-Confidence.  He strolled indifferently toward the eldest
+Marguerite, from whom he passed superiorly to the central one; by
+that time the third had vanished.
+
+Isabel came with the Osborns: George soon to be taken secretly home
+by Rowan; Kate (who had forced herself to accompany him despite her
+bereavement), lacerated but giving no sign even to Isabel, who
+relieved the situation by attaching herself momentarily to her
+hostesses.
+
+"Mamma," protested Marguerite, with indignant eyes, "do you wish
+Isabel to stand here and eclipse your daughter?  Station her on the
+far side of grandmother, and let the men pass this way first!"
+
+The Merediths were late.  As they advanced to pay their respects,
+Isabel maintained her composure.  An observer, who had been told to
+watch, might have noticed that when Rowan held out his hand, she
+did not place hers in it; and that while she did not turn her face
+away from his face, her eyes never met his eyes.  She stood a
+little apart from the receiving group at the moment and spoke to
+him quickly and awkwardly:
+
+"As soon as you can, will you come and walk with me through the
+parlors?  Please do not pay me any more attention.  When the
+evening is nearly over, will you find me and take me to some place
+where we may not be interrupted?  I will explain."
+
+Without waiting for his assent, she left him, and returned with a
+laugh to the side of Marguerite, who was shaking a finger
+threateningly at her.
+
+It was now past one o'clock: guests were already leaving.
+
+When Rowan went for Isabel, she was sitting with Professor Hardage.
+They were not talking; and her eyes had a look of strained
+expectancy.  As soon as she saw him, she rose and held out her hand
+to Professor Hardage; then without speaking and still without
+looking at him, she placed the tips of her fingers on the elbow of
+his sleeve.  As they walked away, she renewed her request in a low
+voice: "Take me where we shall be undisturbed."
+
+They left the rooms.  It was an interval between the dances: the
+verandas were crowded.  They passed out into the yard.  Along the
+cool paths, college boys and college girls strolled by in couples,
+not caring who listened to their words and with that laughter of
+youth, the whole meaning of which is never realized save by those
+who hear it after they have lost it.  Older couples sat here and
+there in quiet nooks--with talk not meant to be heard and with
+occasional laughter so different.
+
+They moved on, seeking greater privacy.  Marguerite's lamps were
+burnt out--brief flames as measured by human passion.  But overhead
+burnt the million torches of the stars.  How brief all human
+passion measured by that long, long light!
+
+He stopped at last:
+
+"Here?"
+
+She placed herself as far as possible from him.
+
+The seat was at the terminus of a path in the wildest part of
+Marguerite's garden.  Overhead against the trunk of a tree a
+solitary lantern was flickering fitfully.  It soon went out.  The
+dazzling lights of the ballroom, glimmering through boughs and
+vines, shot a few rays into their faces.  Music, languorous,
+torturing the heart, swelled and died on the air, mingled with the
+murmurings of eager voices.  Close around them in the darkness was
+the heavy fragrance of perishing blossoms--earth dials of
+yesterday; close around them the clean sweetness of fresh
+ones--breath of the coming morn.  It was an hour when the heart,
+surrounded by what can live no more and by what never before has
+lived, grows faint and sick with yearnings for its own past and
+forlorn with the inevitableness of change--the cruelty of all
+change.
+
+For a while silence lasted.  He waited for her to speak; she tried
+repeatedly to do so.  At length with apparent fear that he might
+misunderstand, she interposed an agitated command:
+
+"Do not say anything."
+
+A few minutes later she began to speak to him, still struggling for
+her self-control.
+
+"I do not forget that to-night I have been acting a part, and that
+I have asked you to act a part with me.  I have walked with you and
+I have talked with you, and I am with you now to create an
+impression that is false; to pretend before those who see us that
+nothing is changed.  I do not forget that I have been doing this
+thing which is unworthy of me.  But it is the first time--try not
+to believe it to be my character.  I am compelled to tell you that
+it is one of the humiliations you have forced upon me."
+
+"I have understood this," he said hastily, breaking the silence she
+had imposed upon him.
+
+"Then let it pass," she cried nervously.  "It is enough that I have
+been obliged to observe my own hypocrisies, and that I have asked
+you to countenance and to conceal them."
+
+He offered no response.  And in a little while she went on:
+
+"I ought to tell you one thing more.  Last week I made all my
+arrangements to go away at once, for the summer, for a long time.
+I did not expect to see you again.  Two or three times I started to
+the station.  I have stayed until now because it seemed best after
+all to speak to you once more.  This is my reason for being here
+to-night; and it is the only apology I can offer to myself or to
+you for what I am doing."
+
+There was a sad and bitter vehemence in her words; she quivered
+with passion.
+
+"Isabel," he said more urgently, "there is nothing I am not
+prepared to tell you."
+
+When she spoke again, it was with difficulty and everything seemed
+to hang upon her question:
+
+"Does any one else know?"
+
+His reply was immediate:
+
+"No one else knows."
+
+"Have you every reason to believe this?"
+
+"I have every reason to believe this."
+
+"You kept your secret well," she said with mournful irony.  "You
+reserved it for the one person whom it could most injure: my
+privilege is too great!"
+
+"It is true," he said.
+
+She turned and looked at him.  She felt the depth of conviction
+with which he spoke, yet it hurt her.  She liked his dignity and
+his self-control, and would not have had them less; yet she
+gathered fresh bitterness from the fact that he did not lose them.
+But to her each moment disclosed its new and uncontrollable
+emotions; as words came, her mind quickly filled again with the
+things she could not say.  She now went on:
+
+"I am forced to ask these questions, although I have no right to
+ask them and certainly I have no wish.  I have wanted to know
+whether I could carry out the plan that has seemed to me best for
+each of us.  If others shared your secret, I could not do this.  I
+am going away--I am going in the morning.  I shall remain away a
+long time.  Since we have been seen together here to-night as
+usual, no one suspects now that for us everything has become
+nothing.  While I am away, no one can have the means of finding
+this out.  Before I return, there will be changes--there may be
+many changes.  If we meet with indifference then, it will be
+thought that we have become indifferent, one of us, or both of us:
+I suppose it will be thought to be you.  There will be comment,
+comment that will be hard to stand; but this will be the quietest
+way to end everything--as far as anything can ever be ended."
+
+"Whatever you wish!  I leave it all to you."
+
+She did not pause to heed his words:
+
+"This will spare me the linking of my name with yours any further
+just now; it will spare me all that I should suffer if the matter
+which estranges us should be discovered and be discussed.  It will
+save me hereafter, perhaps, from being pointed out as a woman who
+so trusted and was so deceived.  It may shield my life altogether
+from some notoriety: I could be grateful for that!"
+
+She was thinking of her family name, and of the many proud eyes
+that were turned upon her in the present and out of the past.
+There was a sting for her in the remembrance and the sting passed
+into her concluding words:
+
+"I do not forget that when I ask you to do all this, I, who am not
+given to practising deception, am asking you to go on practising
+yours.  I am urging you to shirk the consequences of your
+wrong-doing--to enjoy in the world an untarnished name after you
+have tarnished your life.  Do not think I forget that!  Still I beg
+you to do as I say.  This is another of the humiliations you have
+led me to: that although I am separated from you by all that once
+united us, I must remain partner with you in the concealment of a
+thing that would ruin you if it were known."
+
+She turned to him as though she experienced full relief through her
+hard and cruel words:
+
+"Do I understand, then, that this is to be buried away by you--and
+by me--from the knowledge of the world?"
+
+"No one else has any right to know it.  I have told you that."
+
+"Then that is all!"
+
+She gave a quick dismissal to the subject, so putting an end to the
+interview.
+
+She started to rise from her seat; but impulses, new at the
+instant, checked her: all the past checked her, all that she was
+herself and all that he had been to her.
+
+Perhaps what at each moment had angered her most was the fact that
+she was speaking, not he.  She knew him to be of the blood of
+silent men and to have inherited their silence.  This very trait of
+his had rendered association with him so endearing.  Love had been
+so divinely apart from speech, either his or her own: most intimate
+for having been most mute.  But she knew also that he was capable
+of speech, full and strong and quick enough upon occasion; and her
+heart had cried out that in a lifetime this was the one hour when
+he should not have given way to her or allowed her to say a
+word--when he should have borne her down with uncontrollable
+pleading.
+
+It was her own work that confronted her and she did not recognize
+it.  She had exhausted resources to convince him of her
+determination to cast him off at once; to render it plain that
+further parley would to her be further insult.  She had made him
+feel this on the night of his confession; in the note of direct
+repulse she sent him by the hand of a servant in her own house the
+following afternoon; by returning to him everything that he had
+ever given her; by her refusal to acknowledge his presence this
+evening beyond laying upon him a command; and by every word that
+she had just spoken.  And in all this she had thought only of what
+she suffered, not of what he must be suffering.
+
+Perhaps some late instantaneous recognition of this flashed upon
+her as she started to leave him--as she looked at him sitting
+there, his face turned toward her in stoical acceptance of his
+fate.  There was something in the controlled strength of it that
+touched her newly.  She may have realized that if he had not been
+silent, if he had argued, defended himself, pleaded, she would have
+risen and walked back to the house without a word.  It turned her
+nature toward him a little, that he placed too high a value upon
+her dismissal of him not to believe it irrevocable.
+
+Yet it hurt her: she was but one woman in the world; could the
+thought of this have made it easier for him to let her go away now
+without a protest?
+
+The air of the summer night grew unbearable for sweetness about
+her.  The faint music of the ballroom had no pity for her.  There
+young eyes found joy in answering eyes, passed on and found joy in
+others and in others.  Palm met palm and then palms as soft and
+then palms yet softer.  Some minutes before, the laughter of
+Marguerite in the shrubbery quite close by had startled Isabel.
+She had distinguished a voice.  Now Marguerite's laughter reached
+her again--and there was a different voice with hers.  Change!
+change! one put away, the place so perfectly filled by another.
+
+A white moth of the night wandered into Rowan's face searching its
+features; then it flitted over to her and searched hers, its wings
+fanning and clinging to her lips; and then it passed on, pursuing
+amid mistakes and inconstancies its life-quest lasting through a
+few darknesses.
+
+Fear suddenly reached down into her heart and drew up one question;
+and she asked that question in a voice low and cold and guarded:
+
+"Sometime, when you ask another woman to marry you, will you think
+it your duty to tell her?"
+
+"I will never ask any other woman."
+
+"I did not inquire for your intention; I asked what you would
+believe to be your duty."
+
+"It will never become my duty.  But if it should, I would never
+marry without being true to the woman; and to be true is to tell
+the truth."
+
+"You mean that you would tell her?"
+
+"I mean that I would tell her."
+
+After a little silence she stirred in her seat and spoke, all her
+anger gone:
+
+"I am going to ask you, if you ever do, not to tell her as you have
+told me--after it is too late.  If you cannot find some way of
+letting her know the truth before she loves you, then do not tell
+her afterward, when you have won her life away from her.  If there
+is deception at all, then it is not worse to go on deceiving her
+than it was to begin to deceive her.  Tell her, if you must, while
+she is indifferent and will not care, not after she has given
+herself to you and will then have to give you up.  But what can
+you, a man, know what it means to a woman to tell her this!  How
+can you know, how can you ever, ever know!"
+
+She covered her face with her hands and her voice broke with tears.
+
+"Isabel--"
+
+"You have no right to call me by my name, and I have no right to
+hear it, as though nothing were changed between us."
+
+"I have not changed."
+
+"How could you tell me!  Why did you ever tell me!" she cried
+abruptly, grief breaking her down.
+
+"There was a time when I did not expect to tell you.  I expected to
+do as other men do."
+
+"Ah, you would have deceived me!" she exclaimed, turning upon him
+with fresh suffering.  "You would have taken advantage of my
+ignorance and have married me and never have let me know!  And you
+would have called that deception love and you would have called
+yourself a true man!"
+
+"But I did not do this!  It was yourself who helped me to see that
+the beginning of morality is to stop lying and deception."
+
+"But if you had this on your conscience already, what right had you
+ever to come near me?"
+
+"I had come to love you!"
+
+"Did your love of me give you the right to win mine?"
+
+"It gave me the temptation."
+
+"And what did you expect when you determined to tell me this?  What
+did you suppose such a confession would mean to me?  Did you
+imagine that while it was still fresh on your lips, I would smile
+in your face and tell you it made no difference?  Was I to hear you
+speak of one whose youth and innocence you took away through her
+frailties, and then step joyously into her place?  Was this the
+unfeeling, the degraded soul you thought to be mine?  Would I have
+been worthy even of the poor love you could give me, if I had done
+that?"
+
+"I expected you to marry me!  I expected you to forgive.   I have
+this at least to remember: I lost you honestly when I could have
+won you falsely."
+
+"Ah, you have no right to seek any happiness in what is all sadness
+to me!  And all the sadness, the ruin of everything, comes from
+your wrong-doing."
+
+"Remember that my wrong-doing did not begin with me.  I bear my
+share: it is enough: I will bear no more."
+
+A long silence followed.  She spoke at last, checking her tears:
+
+"And so this is the end of my dream!  This is what life has brought
+me to!  And what have I done to deserve it?  To leave home, to shun
+friends, to dread scandal, to be misjudged, to bear the burden of
+your secret and share with you its shame, to see my years stretch
+out before me with no love in them, no ambitions, no ties--this is
+what life has brought me, and what have I done to deserve it?"
+
+As her tears ceased, her eyes seemed to be looking into a future
+that lacked the relief of tears.  As though she were already passed
+far on into it and were looking back to this moment, she went on,
+speaking very slowly and sadly:
+
+"We shall not see each other again in a long time, and whenever we
+do, we shall be nothing to each other and we shall never speak of
+this.  There is one thing I wish to tell you.  Some day you may
+have false thoughts of me.  You may think that I had no deep
+feeling, no constancy, no mercy, no forgiveness; that it was easy
+to give you up, because I never loved you.  I shall have enough to
+bear and I cannot bear that.  So I want to tell you that you will
+never know what my love for you was.  A woman cannot speak till she
+has the right; and before you gave me the right, you took it away.
+For some little happiness it may bring me hereafter let me tell you
+that you were everything to me, everything!  If I had taught myself
+to make allowances for you, if I had seen things to forgive in you,
+what you told me would have been only one thing more and I might
+have forgiven.  But all that I saw in you I loved.  Rowan, and I
+believed that I saw everything.  Remember this, if false thoughts
+of me ever come to you!  I expect to live a long time: the memory
+of my love of you will be the sorrow that will keep me alive."
+
+After a few moments of silent struggle she moved nearer.
+
+"Do not touch me," she said; "remember that what love makes dear,
+it makes sacred."
+
+She put out a hand in the darkness and, closing her eyes over
+welling tears, passed it for long remembrance over his features:
+letting the palm lie close against his forehead with her fingers in
+his hair; afterward pressing it softly over his eyes and passing it
+around his neck.  Then she took her hand away as though fearful of
+an impulse.  Then she put her hand out again and laid her fingers
+across his lips.  Then she took her hand away, and leaning over,
+laid her lips on his lips:
+
+"Good-by!" she murmured against his face, "good-by! good-by!
+good-by!"
+
+
+Mrs. Conyers had seen Rowan and Isabel together in the parlors
+early in the evening.  She had seen them, late in the evening, quit
+the house.  She had counted the minutes till they returned and she
+had marked their agitation as they parted.  The closest association
+lasting from childhood until now had convinced her of the
+straightforwardness of Isabel's character; and the events of the
+night were naturally accepted by her as evidences of the renewal of
+relationship with Rowan, if not as yet of complete reconciliation.
+
+She herself had encountered during the evening unexpected slights
+and repulses.  Her hostesses had been cool, but she expected them
+to be cool: they did not like her nor she them.  But Judge Morris
+had avoided her; the Hardages had avoided her; each member of the
+Meredith family had avoided her; Isabel had avoided her; even
+Harriet, when once she crossed the rooms to her, had with an
+incomprehensible flare of temper turned her back and sought refuge
+with Miss Anna.  She was very angry.
+
+But overbalancing the indignities of the evening was now this
+supreme joy of Isabel's return to what she believed to be Isabel's
+destiny.  She sent her grandson home that she might have the drive
+with the girl alone.  When Isabel, upon entering the carriage, her
+head and eyes closely muffled in her shawl, had withdrawn as far as
+possible into one corner and remained silent on the way, she
+refrained from intrusion, believing that she understood the
+emotions dominating her behavior.
+
+The carriage drew up at the door.  She got out quickly and passed
+to her room--with a motive of her own.
+
+Isabel lingered.  She ascended the steps without conscious will.
+At the top she missed her shawl: it had become entangled in the
+fringe of a window strap, had slipped from her bare shoulders as
+she set her foot on the pavement, and now lay in the track of the
+carriage wheels.  As she picked it up, an owl flew viciously close
+to her face.  What memories, what memories came back to her!  With
+a shiver she went over to a frame-like opening in the foliage on
+one side of the veranda and stood looking toward the horizon where
+the moon had sunk on that other night--that first night of her
+sorrow.  How long it was since then!
+
+At any other time she would have dreaded the parting which must
+take place with her grandmother: now what a little matter it seemed!
+
+As she tapped and opened the door, she put her hand quickly before
+her eyes, blinded by the flood of light which streamed out into the
+dark hall.  Every gas-jet was turned on--around the walls, in the
+chandelier; and under the chandelier stood her grandmother,
+waiting, her eyes fixed expectantly on the door, her countenance
+softened with returning affection, the fire of triumph in her eyes.
+
+She had unclasped from around her neck the diamond necklace of old
+family jewels, and held it in the pool of her rosy palms, as though
+it were a mass of clear separate raindrops rainbow-kindled.  It was
+looped about the tips of her two upright thumbs; part of it had
+slipped through the palms and flashed like a pendent arc of light
+below.
+
+The necklace was an heirloom; it had started to grow in England of
+old; it had grown through the generations of the family in the New
+World.
+
+It had begun as a ring--given with the plighting of troth; it had
+become ear-rings; it had become a pendant; it had become a tiara;
+it had become part of a necklace; it had become a necklace--completed
+circlet of many hopes.
+
+As Isabel entered Mrs. Conyers started forward, smiling, to clasp
+it around her neck as the expression of her love and pleasure; then
+she caught sight of Isabel's face, and with parted lips she stood
+still.
+
+Isabel, white, listless, had sunk into the nearest chair, and now
+said, quietly and wearily, noticing nothing:
+
+"Grandmother, do not get up to see me off in the morning.  My trunk
+is packed; the others are already at the station.  All my
+arrangements are made.  I'll say good-by to you now," and she stood
+up.
+
+Mrs. Conyers stood looking at her.  Gradually a change passed over
+her face; her eyes grew dull, the eyelids narrowed upon the balls;
+the round jaws relaxed; and instead of the smile, hatred came
+mysteriously out and spread itself rapidly over her features: true
+horrible revelation.  Her fingers tightened and loosened about the
+necklace until it was forced out through them, until it glided,
+crawled, as though it were alive and were being strangled and were
+writhing.  She spoke with entire quietness:
+
+"After all that I have seen to-night, are you not going to marry
+Rowan?"
+
+Isabel stirred listlessly as with remembrance of a duty:
+
+"I had forgotten, grandmother, that I owe you an explanation.  I
+found, after all, that I should have to see Rowan again: there was
+a matter about which I was compelled to speak with him.  That is
+all I meant by being with him to-night: everything now is ended
+between us."
+
+"And you are going away without giving me the reason of all this?"
+
+Isabel gathered her gloves and shawl together and said with simple
+distaste:
+
+"Yes."
+
+As she did so, Mrs. Conyers, suddenly beside herself with aimless
+rage, raised one arm and hurled the necklace against the opposite
+wall of the room.  It leaped a tangled braid through the air and as
+it struck burst asunder, and the stones scattered and rattled along
+the floor and rolled far out on the carpet.
+
+She turned and putting up a little white arm, which shook as though
+palsied, began to extinguish the lights.  Isabel watched her a
+moment remorsefully:
+
+"Good night, grandmother, and good-by.  I am sorry to go away and
+leave you angry."
+
+As she entered her room, gray light was already creeping in through
+the windows, left open to the summer night.  She went mournfully to
+her trunk.  The tray had been lifted out and placed upon a chair
+near by.  The little tops to the divisions of the tray were all
+thrown back, and she could see that the last thing had been packed
+into its place.  Her hand satchel was open on her bureau, and she
+could see the edge of a handkerchief and the little brown wicker
+neck of a cologne bottle.  Beside the hand satchel were her purse,
+baggage checks, and travelling ticket: everything was in readiness.
+She looked at it all a long time:
+
+"How can I go away?  How can I, how can I?"
+
+She went over to her bed.  The sheet had been turned down, the
+pillow dented for her face.  Beside the pillow was a tiny
+reading-stand and on this was a candle and a book--with thought of
+her old habit of reading after she had come home from pleasures
+like those of to-night--when they were pleasures.  Beside the book
+her maid had set a little cut-glass vase of blossoms which had
+opened since she put them there--were just opening now.
+
+"How can I read?  How can I sleep?"
+
+She crossed to a large window opening on the lawn in the rear of
+the house--and looked for the last time out at the gray old pines
+and dim blue, ever wintry firs.  Beyond were house-tops and
+tree-tops of the town; and beyond these lay the country--stretching
+away to his home.  Soon the morning light would be crimsoning the
+horizon before his window.
+
+"How can I stay?" she said.  "How can I bear to stay?"
+
+She recalled her last words to him as they parted:
+
+"Remember that you are forgotten!"
+
+She recalled his reply:
+
+"Forget that you are remembered!"
+
+She sank down on the floor and crossed her arms on the window sill
+and buried her face on her arms.  The white dawn approached,
+touched her, and passed, and she did not heed.
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND
+
+I
+
+The home of the Merediths lay in a region of fertile lands adapted
+alike to tillage and to pasturage.  The immediate neighborhood was
+old, as civilization reckons age in the United States, and was well
+conserved, It held in high esteem its traditions of itself,
+approved its own customs, was proud of its prides: a characteristic
+community of country gentlemen at the side of each of whom a
+characteristic lady lived and had her peculiar being.
+
+The ownership of the soil had long since passed into the hands of
+capable families--with this exception, that here and there between
+the borders of large estates little farms were to be found
+representing all that remained from slow processes of partition and
+absorption.  These scant freeholds had thus their pathos, marking
+as they did the losing fight of successive holders against more
+fortunate, more powerful neighbors.  Nothing in its way records
+more surely the clash and struggle and ranking of men than the
+boundaries of land.  There you see extinction and survival, the
+perpetual going under of the weak, the perpetual overriding of the
+strong.
+
+Two such fragmentary farms lay on opposite sides of the Meredith
+estate.  One was the property of Ambrose Webb, a married but
+childless man who, thus exempt from necessity of raking the earth
+for swarming progeny, had sown nearly all his land in grass and
+rented it as pasturage: no crops of children, no crops of grain.
+
+The other farm was of less importance.  Had you ridden from the
+front door of the Merediths northward for nearly a mile, you would
+have reached the summit of a slope sweeping a wide horizon.
+Standing on this summit any one of these bright summer days, you
+could have seen at the foot of the slope, less than a quarter of a
+mile away on the steep opposite side, a rectangle of land covering
+some fifty acres.  It lay crumpled into a rough depression in the
+landscape.  A rivulet of clear water by virtue of indomitable crook
+and turn made its way across this valley; a woodland stood in one
+corner, nearly all its timber felled; there were a few patches of
+grain so small that they made you think of the variegated peasant
+strips of agricultural France; and a few lots smaller still around
+a stable.  The buildings huddled confusedly into this valley seemed
+to have backed toward each other like a flock of sheep, encompassed
+by peril and making a last stand in futile defence of their right
+to exist at all.
+
+What held the preeminence of castle in the collection of structures
+was a small brick house with one upper bedroom.  The front entrance
+had no porch; and beneath the door, as stepping-stones of entrance,
+lay two circular slabs of wood resembling sausage blocks, one half
+superposed.  Over the door was a trellis of gourd vines now
+profusely, blooming and bee-visited.  Grouped around this castle in
+still lower feudal and vital dependence was a log cabin of one room
+and of many more gourd vines, an ice-house, a house for fowls, a
+stable, a rick for hay, and a sagging shed for farm implements.
+
+If the appearance of the place suggested the struggles of a family
+on the verge of extinction, this idea was further borne out by what
+looked like its determination to stand a long final siege at least
+in the matter of rations, for it swarmed with life.  In the quiet
+crystalline air from dawn till after sunset the sounds arising from
+it were the clamor of a sincere, outspoken multitude of what man
+calls the dumb creatures.  Evidently some mind, full of energy and
+forethought, had made its appearance late in the history of these
+failing generations and had begun a fight to reverse failure and
+turn back the tide of aggression.  As the first step in
+self-recovery this rugged island of poverty  must  be made
+self-sustaining.  Therefore it had been made to teem with animal
+and vegetable plenty.
+
+On one side of the house lay an orderly garden of vegetables and
+berry-bearing shrubs; the yard itself was in reality an orchard of
+fruit trees, some warmed by the very walls; under the shed there
+were beegums alive with the nectar builders; along the garden walks
+were frames for freighted grape-vines.  The work of regeneration
+had been pushed beyond the limits of utilitarianism over into a
+certain crude domain of aesthetics.  On one front window-sill what
+had been the annual Christmas box of raisins had been turned into a
+little hot-bed of flowering plants; and under the panes of glass a
+dense forest of them, sun-drawn, looked like a harvest field swept
+by a storm.  On the opposite window ledge an empty drum of figs was
+now topped with hardy jump-up-johnnies.  It bore some resemblance
+to an enormous yellow muffin stuffed with blueberries.  In the
+garden big-headed peonies here and there fell over upon the young
+onions.  The entire demesne lay white and green with tidiness under
+yellow sun and azure sky; for fences and outhouses, even the trunks
+of trees several feet up from the ground, glistened with whitewash.
+So that everywhere was seen the impress and guidance of a spirit
+evoking abundance, order, even beauty, out of what could so easily
+have been squalor and despondent wretchedness.
+
+This was the home of Pansy Vaughan; and Pansy was the explanation
+of everything beautiful and fruitful, the peaceful Joan of Arc of
+that valley, seeing rapt visions of the glory of her people.
+
+In the plain upper room of the plain brick house, on her hard white
+bed with her hard white thoughts, lay Pansy--sleepless throughout
+the night of Marguerite's ball.  The youngest of the children slept
+beside her; two others lay in a trundle-bed across the room; and
+the three were getting out of sleep all that there is in it for
+tired, healthy children.  In the room below, her father and the
+eldest boy were resting; and through the rafters of the flooring
+she could hear them both: her father a large, fluent, well-seasoned,
+self-comforting bassoon; and her brother a sappy, inexperienced
+bassoon trying to imitate it.  Wakefulness was a novel state for
+Pansy herself, who was always tired when bedtime came and as full
+of wild vitality as one of her young guineas in the summer wheat;
+so that she sank into slumber as a rock sinks into the sea,
+descending till it reaches the unstirred bottom.
+
+What kept her awake to-night was mortification that she had not
+been invited to the ball.  She knew perfectly well that she was not
+entitled to an invitation, since the three Marguerites had never
+heard of her.  She had never been to a fashionable party even in
+the country.  But her engagement to Dent Meredith already linked
+her to him socially and she felt the tugging of those links: what
+were soon to become her rights had begun to be her rights already.
+Another little thing troubled her: she had no flower to send him
+for his button-hole, to accompany her note wishing him a pleasant
+evening.   She could not bear to give him anything common; and
+Pansy believed that no one was needed to tell her what a common
+thing is.
+
+For a third reason slumber refused to descend and weigh down her
+eyelids: on the morrow she was to call upon Dent's mother, and the
+thought of this call preoccupied her with terror.  She was one of
+the bravest of souls; but the terror which shook her was the terror
+that shakes them all--terror lest they be not loved.
+
+All her life she had looked with awe upward out of her valley
+toward that great house.  Its lawns with stately clumps of
+evergreens, its many servants, its distant lights often seen
+twinkling in the windows at night, the tales that reached her of
+wonderful music and faery dancing; the flashing family carriages
+which had so often whirled past her on the turnpike with scornful
+footman and driver--all these recollections revisited her to-night.
+In the morning she was to cross the boundary of this inaccessible
+world as one who was to hold a high position in it.
+
+How pictures came crowding back!  One of the earliest recollections
+of childhood was hearing the scream of the Meredith peacocks as
+they drew their gorgeous plumage across the silent summer lawns; at
+home they had nothing better than fussing guineas.  She had never
+come nearer to one of those proud birds than handling a set of tail
+feathers which Mrs. Meredith had presented to her mother for a
+family fly brush.  Pansy had good reason to remember because she
+had often been required to stand beside the table and, one little
+bare foot set alternately on the other little bare foot, wield the
+brush over the dishes till arms and eyelids ached.
+
+Another of those dim recollections was pressing her face against
+the window-panes when the first snow began to fall on the scraggy
+cedars in the yard; and as she began to sing softly to herself one
+of the ancient ditties of the children of the poor, "Old Woman,
+picking Geese," she would dream of the magical flowers which they
+told her bloomed all winter in a glass house at the Merediths'
+while there was ice on the pines outside.  Big red roses and
+icicles separated only by a thin glass--she could hardly believe
+it; and she would cast her eye toward their own garden where a few
+black withered stalks marked the early death-beds of the pinks and
+jonquils.
+
+But even in those young years Pansy had little time to look out of
+windows and to dream of anything.  She must help, she must work;
+for she was the oldest of five children, and the others followed so
+closely that they pushed her out of her garments.  A hardy,
+self-helpful child life, bravened by necessities, never undermined
+by luxuries.  For very dolls Pansy used small dried gourds, taking
+the big round end of the gourd for the head of the doll and all the
+rest of the gourd for all the rest of the body.
+
+One morning when she was fourteen, the other children were clinging
+with tears to her in a poor, darkened room--she to be little mother
+to them henceforth: they never clung in vain.
+
+That same autumn when woods were turning red and wild grapes
+turning black and corn turning yellow, a cherished rockaway drawn
+by a venerated horse, that tried to stop for conversation on the
+highroad whenever he passed a neighbor's vehicle, rattled out on
+the turnpike with five children in it and headed for town: Pansy
+driving, taking herself and the rest to the public school.  For
+years thereafter, through dark and bright days, she conveyed that
+nest of hungry fledglings back and forth over bitter and weary
+miles, getting their ravenous minds fed at one end of the route,
+and their ravenous bodies fed at the other.  If the harness broke,
+Pansy got out with a string.  If the horse dropped a shoe, or
+dropped himself, Pansy picked up what she could.  In town she drove
+to the blacksmith shop and to all other shops whither business
+called her.  Her friends were the blacksmith and the tollgate
+keeper, her teachers--all who knew her and they were few: she had
+no time for friendships.  At home the only frequent visitor was
+Ambrose Webb, and Pansy did not care for Ambrose.  The first time
+she remembered seeing him at dinner, she--a very little girl--had
+watched his throat with gloomy fascination.  Afterward her mother
+told her he had an Adam's apple; and Pansy, working obscurely at
+some problem of theology, had secretly taken down the Bible and
+read the story of Adam and the fearful fruit.   Ambrose became
+associated in her mind with the Fall of Man; she disliked the
+proximity.
+
+No time for friendships.  Besides the labors at school, there was
+the nightly care of her father on her return, the mending of his
+clothes; there was the lonely burning of her candle far into the
+night as she toiled over lessons.  When she had learned all that
+could be taught her at the school, she left the younger children
+there and victoriously transferred herself for a finishing course
+to a seminary of the town, where she was now proceeding to graduate.
+
+This was Pansy, child of plain, poor, farmer folk, immemorially
+dwelling close to the soil; unlettered, unambitious, long-lived,
+abounding in children, without physical beauty, but marking the
+track of their generations by a path lustrous with right-doing.
+For more than a hundred years on this spot the land had lessened
+around them; but the soil had worked upward into their veins, as
+into the stalks of plants, the trunks of trees; and that clean,
+thrilling sap of the earth, that vitality of the exhaustless mother
+which never goes for nothing, had produced one heavenly flower at
+last--shooting forth with irrepressible energy a soul unspoiled and
+morally sublime.  When the top decays, as it always does in the
+lapse of time, whence shall come regeneration if not from below?
+It is the plain people who are the eternal breeding grounds of high
+destinies.
+
+In the long economy of nature, this, perhaps, was the meaning and
+the mission of this lofty child who now lay sleepless, shaken to
+the core with thoughts of the splendid world over into which she
+was to journey to-morrow.
+
+
+At ten o'clock next morning she set out.
+
+It had been a question with her whether she should go straight
+across the fields and climb the fences, or walk around by the
+turnpike and open the gates.  Her preference was for fields and
+fences, because that was the short and direct way, and Pansy was
+used to the short and direct way of getting to the end of her
+desires.  But, as has been said, she had already fallen into the
+habit of considering what was due her and becoming to her as a
+young Mrs. Meredith; and it struck her that this lady would not
+climb field fences, at least by preference and with facility.
+Therefore she chose the highroad, gates, dust, and dignity.
+
+It could scarcely be said that she was becomingly raimented.  Pansy
+made her own dresses, and the dresses declared the handiwork of
+their maker.  The one she wore this morning was chiefly
+characterized by a pair of sleeves designed by herself; from the
+elbow to the wrist there hung green pouches that looked like long
+pea-pods not well filled.  Her only ornament was a large oval pin
+at her throat which had somewhat the relation to a cameo as that
+borne by Wedgwood china.  It represented a white horse drinking at
+a white roadside well; beside the shoulder of the horse stood a
+white angel, many times taller, with an arm thrown caressingly
+around the horse's neck; while a stunted forest tree extended a
+solitary branch over the horse's tail.
+
+She had been oppressed with dread that she should not arrive in
+time.  No time had been set, no one knew that she was coming, and
+the forenoons were long.  Nevertheless impatience consumed her to
+encounter Mrs. Meredith; and once on the way, inasmuch as Pansy
+usually walked as though she had been told to go for the doctor,
+but not to run, she was not long in arriving.
+
+When she reached the top of the drive in front of the Meredith
+homestead, her face, naturally colorless, was a consistent red; and
+her heart, of whose existence she had never in her life been
+reminded, was beating audibly.  Although she said to herself that
+it was bad manners, she shook out her handkerchief, which she had
+herself starched and ironed with much care; and gathering her
+skirts aside, first to the right and then to the left, dusted her
+shoes, lifting each a little into the air, and she pulled some
+grass from around the buttons.  With the other half of her
+handkerchief she wiped her brow; but a fresh bead of perspiration
+instantly appeared; a few drops even stood on her dilated
+nostrils--raindrops on the eaves.  Even had the day been cool she
+must have been warm, for she wore more layers of clothing than
+usual, having deposited some fresh strata in honor of her wealthy
+mother-in-law.
+
+As Pansy stepped from behind the pines, with one long, quivering
+breath of final self-adjustment, she suddenly stood still, arrested
+by the vision of so glorious a hue and shape that, for the moment,
+everything else was forgotten.  On the pavement just before her, as
+though to intercept her should she attempt to cross the Meredith
+threshold, stood a peacock, expanding to the utmost its great fan
+of pride and love.  It confronted her with its high-born composure
+and insolent grace, all its jewelled feathers flashing in the sun;
+then with a little backward movement of its royal head and
+convulsion of its breast, it threw out its cry,--the cry she had
+heard in the distance through dreaming years,--warning all who
+heard that she was there, the intruder.  Then lowering its tail and
+drawing its plumage in fastidiously against the body, it crossed
+her path in an evasive circle and disappeared behind the pines.
+
+"Oh, Dent, why did you ever ask me to marry you!" thought Pansy, in
+a moment of soul failure.
+
+Mrs. Meredith was sitting on the veranda and was partly concealed
+by a running rose.  She was not expecting visitors; she had much to
+think of this morning, and she rose wonderingly and reluctantly as
+Pansy came forward: she did not know who it was, and she did not
+advance.
+
+Pansy ascended the steps and paused, looking with wistful eyes at
+the great lady who was to be her mother, but who did not even greet
+her.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Meredith," she said, in a shrill treble,
+holding herself somewhat in the attitude of a wooden soldier, "I
+suppose I shall have to introduce myself: it is Pansy."
+
+The surprise faded from Mrs. Meredith's face, the reserve melted.
+With outstretched hands she advanced smiling.
+
+"How do you do.  Pansy," she said with motherly gentleness; "it is
+very kind of you to come and see me, and I am very glad to know
+you.  Shall we go in where it is cooler?"
+
+They entered the long hall.  Near the door stood a marble bust:
+each wall was lined with portraits.  She passed between Dent's
+ancestors into the large darkened parlors.
+
+"Sit here, won't you?" said Mrs. Meredith, and she even pushed
+gently forward the most luxurious chair within her reach.  To Pansy
+it seemed large enough to hold all the children.  At home she was
+used to chairs that were not only small, but hard.  Wherever the
+bottom of a chair seemed to be in that household, there it was--if
+it was anywhere.  Actuated now by this lifelong faith in literal
+furniture, she sat down with the utmost determination where she was
+bid; but the bottom offered no resistance to her descending weight
+and she sank.  She threw out her hands and her hat tilted over her
+eyes.  It seemed to her that she was enclosed up to her neck in
+what might have been a large morocco bath-tub--which came to an end
+at her knees.  She pushed back her hat, crimson.
+
+"That was a surprise," she said, frankly admitting the fault, "but
+there'll never be another such."
+
+"I am afraid you found it warm walking, Pansy," said Mrs. Meredith,
+opening her fan and handing it to her.
+
+"Oh, no, Mrs. Meredith, I never fan!" said Pansy, declining
+breathlessly.  "I have too much use for my hands.  I'd rather
+suffer and do something else.  Besides, you know I am used to
+walking in the sun.  I am very fond of botany, and I am out of
+doors for hours at a time when I can find the chance."
+
+Mrs. Meredith was delighted at the opportunity to make easy vague
+comment on a harmless subject.
+
+"What a beautiful study it must be," she said with authority.
+
+"Must be!" exclaimed Pansy; "why, Mrs. Meredith, don't you _know_?
+Don't you understand botany?"
+
+Pansy had an idea that in Dent's home botany was as familiarly
+apprehended as peas and turnips in hers.
+
+"I am afraid not," replied Mrs. Meredith, a little coolly.  Her
+mission had been to adorn and people the earth, not to study it.
+And among persons of her acquaintance it was the prime duty of each
+not to lay bare the others' ignorance, but to make a little
+knowledge appear as great as possible.  It was discomfiting to have
+Pansy charge upon what after all was only a vacant spot in her
+mind.   She added, as defensively intimating that the subject had
+another dangerous side:
+
+"When I was a girl, young ladies at school did not learn much
+botany; but they paid a great deal of attention to their manners."
+
+"Why did not they learn it after they had left school and after
+they had learned manners?" inquired Pansy, with ruthless
+enthusiasm.  "It is such a mistake to stop learning everything
+simply because you have stopped school.  Don't you think so?"
+
+"When a girl marries, my dear, she soon has other studies to take
+up.  She has a house and husband.  The girls of my day, I am
+afraid, gave up their botanies for their duties: it may be
+different now."
+
+"No matter how many children I may have," said Pansy, positively,
+"I shall never--give--up--botany!  Besides, you know, Mrs.
+Meredith, that we study botany only during the summer months, and I
+do hope--" she broke off suddenly.
+
+Mrs. Meredith smoothed her dress nervously and sought to find her
+chair comfortable.
+
+"Your mother named you Pansy," she remarked, taking a gloomy view of
+the present moment and of the whole future of this acquaintanceship.
+
+That this should be the name of a woman was to her a mistake, a
+crime.  Her sense of fitness demanded that names should be given to
+infants with reference to their adult characters and eventual
+positions in life.  She liked her own name "Caroline"; and she
+liked "Margaret" and all such womanly, motherly, dignified, stately
+appellatives.  As for "Pansy," it had been the name of one of her
+husband's shorthorns, a premium animal at the county fairs; the
+silver cup was on the sideboard in the dining room now.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Meredith," replied Pansy, "that was the name my mother
+gave me.  I think she must have had a great love of flowers.  She
+named me for the best she had.  I hope I shall never forget that,"
+and Pansy looked at Mrs. Meredith with a face of such gravity and
+pride that silence lasted in the parlors for a while.
+
+Buried in Pansy's heart was one secret, one sorrow: that her mother
+had been poor.  Her father wore his yoke ungalled; he loved rough
+work, drew his religion from privations, accepted hardship as the
+chastening that insures reward.  But that her mother's hands should
+have been folded and have returned to universal clay without ever
+having fondled the finer things of life--this to Pansy was
+remembrance to start tears on the brightest day.
+
+"I think she named you beautifully," said Mrs. Meredith, breaking
+that silence, "and I am glad you told me, Pansy." She lingered with
+quick approval on the name.
+
+But she turned the conversation at once to less personal channels.
+The beauty of the country at this season seemed to offer her an
+inoffensive escape.  She felt that she could handle it at least
+with tolerable discretion.  She realized that she was not deep on
+the subject, but she did feel fluent.
+
+"I suppose you take the same pride that we all do in such a
+beautiful country."
+
+Sunlight instantly shone out on Pansy's face.  Dent was a
+geologist; and since she conceived herself to be on trial before
+Mrs. Meredith this morning, it was of the first importance that she
+demonstrate her sympathy and intelligent appreciation of his field
+of work.
+
+"Indeed I do feel the greatest pride in it, Mrs. Meredith," she
+replied.   "I study it a great deal.  But of course you know
+perfectly the whole formation of this region."
+
+Mrs. Meredith coughed with frank discouragement.
+
+"I do not know it," she admitted dryly.  "I suppose I ought to know
+it, but I do not.  I believe school-teachers understand these
+things.  I am afraid I am a very ignorant woman.  No one of my
+acquaintances is very learned.  We are not used to scholarship."
+
+"I know all the strata," said Pansy.  "I tell the children stories
+of how the Mastodon once virtually lived in our stable, and that
+millions of years ago there were Pterodactyls under their bed."
+
+"I think it a misfortune for a young woman to have much to say to
+children about Pterodactyls under their bed--is that the name?
+Such things never seem to have troubled Solomon, and I believe he
+was reputed wise."  She did not care for the old-fashioned
+reference herself, but she thought it would affect Pansy.
+
+"The children in the public schools know things that Solomon never
+heard of," said Pansy, contemptuously.
+
+"I do not doubt it in the least, my dear.  I believe it was not his
+knowledge that made him rather celebrated, but his wisdom.  But I
+am not up in Solomon!" she admitted hastily, retreating from the
+subject in new dismay.
+
+The time had arrived for Pansy to depart; but she reclined in her
+morocco alcove with somewhat the stiffness of a tilted bottle and
+somewhat the contour.  She felt extreme dissatisfaction with her
+visit and reluctance to terminate it.
+
+Her idea of the difference between people in society and other
+people was that it hinged ornamentally upon inexhaustible and
+scanty knowledge.  If Mrs. Meredith was a social leader, and she
+herself had no social standing at all, it was mainly because that
+lady was publicly recognized as a learned woman, and the world had
+not yet found out that she herself was anything but ignorant.
+Being ignorant was to her mind the quintessence of being common;
+and as she had undertaken this morning to prove to Dent's mother
+that she was not common, she had only to prove that she was
+learned.  For days she had prepared for this interview with that
+conception of its meaning.  She had converted her mind into a kind
+of rapid-firing gun; she had condensed her knowledge into
+conversational cartridges.  No sooner had she taken up a mental
+position before Mrs. Meredith than the parlors resounded with
+light, rapid detonations of information.  That lady had but to
+release the poorest, most lifeless, little clay pigeon of a remark
+and Pansy shattered it in mid air and refixed suspicious eyes on
+the trap.
+
+But the pigeons soon began to fly less frequently.  And finally
+they gave out.  And now she must take nearly all her cartridges
+home!  Mrs. Meredith would think her ignorant, therefore she would
+think her common.  If Pansy had only known what divine dulness,
+what ambrosial stupidity, often reclines on those Olympian heights
+called society!
+
+As last she rose.  Neither had mentioned Dent's name, though each
+had been thinking of him all the time.  Not a word had been spoken
+to indicate the recognition of a relationship which one of them so
+desired and the other so dreaded.  Pansy might merely have hurried
+over to ask Mrs. Meredith for the loan of an ice-cream freezer or
+for a setting of eggs.  On the mother's part this silence was
+kindly meant: she did not think it right to take for granted what
+might never come to pass.  Uppermost in her mind was the cruelty of
+accepting Pansy as her daughter-in-law this morning with the
+possibility of rejecting her afterward.
+
+As Pansy walked reluctantly out into the hall, she stopped with a
+deep wish in her candid eyes.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Meredith, I should so much like to see the portrait of
+Dent's father: he has often spoken to me about It."
+
+Mrs. Meredith led her away in silence to where the portrait hung,
+and the two stood looking at it side by side.  She resisted a
+slight impulse to put her arm around the child.  When they returned
+to the front of the house, Pansy turned:
+
+"Do you think you will ever love me?"
+
+The carriage was at the door.  "You must not walk," said Mrs.
+Meredith, "the sun is too hot now."
+
+As Pansy stepped into the carriage, she cast a suspicious glance at
+the cushions: Meredith upholstery was not to be trusted, and she
+seated herself warily.
+
+Mrs. Meredith put her hand through the window: "You must come to
+see me soon again, Pansy.  I am a poor visitor, but I shall try to
+call on you in a few days."
+
+She went back to her seat on the veranda.
+
+It has been said that her insight into goodness was her strength;
+she usually had a way of knowing at once, as regards the character
+of people, what she was ever to know at all.  Her impressions of
+Pansy unrolled themselves disconnectedly:
+
+"She makes mistakes, but she does not know how to do wrong.  Guile
+is not in her.  She is so innocent that she does not realize
+sometimes the peril of her own words.  She is proud--a great deal
+prouder than Dent.  To her, life means work and duty; more than
+that, it means love.  She is ambitious, and ambition, in her case,
+would be indispensable.  She did not claim Dent: I appreciate that.
+She is a perfectly brave girl, and it is cowardice that makes so
+many women hypocrites.  She will improve--she improved while she
+was here.  But oh, everything else!  No figure, no beauty, no
+grace, no tact, no voice, no hands, no anything that is so much
+needed!  Dent says there are cold bodies which he calls planets
+without atmosphere: he has found one to revolve about him.  If she
+only had some clouds!  A mist here and there, so that everything
+would not be so plain, so exposed, so terribly open!  But neither
+has _he_ any clouds, any mists, any atmosphere.  And if she only
+would not so try to expose other people!  If she had not so
+trampled upon me in my ignorance; and with such a sense of triumph!
+I was never so educated in my life by a visitor.  The amount of
+information she imparted in half an hour--how many months it would
+have served the purpose of a well-bred woman!  And her pride in her
+family--were there ever such little brothers and sisters outside a
+royal family!  And her devotion to her father, and remembrance of
+her mother.  I shall go to see her, and be received, I suppose,
+somewhere between the griddle and the churn."
+
+As Pansy was driven home, feeling under herself for the first time
+the elasticity of a perfect carriage, she experimented with her
+posture.  "This carriage is not to be sat in in the usual way," she
+said.  And indeed it was not.  In the family rockaway there was
+constant need of muscular adjustment to different shocks at
+successive moments; here muscular surrender was required: a
+comfortable collapse--and there you were!
+
+Trouble awaited her at home.  Owing to preoccupation with her visit
+she had, before setting out, neglected much of her morning work.
+She had especially forgotten the hungry multitude of her
+dependants.  The children, taking advantage of her absence, had fed
+only themselves.  As a consequence, the trustful lives around the
+house had suffered a great wrong, and they were attempting to
+describe it to each other.  The instant Pansy descended from the
+carriage the ducks, massed around the doorsteps, discovered her,
+and with frantic outcry and outstretched necks ran to find out what
+it all meant.  The signal was taken up by other species and genera.
+In the stable lot the calves responded as the French horn end of
+the orchestra; and the youngest of her little brothers, who had
+climbed into a fruit tree as a lookout for her return, in
+scrambling hurriedly down, dropped to the earth with the boneless
+thud of an opossum.
+
+Pansy walked straight up to her room, heeding nothing, leaving a
+wailing wake.  She locked herself in.  It was an hour before dinner
+and she needed all those moments for herself.
+
+She sat on the edge of her bed and new light brought new
+wretchedness.  It was not, after all, quantity of information that
+made the chief difference between herself and Dent's mother.  The
+other things, all the other things--would she ever, ever acquire
+them!  Finally the picture rose before her of how the footman had
+looked as he had held the carriage door open for her, and the ducks
+had sprawled over his feet; and she threw herself on the bed, hat
+and all, and burst out crying with rage and grief and mortification.
+
+"She will think I am common," she moaned, "and I am not common!
+Why did I say such things?  It is not my way of talking.  Why did I
+criticise the way the portrait was hung?  And she will think this
+is what I really am, and it is not what I am!  She will think I do
+not even know how to sit in a chair, and she will tell Dent, and
+Dent will believe her, and what will become of me?"
+
+
+"Pansy," said Dent next afternoon, as they were in the woods
+together, "you have won my mother's heart."
+
+"Oh, Dent," she exclaimed, tears starting, "I was afraid she would
+not like me.  How could she like me, knowing me no better?"
+
+"She doesn't yet know that she likes you," he replied, with his
+honest thinking and his honest speech, "but I can see that she
+trusts you and respects you; and with my mother everything else
+follows in time."
+
+"I was embarrassed.  I did myself such injustice."
+
+"It is something you never did any one else."
+
+He had been at work in his quarry on the vestiges of creation; the
+quarry lay at an outcrop of that northern hill overlooking the
+valley in which she lived.  Near by was a woodland, and she had
+come out for some work of her own in which he guided her.  They lay
+on the grass now side by side.
+
+"I am working on the plan of our house, Pansy.  I expect to begin
+to build in the autumn.  I have chosen this spot for the site.  How
+do you like it?"
+
+"I like it very well.  For one reason, I can always see the old
+place from it."
+
+"My father left his estate to be equally divided between Rowan and
+me.  Of course he could not divide the house; that goes to Rowan:
+it is a good custom for this country as it was a good custom for
+our forefathers in England.  But I get an equivalent and am to
+build for myself on this part of the land: my portion is over here.
+You see we have always been divided only by a few fences and they
+do not divide at all."
+
+"The same plants grow on each side, Dent."
+
+"There is one thing I have to tell you.  If you are coming into our
+family, you ought to know it beforehand.  There is a shadow over
+our house.  It grows deeper every year and we do not know what it
+means.  That is, my mother and I do not know.  It is some secret in
+Rowan's life.  He has never offered to tell us, and of course we
+have never asked him, and in fact mother and I have never even
+spoken to each other on the subject."
+
+It was the first time she had even seen sadness in his eyes; and
+she impulsively clasped his hand.  He returned the pressure and
+then their palms separated.  No franker sign of their love had ever
+passed between them.
+
+He went on very gravely: "Rowan was the most open nature I ever saw
+when he was a boy.  I remember this now.  I did not think of it
+then.  I believe he was the happiest.  You know we are all
+pantheists of some kind nowadays.  I could never see much
+difference between a living thing that stands rooted in the earth
+like a tree and a living thing whose destiny it is to move the foot
+perpetually over the earth, as man.  The union is as close in one
+case as in the other.  Do you remember the blind man of the New
+Testament who saw men as trees walking?  Rowan seemed to me, as I
+recall him now, to have risen out of the earth through my father
+and mother--a growth of wild nature, with the seasons in his face,
+with the blood of the planet rising into his veins as intimately as
+it pours into a spring oak or into an autumn grape-vine.  I often
+heard Professor Hardage call him the earth-born.  He never called
+any one else that.  He was wild with happiness until he went to
+college.  He came back all changed; and life has been uphill with
+him ever since.  Lately things have grown worse.  The other day I
+was working on the plan of our house; he came in and looked over my
+shoulder: 'Don't build, Dent,' he said, 'bring your wife here,' and
+he walked quickly out of the room.  I knew what that meant: he has
+been unfortunate in his love affair and is ready to throw up the
+whole idea of marrying.  This is our trouble, Pansy.  It may
+explain anything that may have been lacking in my mother's
+treatment of you; she is not herself at all." He spoke with great
+tenderness and he looked disturbed.
+
+"Can I do anything?"  What had she been all her life but
+burden-bearer, sorrow-sharer?
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"If I ever can, will you tell me?"
+
+"This is the only secret I have kept from you, Pansy.  I am sure
+you have kept none from me.  I believe that if I could read
+everything in you, I should find nothing I did not wish to know."
+
+She did not reply for a while.  Then she said solemnly: "I have one
+secret.  There is something I try to hide from every human being
+and I always shall.  It is not a bad secret, Dent.  But I do not
+wish to tell you what it is, and I feel sure you will never ask me."
+
+He turned his eyes to her clear with unshakable confidence: "I
+never will."
+
+Pansy was thinking of her mother's poverty.
+
+They sat awhile in silence.
+
+He had pulled some stems of seeding grass and drew them slowly
+across his palm, pondering Life.  Then he began to talk to her in
+the way that made them so much at home with one another.
+
+"Pansy, men used to speak of the secrets of Nature: there is not
+the slightest evidence that Nature has a secret.  They used to
+speak of the mysteries of the Creator.  I am not one of those who
+claim to be authorities on the traits of the Creator.  Some of my
+ancestors considered themselves such.  But I do say that men are
+coming more and more to think of Him as having no mysteries.  We
+have no evidence, as the old hymn declares, that He loves to move
+in a mysterious way.  The entire openness of Nature and of the
+Creator--these are the new ways of thinking.  They will be the only
+ways of thinking in the future unless civilization sinks again into
+darkness.  What we call secrets and mysteries of the universe are
+the limitations of our powers and our knowledge.  The little that
+we actually do know about Nature, how open it is, how unsecretive!
+There is nowhere a sign that the Creator wishes to hide from us
+even what is Life.  If we ever discover what Life is, no doubt we
+shall then realize that it contained no mystery."
+
+She loved to listen, feeling that he was drawing her to his way of
+thinking for the coming years.
+
+"It was the folly and the crime of all ancient religions that their
+priesthoods veiled them; whenever the veil was rent, like the veil
+of Isis, it was not God that men found behind it: it was nothing.
+The religions of the future will have no veils.  As far as they can
+set before their worshippers truth at all, it will be truth as open
+as the day.  The Great Teacher in the New Testament--what an
+eternal lesson on light itself: that is the beauty of his Gospel.
+And his Apostles--where do you find him saying to them, 'Preach my
+word to all men as the secrets of a priesthood and the mysteries of
+the Father'?
+
+"It is the tragedy of man alone that he has his secrets.  No doubt
+the time will come when I shall have mine and when I shall have to
+hide things from you, Pansy, as Rowan has his and hides things from
+us.  Life is full of things that we cannot tell because they would
+injure us; and of things that we cannot tell because they would
+injure others.  But surely we should all like to live in a time
+when a man's private life will be his only life."
+
+After a silence he came back to her with a quiet laugh: "Here I am
+talking about the future of the human race, and we have never
+agreed upon our marriage ceremony!  What a lover!"
+
+"I want the most beautiful ceremony in the world."
+
+"The ceremony of your church?" he asked with great respect, though
+wincing.
+
+"My church has no ceremony: every minister in it has his own; and
+rather than have one of them write mine, I think I should rather
+write it myself: shouldn't you?"
+
+"I think I should," he said, laughing.
+
+He drew a little book out of his breast pocket: "Perhaps you will
+like this: a great many people have been married by it."
+
+"I want the same ceremony that is used for kings and queens, for
+the greatest and the best people of the earth.  I will marry you by
+no other!"
+
+"A good many of them have used this," and he read to her the
+ceremony of his church.
+
+When he finished neither spoke.
+
+It was a clear summer afternoon.  Under them was the strength of
+rocks; around them the noiseless growth of needful things; above
+them the upward-drawing light: two working children of the New
+World, two pieces of Nature's quietism.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It was the second morning after Marguerite's ball.
+
+Marguerite, to herself a girl no longer, lay in the middle
+of a great, fragrant, drowsy bed of carved walnut, once her
+grandmother's.  She had been dreaming; she had just awakened.  The
+sun, long since risen above the trees of the yard, was slanting
+through the leaves and roses that formed an outside lattice to her
+window-blinds.
+
+These blinds were very old.  They had been her grandmother's when
+she was Marguerite's age; and one day, not long before this,
+Marguerite, pillaging the attic, had found them and brought them
+down, with adoring eyes, and put them up before her own windows.
+They were of thin muslin, and on them were painted scenes
+representing the River of Life, with hills and castles, valleys and
+streams, in a long series; at the end there was a faint vision of a
+crystal dome in the air--the Celestial City--nearly washed away.
+You looked at these scenes through the arches of a ruined castle.
+A young man (on one blind) has just said farewell to his parents on
+the steps of the castle and is rowing away down the River of Life.
+At the prow of his boat is the figurehead of a winged woman holding
+an hour-glass.
+
+Marguerite lay on her side, sleepily contemplating the whole scene
+between her thick, bosky lashes.  She liked everything but the
+winged woman holding the hour-glass.  Had she been that woman, she
+would have dropped the hour-glass into the blue, burying water, and
+have reached up her hand for the young man to draw her into the
+boat with him.  And she would have taken off her wings and cast
+them away upon the hurrying river.  To have been alone with him, no
+hour-glass, no wings, rowing away on Life's long voyage, past
+castles and valleys, and never ending woods and streams!  As to the
+Celestial City, she would have liked her blinds better if the rains
+of her grandmother's youth had washed it away altogether.  It was
+not the desirable end of such a journey: she did not care to land
+_there_.
+
+Marguerite slipped drowsily over to the edge of the bed in order to
+be nearer the blinds; and she began to study what was left of the
+face of the young man just starting on his adventures from the
+house of his fathers.  Who was he?  Of whom did he cause her to
+think?  She sat up in bed and propped her face in the palms of her
+hands--the April face with its October eyes--and lapsed into what
+had been her dreams of the night.  The laces of her nightgown
+dropped from her wrists to her elbows; the masses of her hair, like
+sunlit autumn maize, fell down over her neck and shoulders into the
+purity of the bed.
+
+Until the evening of her party the world had been to Marguerite
+something that arranged all her happiness and never interfered
+with it.  Only soundness and loveliness of nature, inborn,
+undestroyable, could have withstood such luxury, indulgence,
+surfeit as she had always known.
+
+On that night which was designed to end for her the life of
+childhood, she had, for the first time, beheld the symbol of the
+world's diviner beauty--a cross.  All her guests had individually
+greeted her as though each were happier in her happiness.  Except
+one--he did not care.  He had spoken to her upon entering with the
+manner of one who wished himself elsewhere, he alone brought no
+tribute to her of any kind, in his eyes, by his smile, through the
+pressure of his hand.
+
+The slight wounded her at the moment; she had not expected to have
+a guest to whom she would be nothing and to whom it would seem no
+unkindness to let her know this.  The slight left its trail of pain
+as the evening wore on and he did not come near her.  Several
+times, while standing close to him, she had looked her surprise,
+had shadowed her face with coldness for him to see.  For the first
+time in her life she felt herself rejected, suffered the
+fascination of that pain.  Afterward she had intentionally pressed
+so close to him in the throng of her guests that her arm brushed
+his sleeve.  At last she had disengaged herself from all others and
+had even gone to him with the inquiries of a hostess; and he had
+forced himself to smile at her and had forgotten her while he spoke
+to her--as though she were a child.  All her nature was exquisitely
+loosened that night, and quivering; it was not a time to be so
+wounded and to forget.
+
+She did not forget as she sat in her room after all had gone.  She
+took the kindnesses and caresses, the congratulations and triumphs,
+of those full-fruited hours, pressed them together and derived
+merely one clear drop of bitterness--the languorous poison of one
+haunting desire.  It followed her into her sleep and through the
+next day; and not until night came again and she had passed through
+the gateway of dreams was she happy: for in those dreams it was he
+who was setting out from the house of his fathers on a voyage down
+the River of Life; and he had paused and turned and called her to
+come to him and be with him always.
+
+Marguerite lifted her face from her palms, as she finished her
+revery.  She slipped to the floor out of the big walnut bed, and
+crossing to the blinds laid her fingers on the young man's
+shoulder.  It was the movement with which one says: "I have come."
+
+With a sigh she drew one of the blinds aside and looked out upon
+the leaves and roses of her yard and at the dazzling sunlight.
+Within a few feet of her a bird was singing.  "How can you?" she
+said.  "If you loved, you would be silent.  Your wings would droop.
+You could neither sing nor fly."  She turned dreamily back into her
+room and wandered over to a little table on which her violin lay in
+its box.  She lifted the top and thrummed the strings.  "How could
+I ever have loved you?"
+
+She dressed absent-mindedly.  How should she spend the forenoon?
+Some of her friends would be coming to talk over the party; there
+would be callers; there was the summer-house, her hammock, her
+phaeton; there were nooks and seats, cool, fragrant; there were her
+mother and grandmother to prattle to and caress.  "No," she said,
+"not any of them.  One person only.  I must see _him_."
+
+She thought of the places where she could probably see him if he
+should be in town that day.  There was only one--the library.
+Often, when there, she had seen him pass in and out.  He had no
+need to come for books or periodicals, all these he could have at
+home; but she had heard the librarian and him at work; over the
+files of old papers containing accounts of early agricultural
+affairs and the first cattle-shows of the state.  She resolved to
+go to the library: what desire had she ever known that she had not
+gratified?
+
+When Marguerite, about eleven o'clock, approached the library a
+little fearfully, she saw Barbee pacing to and fro on the sidewalk
+before the steps.  She felt inclined to turn back; he was the last
+person she cared to meet this morning.  Play with him had suddenly
+ended as a picnic in a spring grove is interrupted by a tempest.
+
+"I ought to tell him at once," she said; and she went forward.
+
+He came to meet her--with a countenance dissatisfied and
+reproachful.  It struck her that his thin large ears looked
+yellowish instead of red and that his freckles had apparently
+spread and thickened.  She asked herself why she had never before
+realized how boyish he was.
+
+"Marguerite," he said at once, as though the matter were to be
+taken firmly in hand, "you treated me shabbily the night of your
+party.  It was unworthy of you.  And I will not stand it.  You
+ought not be such a child!"
+
+Her breath was taken away.  She blanched and her eyes dilated as
+she looked at him: the lash of words had never been laid on her.
+
+"Are you calling me to account?" she asked.  "Then I shall call you
+to an account.  When you came up to speak to grandmother and to
+mamma and me, you spoke to us as though you were an indifferent
+suitor of mine--as though I were a suitor of yours.  As soon as you
+were gone, mamma said to me: 'What have you been doing, Marguerite,
+that he should think you are in love with him--that he should treat
+us as though we all wished to catch him?'"
+
+"That was a mistake of your mother's.  But after what had passed
+between us--"
+
+"No matter what had passed between us, I do not think that a _man_
+would virtually tell a girl's mother on her: a boy might."
+
+He grew ashen; and he took his hand out of his pockets and
+straightened himself from his slouchy lounging posture, and stood
+before her, his head in the air on his long neck like a young stag
+affronted and enraged.
+
+"It is true, I have sometimes been too much like a boy with you,"
+he said.  "Have you made it possible for me to be anything else?"
+
+"Then I'll make it possible for you now: to begin, I am too old to
+be called to account for my actions--except by those who have the
+right."
+
+"You mean, that I have no right--after what has passed--"
+
+"Nothing has passed between us!"
+
+"Marguerite," he said, "do you mean that you do not love me?"
+
+"Can you not see?"
+
+She was standing on the steps above him.  The many-fluted parasol
+with its long silken fringes rested on one shoulder.  Her face in
+the dazzling sunlight, under her hat, had lost its gayety.  Her
+eyes rested upon his with perfect quietness.
+
+"I do not believe that you yourself know whether you love me," he
+said, laughing pitifully.  His big mouth twitched and his love had
+come back into his eyes quickly enough.
+
+"Let me tell you how I know," she said, with more kindness.  "If I
+loved you, I could not stand here and speak of it to you in this
+way.  I could not tell you you are not a man.   Everything in me
+would go down before you.  You could do with my life what you
+pleased.  No one in comparison with you would mean anything to
+me--not even mamma.  As long as I was with you, I should never wish
+to sleep; if you were away from me, I should never wish to waken.
+If you were poor, if you were in trouble, you would be all the
+dearer to me--if you only loved me, only loved me!"
+
+Who is it that can mark down the moment when we ceased to be
+children?  Gazing backward in after years, we sometimes attempt
+dimly to fix the time.  "It probably occurred on that day," we
+declare; "it may have taken place during that night.  It coincided
+with that hardship, or with that mastery of life."  But a child can
+suffer and can triumph as a man or a woman, yet remain a child.
+Like man and woman it can hate, envy, malign, cheat, lie,
+tyrannize; or bless, cheer, defend, drop its pitying tears, pour
+out its heroic spirit.  Love alone among the passions parts the two
+eternities of a lifetime.  The instant it is born, the child which
+was its parent is dead.
+
+As Marguerite suddenly ceased speaking, frightened by the secret
+import of her own words, her skin, which had the satinlike fineness
+and sheen of white poppy leaves, became dyed from brow to breast
+with a surging flame of rose.  She turned partly away from Barbee,
+and she waited for him to go.
+
+He looked at her a moment with torment in his eyes; then, lifting
+his hat without a word, he turned and walked proudly down the
+street toward his office.
+
+Marguerite did not send a glance after him.  What can make us so
+cruel to those who vainly love us as our vain love of some one
+else?  What do we care for their suffering?  We see it in their
+faces, hear it in their speech, feel it as the tragedy of their
+lives.  But we turn away from them unmoved and cry out at the
+heartlessness of those whom our own faces and words and sorrow do
+not touch.
+
+She lowered her parasol, and pressing her palm against one cheek
+and then the other, to force back the betraying blood, hurried
+agitated and elated into the library.  A new kind of excitement
+filled her: she had confessed her secret, had proved her fidelity
+to him she loved by turning off the playmate of childhood.  Who
+does not know the relief of confessing to some one who does not
+understand?
+
+The interior of the library was an immense rectangular room.  Book
+shelves projected from each side toward the middle, forming
+alcoves.  Seated in one of these alcoves, you could be seen only by
+persons who should chance to pass.  The library was never crowded
+and it was nearly empty now.  Marguerite lingered to speak with the
+librarian, meantime looking carefully around the room; and then
+moved on toward the shelves where she remembered having once seen a
+certain book of which she was now thinking.  It had not interested
+her then; she had heard it spoken of since, but it had not
+interested her since.  Only to-day something new within herself
+drew her toward it.
+
+No one was in the alcove she entered.  After a while she found her
+book and seated herself in a nook of the walls with her face turned
+in the one direction from which she could be discovered by any one
+passing.  While she read, she wished to watch: might he not pass?
+
+It was a very old volume, thumbed by generations of readers.  Pages
+were gone, the halves of pages worn away or tattered.  It was
+printed in an old style of uncertain spelling so that the period of
+its authorship could in this way be but doubtfully indicated.
+Ostensibly it came down from the ruder, plainer speech of old
+English times, which may have found leisure for such "A Booke of
+Folly."
+
+Marguerite's eyes settled first on the complete title: "Lady
+Bluefields' First Principles of Courting for Ye Use of Ye Ladies;
+but Plainly Set Down for Ye Good of Ye Beginners."
+
+"I am not a beginner," thought Marguerite, who had been in love
+three days; and she began to read:
+
+"_Now of all artes ye most ancient is ye lovely arte of courting.
+It is ye earliest form of ye chase.  It is older than hawking or
+hunting ye wilde bore.  It is older than ye flint age or ye stone
+aye, being as old as ye bones in ye man his body and in ye woman
+her body.  It began in ye Garden of Eden and is as old as ye old
+devil himself_."
+
+Marguerite laughed: she thought Lady Bluefields delightful.
+
+"_Now ye only purpose in all God His world of ye arte of courting
+is to create love where love is not, or to make it grow where it
+has begun.  But whether ye wish to create love or to blow ye little
+coal into ye big blaze, ye principles are ye same; for ye bellows
+that will fan nothing into something will easily roast ye spark
+into ye roaring fire; and ye grander ye fire, ye grander ye arte_."
+
+Marguerite laughed again.  Then she stopped reading and tested the
+passage in the light of her experience.  A bellows and--nothing to
+begin.  Then something.  Then a spark.  Then a name.  She returned
+to the book with the conclusion that Lady Bluefields was a woman of
+experience.
+
+"_This little booke will not contain any but ye first principles:
+if is enough for ye stingy price ye pay.  But ye woman who buys ye
+first principles and fails, must then get ye larger work on ye Last
+Principles of Courting, with ye true account of ye mysteries which
+set ye principles to going: it is ye infallible guide to ye
+irresistible love.  Ye pay more for ye Big Booke, and God knows it
+is worth ye price: it is written for ye women who are ye difficult
+cases--ye floating derelicts in ye ocean of love, ye hidden snags,
+terror of ye seafaring men_."
+
+This did not so much interest Marguerite.  She skipped two or three
+pages which seemed to go unnecessarily into the subject of
+derelicts and snags.  "I am not quite sure as to what a derelict
+is: I do not think I am one; out certainly I am not a snag."
+
+"_Now ye only reason for ye lovely arts of courtinge is ye purpose
+to marry.  If ye do not expect to marry, positively ye must not
+court: flirting is ye dishonest arte.  Courting is ye honest arte;
+if ye woman knows in ye woman her heart that she will not make ye
+man a good wife, let her not try to Cage ye man: let her keep ye
+cat or cage ye canary: that is enough for her_."
+
+"I shall dispose of my canary at once.  It goes to Miss Harriet
+Crane."
+
+"_Now of all men there is one ye woman must not court: ye married
+man.  Positively ye must not court such a man.  If he wishes to
+court ye, ye must make resistance to him with all ye soul; if you
+wish to court him, ye must resist yourself.  If he is a married man
+and happy, let him alone.  If he is married and unhappy, let him
+bear his lot and beat his wife_."
+
+Marguerite's eyes flashed.  "It is well the writer did not live in
+this age," she thought.
+
+"_Ye men to court are three kinds: first ye swain; second ye old
+bachelor; third ye widower.  Ye old bachelor is like ye green
+chimney of ye new house--hard to kindle.  But ye widower is like ye
+familiar fireplace.  Ye must court according to ye kind.  Ye
+bachelor and ye widower are treated in ye big booke_."
+
+"The swain is left," said Marguerite.  "How and when is the swain
+to be courted?"
+
+"_Now ye beauty of ye swain is that ye can court him at all seasons
+of ye year.  Ye female bird will signal for ye mate only when ye
+woods are green; but even ye old maid can go to ye icy spinnet and
+drum wildly in ye dead of winter with ye aching fingers and ye
+swain mate will sometimes come to her out of ye cold_."
+
+Marguerite was beginning to think that nearly every one treated in
+Lady Bluefields' book was too advanced in years: it was too
+charitable to the problems of spinsters.  "Where do the young come
+in?" she asked impatiently.
+
+"_Ye must not court ye young swain with ye food or ye wine.  That
+is for ye old bachelors and ye widowers to whom ye food and wine
+are dear, but ye woman who gives them not dear enough.  Ye woman
+gives them meat and drink and they give ye woman hope: it is ye
+bargain: let each be content with what each gets.  But if ye swain
+be bashful and ye know that he cannot speak ye word that he has
+tried to speak, a glass of ye wine will sometimes give him that
+missing word.  Ye wine passes ye word to him and he passes ye word
+to you: and ye keep it!  When ye man is soaked with wine he does
+not know what he loves nor cares: he will hug ye iron post in ye
+street or ye sack of feathers in ye man his bed and talk to it as
+though nothing else were dear to him in all ye world.  It is not ye
+love that makes him do this; it is ye wine and ye man his own
+devilish nature.  No; ye must marry with wine, but ye must court
+with water.  Ye love that will not begin with water will not last
+with wine_."
+
+This did not go to the heart of the matter.  Marguerite turned over
+several pages.
+
+"_In ye arte of courting, it is often ye woman her eyes that settle
+ye man his fate, But if ye woman her eyes are not beautiful, she
+must not court with them but with other members of ye woman her
+body.  Ye greatest use of ye ugly eyes is to see but not be seen.
+If ye try to court with ye ugly eyes, ye scare ye man away or make
+him to feel sick; and ye will be sorry.  Ye eyes must be beautiful
+and ye eyes must have some mystery.  They must not be like ye
+windows of ye house in summer when ye curtains are taken down and
+ye shutters are taken off.  As ye man stands outside he must want
+to see all that is within, but he must not be able.  What ye man
+loves ye woman for is ye mystery in her; if ye woman contain no
+mystery, let her marry if she must; but not aspire to court.  (This
+is enough for ye stingy price ye pay: if ye had paid more money, ye
+would have received more instruction.)_"
+
+Marguerite thought it very little instruction for any money.  She
+felt disappointed and provoked.  She passed on to "Clothes." "What
+can she teach me on that subject?" she thought.
+
+"_When ye court with ye clothes, ye must not lift ye dress above ye
+ankle bone_."
+
+"Then I know what kind of ankle bone _she_ had," said Marguerite,
+bitter for revenge on Lady Bluefields.
+
+"_Ye clothes play a greate part in ye arte of courtinge_."
+
+
+Marguerite turned the leaf; but she found that the other pages on
+the theme were too thumbed and faint to be legible.
+
+She looked into the subject of "Hands": learning where the palms
+should be turned up and when turned down; the meaning of a crooked
+forefinger, and of full moons rising on the horizons of the finger
+nails; why women with freckled hands should court bachelors.  Also
+how the feet, if of such and such sizes and configurations, must be
+kept as "_ye two dead secrets_."  Similarly how dimples must be
+born and not made--with a caution against "_ye dimple under ye
+nose_" (reference to "Big Booke"--well worth the money, etc.).
+
+When she reached the subject of the kiss, Marguerite thought
+guiltily of the library steps.
+
+"_Ye kiss is ye last and ye greatest act in all ye lovely arte of
+courtinge.  Ye eyes, ye hair, ye feet, ye dimple, ye whole trunk,
+are of no account if they do not lead up to ye kiss.  There are two
+kinds of ye kiss: ye kiss that ye give and ye kiss that ye take.
+Ye kiss that ye take is ye one ye want.  Ye woman often wishes to
+give ye man one but cannot; and ye man often wishes to take one (or
+more) from ye woman but cannot; and between her not being able to
+give and his not being able to take, there is suffering enough in
+this ill-begotten and ill-sorted world.  Ye greatest enemy of ye
+kiss that ye earth has ever known is ye sun; ye greatest friend is
+ye night_.
+
+"_Ye most cases where ye woman can take ye kiss are put down in ye
+'Big Booke_.'
+
+"_When ye man lies sick in ye hospital and ye woman bends over him
+and he is too weak to raise his head, she can let her head fall
+down on his; it is only the law of gravitation.  But not while she
+is giving him ye physick.  If ye woman is riding in ye carriage and
+ye horses run away; and ye man she loves is standing in ye bushes
+and rushes out and seizes ye horses but is dragged, when he lies in
+ye road in ye swoon, ye woman can send ye driver around behind ye
+carriage and kiss him then--as she always does in ye women their
+novels but never does in ye life.  There is one time when any woman
+can freely kiss ye man she loves: in ye dreame.  It is ye safest
+way, and ye best.  No one knows; and it does not disappoint as it
+often does disappoint when ye are awake_.
+
+"_Lastly when ye beautiful swain that ye woman loved is dead, she
+way go into ye room where he lies white and cold and kiss him then:
+but she waited too long_."
+
+Marguerite let the book fall as though an arrow had pierced her.
+At the same time she heard the librarian approaching.  She quickly
+restored the volume to its place and drew out another book.  The
+librarian entered the alcove, smiled at Marguerite, peeped over her
+shoulder into the book she was reading, searched for another, and
+took it away.  When she disappeared, Marguerite rose and looked;
+Lady Bluefields was gone.
+
+She could not banish those heart-breaking words: "_When ye
+beautiful swain that ye woman loved is dead_."  The longing of the
+past days, the sadness, the languor that was ecstasy and pain,
+swept back over her as she sat listening now, hoping for another
+footstep.  Would he not come?  She did not ask to speak with him.
+If she might only see him, only feel him near for a few moments.
+
+She quitted the library slowly at last, trying to escape notice;
+and passed up the street with an unconscious slight drooping of
+that aerial figure.  When she reached her yard, the tree-tops
+within were swaying and showing the pale gray under-surfaces of
+their leaves.  A storm was coming.  She turned at the gate, her hat
+in her hand, and looked toward the cloud with red lightnings
+darting from it: a still white figure confronting that noonday
+darkness of the skies.
+
+"Grandmother never loved but once," she said.  "Mamma never loved
+but once: it is our fate."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"Anna," said Professor Hardage that same morning, coming out of his
+library into the side porch where Miss Anna, sitting in a green
+chair and wearing a pink apron and holding a yellow bowl with a
+blue border, was seeding scarlet cherries for a brown roll, "see
+what somebody has sent _me_."  He held up a many-colored bouquet
+tied with a brilliant ribbon; to the ribbon was pinned an
+old-fashioned card.
+
+"Ah, now, that is what comes of your being at the ball," said Miss
+Anna, delighted and brimming with pride.  "Somebody fell in love
+with you.  I told you you looked handsome that night," and she
+beckoned impatiently for the bouquet.
+
+He surrendered it with a dubious look.  She did not consider the
+little tumulus of Flora, but devoured the name of the builder.  Her
+face turned crimson; and leaning over to one side, she dropped the
+bouquet into the basket for cherry seed.  Then she continued her
+dutiful pastime, her head bent so low that he could see nothing but
+the part dividing the soft brown hair of her fine head.
+
+He sat down and laughed at her: "I knew you'd get me into trouble."
+
+It was some moments before she asked in a guilty voice: "What did
+you _do_?"
+
+"What did you tell me to do?"
+
+"I asked you to be kind to Harriet," she murmured mournfully.
+
+"You told me to take her out into the darkest place I could find
+and to sit there with her and hold her hand."
+
+"I did not tell you to hold her hand.  I told you to _try_ to hold
+her hand."
+
+"Well!  I builded better than you knew: give me my flowers."
+
+"What did you do?" she asked again, in a voice that admitted the
+worst.
+
+"How do I know?  I was thinking of something else!  But here comes
+Harriet," he said, quickly standing up and gazing down the street.
+
+"Go in," said Miss Anna, "I want to see Harriet alone."
+
+"_You_ go in.  The porch isn't dark; but I'll stay here with her!"
+
+"Please."
+
+When he had gone, Miss Anna leaned over and lifting the bouquet
+from the sticking cherry seed tossed it into the yard--tossed it
+_far_.
+
+Harriet came out into the porch looking wonderfully fresh.  "How do
+you do, Anna?" she said with an accent of new cordiality,
+established cordiality.
+
+The accent struck Miss Anna's ear as the voice of the bouquet.  She
+had at once discovered also that Harriet was beautifully
+dressed--even to the point of wearing her best gloves.
+
+"Oh, good morning, Harriet," she replied, giving the yellow bowl an
+unnecessary shake and speaking quite incidentally as though the
+visit were not of the slightest consequence.  She did not invite
+Harriet to be seated.  Harriet seated herself.
+
+"Aren't you well, Anna?" she inquired with blank surprise.
+
+"I am always well."
+
+"Is any one ill, Anna?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge."
+
+Harriet knew Miss Anna to have the sweetest nature of all women.
+She realized that she herself was often a care to her friend.  A
+certain impulse inspired her now to give assurance that she had not
+come this morning to weigh her down with more troubles.
+
+"Do you know, Anna, I never felt so well!  Marguerite's ball really
+brought me out.  I have turned over a new leaf of destiny and I am
+going out more after this.  What right has a woman to give up life
+so soon?  I shall go out more, and I shall read more, and be a
+different woman, and cease worrying you.  Aren't women reading
+history now?   But then they are doing everything.  Still that is
+no reason why I should not read a little, because my mind is really
+a blank on the subject of the antiquities.  Of course I can get the
+ancient Hebrews out of the Bible; but I ought to know more about
+the Greeks and Romans.  Now oughtn't I?"
+
+"You don't want to know anything about the Greeks and the Romans,
+Harriet," said Miss Anna.  "Content yourself with the earliest
+Hebrews.  You have gotten along very well without the Greeks and
+the Romans--for--a--long--time."
+
+Harriet understood at last; there was no mistaking now.  She was a
+very delicate instrument and much used to being rudely played upon.
+Her friend's reception of her to-day had been so unaccountable that
+at one moment she had suspected that her appearance might be at
+fault.  Harriet had known women to turn cold at the sight of a new
+gown; and it had really become a life principle not to dress even
+as well as she could, because she needed the kindness that flows
+out so copiously from new clothes to old clothes.  But it was
+embarrassment that caused her now to say rather aimlessly:
+
+"I believe I feel overdressed.  What possessed me?"
+
+"Don't overdress again," enjoined Miss Anna in stern confidence.
+"Never try to change yourself in anyway.  I like you better as you
+are--a--great--deal--better."
+
+"Then you shall have me as you like me, Anna dear," replied
+Harriet, faithfully and earnestly, with a faltering voice; and she
+looked out into the yard with a return of an expression very old
+and very weary.  Fortunately she was short-sighted and was thus
+unable to see her bouquet which made such a burning blot on the
+green grass, with the ribbon trailing beside it and the card still
+holding on as though determined to see the strange adventure
+through to the end.
+
+"Good-by, Anna," she said, rising tremblingly, though at the
+beginning of her visit.
+
+"Oh, good-by, Harriet," replied Miss Anna, giving a cheerful shake
+to the yellow bowl.
+
+As Harriet walked slowly down the street, a more courageously
+dressed woman than she had been for years, her chin quivered and
+she shook with sobs heroically choked back.
+
+Miss Anna went into the library and sat down near the door.  Her
+face which had been very white was scarlet again: "What was it you
+did--tell me quickly.  I cannot stand it."
+
+He came over and taking her cheeks between his palms turned her
+face up and looked down into her eyes.  But she shut them quickly.
+"What do you suppose I did?  Harriet and I sat for half an hour in
+another room.  I don't remember what I did; but it could not have
+been anything very bad: others were all around us."
+
+She opened her eyes and pushed him away harshly: "I have wounded
+Harriet in her most sensitive spot; and then I insulted her after I
+wounded her," and she went upstairs.
+
+Later he found the bouquet on his library table with the card stuck
+in the top.  The flowers stayed there freshly watered till the
+petals strewed his table: they were not even dusted away.
+
+As for Harriet herself, the wound of the morning must have
+penetrated till it struck some deep flint in her composition; for
+she came back the next day in high spirits and severely
+underdressed--in what might be called toilet reduced to its lowest
+terms, like a common fraction.  She had restored herself to the
+footing of an undervalued intercourse.  At the sight of her Miss
+Anna sprang up, kissed her all over the face, was atoningly cordial
+with her arms, tried in every way to say: "See, Harriet, I bare my
+heart!  Behold the dagger of remorse!"
+
+Harriet saw; and she walked up and took the dagger by the handle
+and twisted it to the right and to the left and drove it in deeper
+and was glad.
+
+"How do you like this dress, Anna?" she inquired with the sweetest
+solicitude.  "Ah, there is no one like a friend to bring you to
+your senses!  You were right.  I am too old to change, too old to
+dress, too old even to read: thank you, Anna, as always."
+
+Many a wound of friendship heals, but the wounder and the wounded
+are never the same to each other afterward.  So that the two
+comrades were ill at ease and welcomed a diversion in the form of a
+visitor.  It happened to be the day of the week when Miss Anna
+received her supply of dairy products from the farm of Ambrose
+Webb.  He came round to the side entrance now with two shining tin
+buckets and two lustreless eyes.
+
+The old maids stood on the edge of the porch with their arms
+wrapped around each other, and talked to him with nervous gayety.
+He looked up with a face of dumb yearning at one and then at the
+other, almost impartially.
+
+"Aren't you well, Mr. Webb?" inquired Miss Anna, bending over
+toward him with a healing smile.
+
+"Certainly I am well," he replied resentfully.  "There is nothing
+the matter with me.  I am a sound man."
+
+"But you were certainly groaning," insisted Miss Anna, "for I heard
+you; and you must have been groaning about _something_."
+
+He dropped his eyes, palpably crestfallen, and scraped the bricks
+with one foot.
+
+Harriet nudged Miss Anna not to press the point and threw herself
+gallantly into the breach of silence.
+
+"I am coming out to see you sometime, Mr. Webb," she said
+threateningly; "I want to find out whether you are taking good care
+of my calf.  Is she growing?"
+
+"Calves always grow till they stop," said Ambrose, axiomatically.
+
+"How high is she?"
+
+He held his hand up over an imaginary back.
+
+"Why, that is _high_!  When she stops growing, Anna, I am going to
+sell her, sell her by the pound.  She is my beef trust.  Now don't
+forget, Mr. Webb, that I am coming out some day."
+
+"I'll be there," he said, and he gave her a peculiar look.
+
+"You know, Anna," said Harriet, when they were alone again, "that
+his wife treats him shamefully.  I have heard mother talking about
+it.  She says his wife is the kind of woman that fills a house as
+straw fills a barn: you can see it through every crack.  That
+accounts for his heavy expression, and for his dull eyes, and for
+the groaning.  They say that most of the time he sits on the fences
+when it is clear, and goes into the stable when it rains."
+
+"Why, I'll have to be kinder to him than ever," said Miss Anna.
+"But how do you happen to have a calf, Harriet?" she added, struck
+by the practical fact.
+
+"It was the gift of my darling mother, my dear, the only present
+she has made me that I can remember.  It was an orphan, and you
+wouldn't have it in your asylum, and my mother was in a peculiar
+mood, I suppose.  She amused herself with the idea of making me
+such a present.  But Anna, watch that calf, and see if thereby does
+not hang a tale.  I am sure, in some mysterious way, my destiny is
+bound up with it.  Calves do have destinies, don't they, Anna?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask _me_, Harriet!  Inquire of their Creator; or try the
+market-house."
+
+It was at the end of this visit that Harriet as usual imparted to
+Miss Anna the freshest information regarding affairs at home: that
+Isabel had gone to spend the summer with friends at the seashore,
+and was to linger with other friends in the mountains during
+autumn; that her mother had changed her own plans, and was to keep
+the house open, and had written for the Fieldings--Victor's mother
+and brothers and sisters--to come and help fill the house; that
+everything was to be very gay.
+
+"I cannot fathom what is under it all," said Harriet, with her
+hand on the side gate at leaving.  "But I know that mother and
+Isabel have quarrelled.  I believe mother has transferred her
+affections--and perhaps her property.  She has rewritten her will
+since Isabel went away.  What have I to do, Anna, but interest
+myself in other people's affairs?  I have none of my own.  And she
+never calls Isabel's name, but pets Victor from morning till night.
+And her expression sometimes!  I tell you, Anna, that when I see
+it, if I were a bird and could fly, gunshot could not catch me.  I
+see a summer before me!  If there is ever a chance of my doing
+_anything_, don't be shocked if I do it;" and in Harriet's eyes
+there were two mysterious sparks of hope--two little rising suns.
+
+"What did she mean?" pondered Miss Anna.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Barbee," said Judge Morris one morning a fortnight later, "what
+has become of Marguerite?  One night not long ago you complained of
+her as an obstacle in the path of your career: does she still annoy
+you with her attentions?  You could sue out a writ of habeas corpus
+in your own behalf if she persists.  I'd take the case.  I believe
+you asked me to mark your demeanor on the evening of that party.  I
+tried to mark it; but I did not discover a great deal of demeanor
+to mark."
+
+The two were sitting in the front office.  The Judge, with nothing
+to do, was facing the street, his snow-white cambric handkerchief
+thrown across one knee, his hands grasping the arms of his chair,
+the newspaper behind his heels, his straw hat and cane on the floor
+at his side, and beside them the bulldog--his nose thrust against
+the hat.
+
+Barbee was leaning over his desk with his fingers plunged in his
+hair and his eyes fixed on the law book before him--unopened.  He
+turned and remarked with dry candor:
+
+"Marguerite has dropped me."
+
+"If she has, it's a blessed thing."
+
+"There was more depth to her than I thought."
+
+"There always is.  Wait until you get older."
+
+"I shall have to work and climb to win her."
+
+"You might look up meantime the twentieth verse of the twenty-ninth
+chapter of Genesis."
+
+Barbee rose and took down a Bible from among the law books: it had
+been one of the Judge's authorities, a great stand-by for reference
+and eloquence in his old days of pleading.  He sat down and read
+the verse and laid the volume aside with the mere comment: "All
+this time I have been thinking her too much of a child; I find that
+she has been thinking the same of me."
+
+"Then she has been a sound thinker."
+
+"The result is she has wandered away after some one else.  I know
+the man; and I know that he is after some one else.  Why do people
+desire the impossible person?  If I had been a Greek sculptor and
+had been commissioned to design as my masterwork the world's Frieze
+of Love, it should have been one long array of marble shapes, each
+in pursuit of some one fleeing.  But some day Marguerite will be
+found sitting pensive on a stone--pursuing no longer; and when I
+appear upon the scene, having overtaken her at last, she will sigh,
+but she will give me her hand and go with me: and I'll have to
+stand it.  That is the worst of it.  I shall have to stand it--that
+she preferred the other man."
+
+The Judge did not care to hear Barbee on American themes with Greek
+imagery.  He yawned and struggled to his feet with difficulty.
+"I'll take a stroll," he said; "it is all I can take."
+
+Barbee sprang forward and picked up for him his hat and cane.  The
+dog, by what seemed the slow action of a mental jackscrew, elevated
+his cylinder to the tops of his legs; and presently the two stiff
+old bodies turned the corner of the street, one slanting, one
+prone: one dotting the bricks with his three legs, the other with
+his four.
+
+Formerly the man and the brute had gone each his own way, meeting
+only at meal time and at irregular hours of the night in the
+Judge's chambers.  The Judge had his stories regarding the origin
+of their intimacy.  He varied these somewhat according to the
+sensibilities of the persons to whom they were related--and there
+were not many habitues of the sidewalks who did not hear them
+sooner or later.  "No one could disentangle fact and fiction and
+affection in them.
+
+"Some years ago," he said one day to Professor Hardage, "I was a
+good deal gayer than I am now and so was he.  We cemented a
+friendship in a certain way, no matter what: that is a story I'm
+not going to tell.  And he came to live with me on that footing of
+friendship.  Of course he was greatly interested in the life of his
+own species at that time; he loved part of it, he hated part; but
+he was no friend to either.  By and by he grew older.  Age removed
+a good deal of his vanity, and I suppose it forced him to part with
+some portion of his self-esteem.  But I was growing older myself
+and no doubt getting physically a little helpless.  I suppose I
+made senile noises when I dressed and undressed, expressive of my
+decorative labors.  This may have been the reason; possibly not;
+but at any rate about this time he conceived it his duty to give up
+his friendship as an equal and to enter my employ as a servant.  He
+became my valet--without wages--and I changed his name to 'Brown.'
+
+"Of course you don't think this true; well, then, don't think it
+true.  But you have never seen him of winter mornings get up before
+I do and try to keep me out of the bath-tub.  He'll station himself
+at the bath-room door; and as I approach he will look at me with an
+air of saying; 'Now don't climb into that cold water!  Stand on the
+edge of it and lap it if you wish!  But don't get into it.  Drink
+it, man, don't wallow in it.'  He waits until I finish, and then he
+speaks his mind plainly again: 'Now see how wet you are!  And
+to-morrow you will do the same thing.'  And he will stalk away,
+suspicious of the grade of my intelligence.
+
+"He helps me to dress and undress.  You'd know this if you studied
+his face when I struggle to brush the dust off of my back and
+shoulders: the mortification, the sense of injustice done him, in
+his having been made a quadruped.  When I stoop over to take off my
+shoes, if I do it without any noise and he lies anywhere near, very
+well; but if I am noisy about it, he always comes and takes a seat
+before me and assists.  Then he makes his same speech: 'What a
+shame that you should have to do this for yourself, when I am here
+to do it for you, but have no hands.'
+
+"You know his portrait in my sitting room.  When it was brought
+home and he discovered it on the wall, he looked at it from
+different angles, and then came across to me with a wound and a
+grievance: 'Why have you put that thing there?  How can you, who
+have me, tolerate such a looking object as that?  See the meanness
+in his face!  See how used up he is and how sick of life!  See what
+a history is written all over him--his crimes and disgraces!  And
+you can care for him when you have _me_, your Brown.'  After I am
+dead, I expect him to publish a memorial volume entitled
+'Reminiscences of the late Judge Ravenel Morris, By his former
+Friend, afterward his Valet, _Taurus-Canis_.'"
+
+The long drowsing days of summer had come.  Business was almost
+suspended; heat made energy impossible.  Court was not in session,
+farmers were busy with crops.  From early morning to late afternoon
+the streets were well-nigh deserted.
+
+Ravenel Morris found life more active for him during this idlest
+season of his native town.   Having no business to prefer, people
+were left more at leisure to talk with him; more acquaintances sat
+fanning on their doorsteps and bade him good night as he passed
+homeward.  There were festivals in the park; and he could rest on
+one of the benches and listen to the band playing tunes.  He had
+the common human heart in its love of tunes.  When tunes stopped,
+music stopped for him.  If anything were played in which there was
+no traceable melody, when the instruments encountered a tumult of
+chords and dissonances, he would exclaim though with regretful
+toleration:
+
+"What are they trying to do now?  What is it all about?  Why can't
+music be simple and sweet?  Do noise and confusion make it better
+or greater?"
+
+One night Barbee had him serenaded.  He gave the musicians
+instruction as to the tunes, how they were to be played, in what
+succession, at what hour of the night.  The melodists grouped
+themselves in the middle of the street, and the Judge came out on a
+little veranda under one of his doors and stood there, a great
+silver-haired figure, looking down.  The moonlight shone upon him.
+He remained for a while motionless, wrapped loosely in what looked
+like a white toga.  Then with a slight gesture of the hand full of
+mournful dignity he withdrew.
+
+It was during these days that Barbee, who always watched over him
+with a most reverent worship and affection, made a discovery.  The
+Judge was breaking; that brave life was beginning to sink and
+totter toward its fall and dissolution.  There were moments when
+the cheerfulness, which had never failed him in the midst of trial,
+failed him now when there was none; when the ancient springs of
+strength ceased to run and he was discovered to be feeble.
+Sometimes he no longer read his morning newspaper; he would sit for
+long periods in the front door of his office, looking out into the
+street and caring not who passed, not even returning salutations:
+what was the use of saluting the human race impartially?  Or going
+into the rear office, he would reread pages and chapters of what at
+different times in his life had been his favorite books: "Rabelais"
+and "The Decameron" when he was young; "Don Quixote" later, and
+"Faust"; "Clarissa" and "Tom Jones" now and then; and Shakespeare
+always; and those poems of Burns that tell sad truths; and the
+account of the man in Thackeray who went through so much that was
+large and at the end of life was brought down to so much that was
+low.  He seemed more and more to feel the need of grasping through
+books the hand of erring humanity.  And from day to day his
+conversations with Barbee began to take more the form of counsels
+about life and duty, about the ideals and mistakes and virtues and
+weaknesses in men.  He had a good deal to say about the ethics of
+character in the court room and in the street.
+
+One afternoon Barbee very thoughtfully asked him a question:
+"Uncle, I have wanted to know why you always defended and never
+prosecuted.  The State is supposed to stand for justice, and the
+State is the accuser; in always defending the accused and so in
+working against the State, have you not always worked against
+justice?"
+
+The Judge sat with his face turned away and spoke as he sat--very
+gravely and quietly: "I always defended because the State can
+punish only the accused, and the accused is never the only
+criminal.  In every crime there are three criminals.  The first
+criminal is the Origin of Evil.  I don't know what the Origin of
+Evil is, or who he is; but if I could have dragged the Origin of
+Evil into the court room, I should have been glad to try to have it
+hanged, or have him hanged.  I should have liked to argue the
+greatest of all possible criminal cases: the case of the Common
+People vs. the Devil--so nominated.  The second criminal is all
+that coworked with the accused as involved in his nature, in his
+temptation, and in his act.  If I could have arraigned all the
+other men and women who have been forerunners or copartners of the
+accused as furthering influences in the line of his offence, I
+should gladly have prosecuted them for their share of the guilt.
+But most of the living who are accessory can no more be discovered
+and summoned than can the dead who also were accessory.  You have
+left the third criminal; and the State is forced to single him out
+and let the full punishment fall upon him alone.  Thus it does not
+punish the guilty--it punishes the last of the guilty.  It does not
+even punish him for his share of the guilt: it can never know what
+that share is.  This is merely a feeling of mine, I do not uphold
+it.  Of course I often declined to defend also."
+
+They returned to this subject another afternoon as the two sat
+together a few days later:
+
+"There was sometimes another reason why I felt unwilling to
+prosecute: I refer to cases in which I might be taking advantage of
+the inability of a fellow-creature to establish his own innocence.
+I want you to remember this--nothing that I have ever said to you
+is of more importance: a good many years ago I was in Paris.  One
+afternoon I was walking through the most famous streets in the
+company of a French scholar and journalist, a deep student of the
+genius of French civilization.  As we passed along, he pointed out
+various buildings with reference to the history that had been made
+and unmade within them.  At one point he stopped and pointed to a
+certain structure with a high wall in front of it and to a hole in
+that wall.  'Do you know what that is?' he asked.  He told me.  Any
+person can drop a letter into that box, containing any kind of
+accusation against any other person; it is received by the
+authorities and it becomes their duty to act upon its contents.  Do
+you know what that means?  Can you for a moment realize what is
+involved?  A man's enemy, even his so-called religious enemy, any
+assassin, any slanderer, any liar, even the mercenary who agrees to
+hire out his honor itself for the wages of a slave, can deposit an
+anonymous accusation against any one whom he hates or wishes to
+ruin; and it becomes the duty of the authorities to respect his
+communication as much as though it came before a court of highest
+equity.  An innocent man may thus become an object of suspicion,
+may be watched, followed, arrested and thrown into prison,
+disgraced, ruined in his business, ruined in his family; and if in
+the end he is released, he is never even told what he has been
+charged with, has no power of facing his accuser, of bringing him
+to justice, of recovering damages from the State.  While he himself
+is kept in close confinement, his enemy may manufacture evidence
+which he alone would be able to disprove; and the chance is never
+given him to disprove it."
+
+The Judge turned and looked at Barbee in simple silence.
+
+Barbee sprang to his feet: "It is a damned shame!" he cried.  "Damn
+the French! damn such a civilization."
+
+"Why damn the French code?  In our own country the same thing goes
+on, not as part of our system of jurisprudence, but as part of our
+system of--well, we'll say--morals.  In this country any man's
+secret personal enemy, his so-called religious enemy for instance,
+may fabricate any accusation against him.  He does not drop it into
+the dark crevice of a dead wall, but into the blacker hole of a
+living ear.  A perfectly innocent man by such anonymous or
+untraceable slander can be as grossly injured in reputation, in
+business, in his family, out of a prison in this country as in a
+prison in France.  Slander may circulate about him and he will
+never even know what it is, never be confronted by his accuser,
+never have power of redress.
+
+"Now what I wish you to remember is this: that in the very nature
+of the case a man is often unable to prove his innocence.  All over
+the world useful careers come to nothing and lives are wrecked,
+because men may be ignorantly or malignantly accused of things of
+which they cannot stand up and prove that they are innocent.  Never
+forget that it is impossible for a man finally to demonstrate his
+possession of a single great virtue.  A man cannot so prove his
+bravery.  He cannot so prove his honesty or his benevolence or his
+sobriety or his chastity, or anything else.  As to courage, all
+that he can prove is that in a given case or in all tested cases he
+was not a coward.  As to honesty, all that he can prove is that in
+any alleged instance he was not a thief.  A man cannot even
+directly prove his health, mental or physical: all that he can
+prove is that he shows no unmistakable evidences of disease.  But
+an enemy may secretly circulate the charge that these evidences
+exist; and all the evidences to the contrary that the man himself
+may furnish will never disperse that impression.  It is so for
+every great virtue.  His final possession of a single virtue can be
+proved by no man.
+
+"This was another reason why I was sometimes unwilling to prosecute
+a fellow-creature; it might be a case in which he alone would
+actually know whether he were innocent, but his simple word would
+not be taken, and his simple word would be the only proof that he
+could give.  I ask you, as you care for my memory, never to take
+advantage of the truth that the man before you, as the accused, may
+in the nature of things be unable to prove his innocence.  Some day
+you are going to be a judge.  Remember you are always a judge; and
+remember that a greater Judge than you will ever be gave you the
+rule: 'Judge as you would be judged.'  The great root of the matter
+is this: that all human conduct is judged; but a very small part of
+human conduct is ever brought to trial."
+
+He had many visitors at his office during these idle summer days.
+He belonged to a generation of men who loved conversation--when
+they conversed.  All the lawyers dropped in.  The report of his
+failing strength brought these and many others.
+
+He saw a great deal of Professor Hardage.  One morning as the two
+met, he said with more feeling than he usually allowed himself to
+show: "Hardage, I am a lonesome old man; don't you want me to come
+and see you every Sunday evening?  I always try to get home by ten
+o'clock, so that you couldn't get tired of me; and as I never fall
+asleep before that time, you wouldn't have to put me to bed.  I
+want to hear you talk, Hardage.  My time is limited; and you have
+no right to shut out from me so much that you know--your learning,
+your wisdom, yourself.  And I know a few things that I have picked
+up in a lifetime.  Surely we ought to have something to say to each
+other."
+
+But when he came, Professor Hardage was glad to let him find relief
+in his monologues--fragments of self-revelation.  This last phase
+of their friendship had this added significance: that the Judge no
+longer spent his Sunday evenings with Mrs. Conyers.  The last
+social link binding him to womankind had been broken.  It was a
+final loosening and he felt it, felt the desolation in which it
+left him.  His cup of life had indeed been drained, and he turned
+away from the dregs.
+
+One afternoon Professor Hardage found him sitting with his familiar
+Shakespeare on his knees.  As he looked up, he stretched out his
+hand in eager welcome and said: "Listen once more;" and he read the
+great kindling speech of King Henry to his English yeomen on the
+eve of battle.
+
+He laid the book aside.
+
+"Of course you have noticed how Shakespeare likes this word
+'mettle,' how he likes the _thing_.  The word can be seen from afar
+over the vast territory of his plays like the same battle-flag set
+up in different parts of a field.  It is conspicuous in the heroic
+English plays, and in the Roman and in the Greek; it waves alike
+over comedy and tragedy as a rallying signal to human nature.  I
+imagine I can see his face as he writes of the mettle of
+children--the mettle of a boy--the quick mettle of a schoolboy--a
+lad of mettle--the mettle of a gentleman--the mettle of the
+sex--the mettle of a woman, Lady Macbeth--the mettle of a king--the
+mettle of a speech--even the mettle of a rascal--mettle in death.
+I love to think of him, a man who had known trouble, writing the
+words: 'The insuppressive mettle of our spirits.'
+
+"But this particular phrase--the mettle of the pasture--belongs
+rather to our century than to his, more to Darwin than to the
+theatre of that time.  What most men are thinking of now, if they
+think at all, is of our earth, a small grass-grown planet hung in
+space.  And, unaccountably making his appearance on it, is man, a
+pasturing animal, deriving his mettle from his pasture.  The old
+question comes newly up to us: Is anything ever added to him?  Is
+anything ever lost to him?  Evolution--is it anything more than
+change?  Civilizations--are they anything but different
+arrangements of the elements of man's nature with reference to the
+preeminence of some elements and the subsidence of others?
+
+"Suppose you take the great passions: what new one has been added,
+what old one has been lost?  Take all the passions you find in
+Greek literature, in the Roman.  Have you not seen them reappear in
+American life in your own generation?  I believe I have met them in
+my office.  You may think I have not seen Paris and Helen, but I
+have.  And I have seen Orestes and Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and
+Oedipus.  Do you suppose I have not met Tarquin and Virginia and
+Lucretia and Shylock--to come down to nearer times--and seen Lear
+and studied Macbeth in the flesh?  I knew Juliet once, and behind
+locked doors I have talked with Romeo.  They are all here in any
+American commonwealth at the close of our century: the great
+tragedies are numbered--the oldest are the newest.  So that
+sometimes I fix my eyes only on the old.  I see merely the planet
+with its middle green belt of pasture and its poles of snow and
+ice; and wandering over that green belt for a little while man the
+pasturing animal--with the mystery of his ever being there and the
+mystery of his dust--with nothing ever added to him, nothing ever
+lost out of him--his only power being but the power to vary the
+uses of his powers.
+
+"Then there is the other side, the side of the new.  I like to
+think of the marvels that the pasturing animal has accomplished in
+our own country.  He has had new thoughts, he has done things never
+seen elsewhere or before.  But after all the question remains, what
+is our characteristic mettle?  What is the mettle of the American?
+He has had new ideas; but has he developed a new virtue or carried
+any old virtue forward to characteristic development?  Has he added
+to the civilizations of Europe the spectacle of a single virtue
+transcendently exercised?  We are not braver than other brave
+people, we are not more polite, we are not more honest or more
+truthful or more sincere or kind.  I wish to God that some virtue,
+say the virtue of truthfulness, could be known throughout the world
+as the unfailing mark of the American--the mettle of his pasture.
+Not to lie in business, not to lie in love, not to lie in
+religion--to be honest with one's fellow-men, with women, with
+God--suppose the rest of mankind would agree that this virtue
+constituted the characteristic of the American!  That would be fame
+for ages.
+
+"I believe that we shall sometime become celebrated for preeminence
+in some virtue.  Why, I have known young fellows in my office that
+I have believed unmatched for some fine trait or noble quality.
+You have met them in your classes."
+
+He broke off abruptly and remained silent for a while.
+
+"Have you seen Rowan lately?" he asked, with frank uneasiness: and
+receiving the reply which he dreaded, he soon afterward arose and
+passed brokenly down the street.
+
+For some weeks now he had been missing Rowan; and this was the
+second cause of his restlessness and increasing loneliness.  The
+failure of Rowan's love affair was a blow to him: it had so linked
+him to the life of the young--was the last link.  And since then he
+had looked for Rowan in vain; he had waited for him of mornings at
+his office, had searched for him on the streets, scanning all young
+men on horseback or in buggies; had tried to find him in the
+library, at the livery stable, at the bank where he was a depositor
+and director.  There was no ground for actual uneasiness concerning
+Rowan's health, for Rowan's neighbors assured him in response to
+his inquiries that he was well and at work on the farm.
+
+"If he is in trouble, why does he not come and tell me?  Am I not
+worth coming to see?  Has he not yet understood what he is to me?
+But how can he know, how can the young ever know how the old love
+them?  And the old are too proud to tell."  He wrote letters and
+tore them up.
+
+As we stand on the rear platform of a train and see the mountains
+away from which we are rushing rise and impend as if to overwhelm
+us, so in moving farther from his past very rapidly now, it seemed
+to follow him as a landscape growing always nearer and clearer.
+His mind dwelt more on the years when hatred had so ruined him,
+costing him the only woman he had ever asked to be his wife,
+costing him a fuller life, greater honors, children to leave behind.
+
+He was sitting alone in his rear office the middle of one
+afternoon, alone among his books.  He had outspread before him
+several that are full of youth.  Barbee was away, the street was
+very quiet.  No one dropped in--perhaps all were tired of hearing
+him talk.  It was not yet the hour for Professor Hardage to walk
+in.  A watering-cart creaked slowly past the door and the gush of
+the drops of water sounded like a shower and the smell of the dust
+was strong.  Far away in some direction were heard the cries of
+school children at play in the street.  A bell was tolling; a green
+fly, entering through the rear door, sang loud on the dusty
+window-panes and then flew out and alighted on a plant of
+nightshade springing up rank at the doorstep.
+
+He was not reading and his thoughts were the same old thoughts.  At
+length on the quiet air, coming nearer, were heard the easy roll of
+wheels and the slow measured step of carriage horses.  The sound
+caught his ear and he listened with quick eagerness.  Then he rose
+trembling and waited.  The carriage had stopped at the door; a
+moment later there was a soft low knock on the lintel and Mrs.
+Meredith entered.  He met her but she said: "May I go in there?"
+and entered the private office.
+
+She brought with her such grace and sweetness of full womanly years
+that as she seated herself opposite him and lifted her veil away
+from the purity of her face, it was like the revelation of a shrine
+and the office became as a place of worship.  She lifted the veil
+from the dignity and seclusion of her life.  She did not speak at
+once but looked about her.  Many years had passed since she had
+entered that office, for it had long ago seemed best to each of
+them that they should never meet.  He had gone back to his seat at
+the desk with the opened books lying about him as though he had
+been searching one after another for the lost fountain of youth.
+He sat there looking at her, his white hair falling over his
+leonine head and neck, over his clear mournful eyes.  The sweetness
+of his face, the kindness of it, the shy, embarrassed, almost
+guilty look on it from the old pain of being misunderstood--the
+terrible pathos of it all, she saw these; but whatever her
+emotions, she was not a woman to betray them at such a moment, in
+such a place.
+
+"I do not come on business," she said.  "All the business seems to
+have been attended to; life seems very easy, too easy: I have so
+little to do.  But I am here, Ravenel, and I suppose I must try to
+say what brought me."
+
+She waited for some time, unable to speak.
+
+"Ravenel," she said at length, "I cannot go on any longer without
+telling you that my great sorrow in life has been the wrong I did
+you."
+
+He closed his eyes quickly and stretched out his hand against her,
+as though to shut out the vision of things that rose before him--as
+though to stop words that would unman him.
+
+"But I was a young girl!  And what does a young girl understand
+about her duty in things like that?  I know it changed your whole
+life; you will never know what it has meant in mine."
+
+"Caroline," he said, and he looked at her with brimming eyes, "if
+you had married me, I'd have been a great man.  I was not great
+enough to be great without you.  The single road led the wrong
+way--to the wrong things!"
+
+"I know," she said, "I know it all.  And I know that tears do not
+efface mistakes, and that our prayers do not atone for our wrongs."
+
+She suddenly dropped her veil and rose,
+
+"Do not come out to help me," she said as he struggled up also.
+
+He did not wish to go, and he held out his hand and she folded her
+soft pure hands about it; then her large noble figure moved to the
+side of his and through her veil--her love and sorrow hidden from
+him--she lifted her face and kissed him.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+And during these days when Judge Morris was speaking his mind about
+old tragedies that never change, and new virtues--about scandal and
+guilt and innocence--it was during these days that the scandal
+started and spread and did its work on the boy he loved--and no one
+had told him.
+
+The summer was drawing to an end.  During the last days of it Kate
+wrote to Isabel:
+
+"I could not have believed, dearest friend, that so long a time
+would pass without my writing.  Since you went away it has been
+eternity.  And many things have occurred which no one foresaw or
+imagined.  I cannot tell you how often I have resisted the impulse
+to write.  Perhaps I should resist now; but there are some matters
+which you ought to understand; and I do not believe that any one
+else has told you or will tell you.  If I, your closest friend,
+have shrunk, how could any one else be expected to perform the duty?
+
+"A week or two after you left I understood why you went away
+mysteriously, and why during that last visit to me you were unlike
+yourself.  I did not know then that your gayety was assumed, and
+that you were broken-hearted beneath your brave disguises.  But I
+remember your saying that some day I should know.  The whole truth
+has come out as to why you broke your engagement with Rowan, and
+why you left home.  You can form no idea what a sensation the news
+produced.  For a while nothing else was talked of, and I am glad
+for your sake that you were not here.
+
+"I say the truth came out; but even now the town is full of
+different stories, and different people believe different things.
+But every friend of yours feels perfectly sure that Rowan was
+unworthy of you, and that you did right in discarding him.  It is
+safe to say that he has few friends left among yours.  He seldom
+comes to town, and I hear that he works on the farm like a common
+hand as he should.  One day not long after you left I met him on
+the street.  He was coming straight up to speak to me as usual.
+But I had the pleasure of staring him in the eyes and of walking
+deliberately past him as though he were a stranger--except that I
+gave him one explaining look.  I shall never speak to him.
+
+"His mother has the greatest sympathy of every one.  They say that
+no one has told her the truth: how could any one tell her such
+things about her own son?  Of course she must know that you dropped
+him and that we have all dropped him.  They say that she is greatly
+saddened and that her health seems to be giving way.
+
+"I do not know whether you have heard the other sensation regarding
+the Meredith family.  You refused Rowan; and now Dent is going to
+marry a common girl in the neighborhood.  Of course Dent Meredith
+was always noted for being a quiet little bookworm, near-sighted,
+and without any knowledge of girls.  So it doesn't seem very
+unnatural for him to have collected the first specimen that he came
+across as he walked about over the country.  This marriage which is
+to take place in the autumn is the second shock to his mother.
+
+"You will want to hear of other people.  And this reminds me that a
+few of your friends have turned against you and insist that these
+stories about Rowan are false, and even accuse you of starting
+them.  This brings me to Marguerite.
+
+"Soon after her ball she had typhoid fever.  In her delirium of
+whom do you suppose she incessantly and pitifully talked?  Every
+one had supposed that she and Barbee were sweethearts--and had been
+for years.  But Barbee's name was never on her lips.  It was all
+Rowan, Rowan, Rowan.  Poor child, she chided him for being so cold
+to her; and she talked to him about the river of life and about his
+starting on the long voyage from the house of his fathers; and
+begged to be taken with him, and said that in their family the
+women never loved but once.  When she grew convalescent, there was
+a consultation of the grandmother and the mother and the doctors:
+one passion now seemed to constitute all that was left of
+Marguerite's life; and that was like a flame burning her strength
+away.
+
+"They did as the doctor said had to be done.  Mrs. Meredith had
+been very kind during her illness, had often been to the house.
+They kept from her of course all knowledge of what Marguerite had
+disclosed in her delirium.  So when Marguerite by imperceptible
+degrees grew stronger, Mrs. Meredith begged that she might be moved
+out to the country for the change and the coolness and the quiet;
+and the doctors availed themselves of this plan as a solution of
+their difficulty--to lessen Marguerite's consuming desire by
+gratifying it.  So she and her mother went out to the Merediths'.
+The change proved beneficial.  I have not been driving myself,
+although the summer has been so long and hot; and during the
+afternoons I have so longed to see the cool green lanes with the
+sun setting over the fields.  But of course people drive a great
+deal and they often meet Mrs. Meredith with Marguerite in the
+carriage beside her.  At first it was Marguerite's mother and
+Marguerite.  Then it was Mrs. Meredith and Marguerite; and now it
+is Rowan and Marguerite.  They drive alone and she sits with her
+face turned toward him--in open idolatry.  She is to stay out there
+until she is quite well.  How curiously things work around!  If he
+ever proposes, scandal will make no difference to Marguerite.
+
+"How my letter wanders!  But so do my thoughts wander.  If you only
+knew, while I write these things, how I am really thinking of other
+things.  But I must go on in my round-about way.  What I started
+out to say was that when the scandals, I mean the truth, spread
+over the town about Rowan, the three Marguerites stood by him.  You
+could never have believed that the child had such fire and strength
+and devotion in her nature.  I called on them one day and was
+coldly treated simply because I am your closest friend.  Marguerite
+pointedly expressed her opinion of a woman who deserts a man
+because he has his faults.  Think of this child's sitting in moral
+condemnation upon you!
+
+"The Hardages also--of course you have no stancher friends than
+they are--have stood up stubbornly for Rowan.  Professor Hardage
+became very active in trying to bring the truth out of what he
+believes to be gossip and misunderstanding.  And Miss Anna has also
+remained loyal to him, and in her sunny, common-sense way flouts
+the idea of there being any truth in these reports.
+
+"I must not forget to tell you that Judge Morris now spends his
+Sunday evenings with Professor Hardage.  No one has told him: they
+have spared him.  Of course every one knows that he was once
+engaged to Rowan's mother and that scandal broke the engagement and
+separated them for life.  Only in his case it was long afterward
+found out that the tales were not true.
+
+"I have forgotten Barbee.  He and Marguerite had quarrelled before
+her illness--no one knows why, unless she was already under the
+influence of her fatal infatuation for Rowan.  Barbee has gone to
+work.  A few weeks ago he won his first serious case in court and
+attracted attention.  They say his speech was so full of dignity
+and unnecessary rage that some one declared he was simply trying to
+recover his self-esteem for Marguerite's having called him trivial
+and not yet altogether grown up.
+
+"Of course you must have had letters of your own, telling you of
+the arrival of the Fieldings--Victor's mother and sisters; and the
+house is continually gay with suppers and parties.
+
+"How my letter wanders!  It is a sick letter, Isabel, a dead
+letter.  I must not close without going back to the Merediths once
+more.  People have been driving out to see the little farm and the
+curious little house of Dent Meredith's bride elect--a girl called
+Pansy Something.  It lies near enough to the turnpike to be in full
+view--too full view.  They say it is like a poultry farm and that
+the bride is a kind of American goose girl: it will be a marriage
+between geology and the geese.  The geese will have the best of it.
+
+"Dearest friend, what shall I tell you of my own life--of my
+nights, of the mornings when I wake, of these long, lonesome,
+summer afternoons?  Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing!  I should
+rather write to you how, my thoughts go back to the years of our
+girlhood together when we were so happy, Isabel, so happy, so
+happy!  What ideals we formed as to our marriages and our futures!
+
+"KATE.
+
+"P.S.--I meant to tell you that of course I shall do everything in
+my power to break up the old friendship between George and Rowan.
+Indeed, I have already done it."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+This letter brought Isabel home at once through three days of
+continuous travel.  From the station she had herself driven
+straight to Mrs. Osborn's house, and she held the letter in her
+hand as she went.
+
+Her visit lasted for some time and it was not pleasant.  When Mrs.
+Osborn hastened down, surprised at Isabel's return and prepared to
+greet her with the old warmth, her greeting was repelled and she
+herself recoiled, hurt and disposed to demand an explanation.
+
+"Isabel," she said reproachfully, "is this the way you come back to
+me?"
+
+Isabel did not heed but spoke: "As soon as I received this letter,
+I determined to come home.  I wished to know at once what these
+things are that are being said about Rowan.  What are they?"
+
+Mrs. Osborn hesitated: "I should rather not tell you."
+
+"But you must tell me: my name has been brought into this, and I
+must know."
+
+While she listened her eyes flashed and when she spoke her voice
+trembled with excitement and anger.  "These things are not true,"
+she said.  "Only Rowan and I know what passed between us.  I told
+no one, he told no one, and it is no one's right to know.  A great
+wrong has been done him and a great wrong has been done me; and I
+shall stay here until these wrongs are righted."
+
+"And is it your feeling that you must begin with me?" said Mrs.
+Osborn, bitterly.
+
+"Yes, Kate; you should not have believed these things.  You
+remember our once saying to each other that we would try never to
+believe slander or speak slander or think slander?  It is unworthy
+of you to have done so now."
+
+"Do you realize to whom you are speaking, and that what I have done
+has been through friendship for you?"
+
+Isabel shook her head resolvedly.  "Your friendship for me cannot
+exact of you that you should be untrue to yourself and false to
+others.  You say that you refuse to speak to Rowan on the street.
+You say that you have broken up the friendship between Mr. Osborn
+and him.  Rowan is the truest friend Mr. Osborn has ever had; you
+know this.  But in breaking off that friendship, you have done more
+than you have realized: you have ended my friendship with you."
+
+"And this is gratitude for my devotion to you and my willingness to
+fight your battles!" said Mrs. Osborn, rising.
+
+"You cannot fight my battles without fighting Rowan's.  My wish to
+marry him or not to marry him is one thing; my willingness to see
+him ruined is another."
+
+Isabel drove home.  She rang the bell as though she were a
+stranger.  When her maid met her at the door, overjoyed at her
+return, she asked for her grandmother and passed at once into her
+parlors.  As she did so, Mrs. Conyers came through the hall,
+dressed to go out.  At the sound of Isabel's voice, she, who having
+once taken hold of a thing never let it go, dropped her parasol;
+and as she stooped to pick it up, the blood rushed to her face.
+
+"I wish to speak to you," said Isabel, coming quickly out into the
+hall as though to prevent her grandmother's exit.  Her voice was
+low and full of shame and indignation.
+
+"I am at your service for a little while," said Mrs. Conyers,
+carelessly; "later I am compelled to go out."  She entered the
+parlors, followed by Isabel, and, seating herself in the nearest
+chair, finished buttoning her glove.
+
+Isabel sat silent a moment, shocked by her reception.  She had not
+realized that she was no longer the idol of that household and of
+its central mind; and we are all loath to give up faith in our
+being loved still, where we have been loved ever.  She was not
+aware that since she had left home she had been disinherited.  She
+would not have cared had she known; but she was now facing what was
+involved in the disinheritance--dislike; and in the beginning of
+dislike there was the ending of the old awe with which the
+grandmother had once regarded the grandchild.
+
+But she came quickly back to the grave matter uppermost in her
+mind.  "Grandmother," she said, "I received a few days ago a letter
+from Kate Osborn.  In it she told me that there were stories in
+circulation about Rowan.  I have come home to find out what these
+stories are.  On the way from the station I stopped at Mrs.
+Osborn's, and she told me.  Grandmother, this is your work."
+
+Mrs. Conyers pushed down the thumb of her glove.
+
+"Have I denied it?  But why do you attempt to deny that it is also
+your work?"
+
+Isabel sat regarding her with speechless, deepening horror.  She
+was not prepared for this revelation.  Mrs. Conyers did not wait,
+but pressed on with a certain debonair enjoyment of her advantage.
+
+"You refused to recognize my right to understand a matter that
+affected me and affected other members of the family as well as
+yourself.  You showed no regard for the love I had cherished for
+you many a year.  You put me aside as though I had no claim upon
+your confidence--I believe you said I was not worthy of it; but my
+memory is failing--perhaps I wrong you."
+
+"It is _true_!" said Isabel, with triumphant joy in reaffirming it
+on present grounds.  "It is _true_!"
+
+"Very well," said Mrs. Conyers, "we shall let that pass.  It was of
+consequence then; it is of no consequence now: these little
+personal matters are very trivial.  But there was a serious matter
+that you left on my hands; the world always demands an explanation
+of what it is compelled to see and cannot understand.   If no
+explanation is given, it creates an explanation.  It was my duty to
+see that it did not create an explanation in this case.  Whatever
+it may have been that took place between you and Rowan, I did not
+intend that the responsibility should rest upon you, even though
+you may have been willing that it should rest there.  You discarded
+Rowan; I was compelled to prevent people from thinking that Rowan
+discarded you.  Your reason for discarding him you refused to
+confide to me; I was compelled therefore to decide for myself what
+it probably was.  Ordinarily when a man is dropped by a girl under
+such circumstances, it is for this," she tapped the tips of her
+fingers one by one as she went on, "or for this, or for this, or
+for this; you can supply the omitted words--nearly any one can--the
+world always does.  You see, it becomes interesting.  As I had not
+your authority for stating which one of these was the real reason,
+I was compelled to leave people at liberty to choose for
+themselves.  I could only say that I myself did not know; but that
+certainly it was for some one of these reasons, or two of them, or
+for all of them."
+
+"You have tried to ruin him!" Isabel cried, white with suffering.
+
+"On the contrary, I received my whole idea of this from you.
+Nothing that I said to others about him was quite so bad as what
+you said to me; for you knew the real reason of your discarding
+him, and the reason was so bad--or so good--that you could not even
+confide it to me, your natural confidant.  You remember saying that
+we must drop him from the list of our acquaintances, must not
+receive him at the house, or recognize him in society, or speak, to
+him in public.  I protested that this would be very unjust to him,
+and that he might ask me at least the grounds for so insulting him;
+you assured me that he would never dare ask.  And now you affect to
+be displeased with me for believing what you said, and trying to
+defend you from criticism, and trying to protect the good name of
+the family."
+
+"Ah," cried Isabel, "you can give fair reasons for foul deeds.  You
+always could.  We often do, we women.  The blacker our conduct, the
+better the names with which we cover it.  If you would only glory
+openly in what you have done and stand by it!  Not a word of what
+you have said is true, as you have said it.  When I left home not a
+human being but yourself knew that there had been trouble between
+Rowan and me.  It need never have become public, had you let the
+matter be as I asked you to do, and as you solemnly promised that
+you would.  It is you who have deliberately made the trouble and
+scattered the gossip and spread the scandal.  Why do you not avow
+that your motive was revenge, and that your passion was not
+justice, but malice.  Ah, you are too deep a woman to try to seem
+so shallow!"
+
+"Can I be of any further service to you?" said Mrs. Conyers with
+perfect politeness, rising.  "I am sorry that the hour of my
+engagement has come.  Are you to be in town long?"
+
+"I shall be here until I have undone what you have done," cried
+Isabel, rising also and shaking with rage.  "The decencies of life
+compel me to shield you still, and for that reason I shall stay in
+this house.  I am not obliged to ask this as a privilege; it is my
+right."
+
+"Then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you often."
+
+Isabel went up to her room as usual and summoned her maid, and
+ordered her carriage to be ready in half an hour.
+
+Half an hour later she came down and drove to the Hardages'.  She
+showed no pleasure in seeing him again, and he no surprise in
+seeing her.
+
+"I have been expecting you," he said; "I thought you would be
+brought back by all this."
+
+"Then you have heard what they are saying about Rowan?"
+
+"I suppose we have all heard," he replied, looking at her
+sorrowfully.
+
+"You have not believed these things?"
+
+"I have denied them as far as I could.  I should have denied that
+anything had occurred; but you remember I could not do that after
+what you told me.  You said something had occurred."
+
+"Yes, I know," she said.  "But you now have my authority at least
+to say that these things are not true.  What I planned for the best
+has been misused and turned against him and against me.  Have you
+seen him?"
+
+"He has been in town, but I have not seen him."
+
+"Then you must see him at once.  Tell me one thing: have you heard
+it said that I am responsible for the circulation of these stories?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you suppose he has heard that?  And could he believe it?  Yet
+might he not believe it?  But how could he, how could he!"
+
+"You must come here and stay with us.  Anna will want you."   He
+could not tell her his reason for understanding that she would not
+wish to stay at home.
+
+"No, I should like to come; but it is better for me to stay at
+home.  But I wish Rowan to come to see me here.  Judge Morris--has
+he done nothing?"
+
+"He does not know.  No one has told him."
+
+Her expression showed that she did not understand.
+
+"Years ago, when he was about Rowan's age, scandals like these were
+circulated about him.  We know how much his life is wrapped up In
+Rowan.  He has not been well this summer: we spared him."
+
+"But you must tell him at once.  Say that I beg him to write to
+Rowan to come to see him.  I want Rowan to tell him everything--and
+to tell you everything."
+
+
+All the next day Judge Morris stayed in his rooms.  The end of life
+seemed suddenly to have been bent around until it touched the
+beginning.  At last he understood.
+
+"It was _she_ then," he said.  "I always suspected her; but I had
+no proof of her guilt; and if she had not been guilty, she could
+never have proved her innocence.  And now for years she has smiled
+at me, clasped my hands, whispered into my ear, laughed in my eyes,
+seemed to be everything to me that was true.  Well, she has been
+everything that is false.  And now she has fallen upon the son of
+the woman whom she tore from me.  And the vultures of scandal are
+tearing at his heart.  And he will never be able to prove his
+innocence!"
+
+He stayed in his rooms all that day.  Rowan, in answer to his
+summons, had said that he should come about the middle of the
+afternoon; and it was near the middle of the afternoon now.  As he
+counted the minutes, Judge Morris was unable to shut out from his
+mind the gloomier possibilities of the case.
+
+"There is some truth behind all this," he said.  "She broke her
+engagement with him,--at least, she severed all relations with him;
+and she would not do that without grave reason."  He was compelled
+to believe that she must have learned from Rowan himself the things
+that had compelled her painful course.  Why had Rowan never
+confided these things to him?  His mind, while remaining the mind
+of a friend, almost the mind of a father toward a son, became also
+the mind of a lawyer, a criminal lawyer, with the old, fixed, human
+bloodhound passion for the scent of crime and the footsteps of
+guilt.
+
+It was with both attitudes that he himself answered Rowan's ring;
+he opened the door half warmly and half coldly.  In former years
+when working up his great cases involving life and death, it had
+been an occasional custom of his to receive his clients, if they
+were socially his friends, not in his private office, but in his
+rooms; it was part of his nature to show them at such crises his
+unshaken trust in their characters.  He received Rowan in his rooms
+now.  It was a clear day; the rooms had large windows; and the
+light streaming in took from them all the comfort which they
+acquired under gaslight: the carpets were faded, the rugs were worn
+out and lay in the wrong places.  It was seen to be a desolate
+place for a desolated life.
+
+"How are you, Rowan?" he said, speaking as though he had seen him
+the day before, and taking no note of changes in his appearance.
+Without further words he led the way into his sitting room and
+seated himself in his leather chair.
+
+"Will you smoke?"
+
+They had often smoked as they sat thus when business was before
+them, or if no business, questions to be intimately discussed about
+life and character and good and bad.  Rowan did not heed the
+invitation, and the Judge lighted a cigar for himself.  He was a
+long time in lighting it, and burned two or three matches at the
+end of it after it was lighted, keeping a cloud of smoke before his
+eyes and keeping his eyes closed.  When the smoke rose and he lay
+back in his chair, he looked across at the young man with the eyes
+of an old lawyer who had drawn the truth out of the breast of many
+a criminal by no other command than their manly light.  Rowan sat
+before him without an effort at composure.  There was something
+about him that suggested a young officer out of uniform, come home
+with a browned face to try to get himself court-martialled.  He
+spoke first:
+
+"I have had Isabel's letter, and I have come to tell you."
+
+"I need not say to you, tell me the whole truth."
+
+"No, you need not say that to me.  I should have told you long ago,
+if it had been a duty.  But it was not a duty.  You had not the
+right to know; there was no reason why you should know.  This was a
+matter which concerned only the woman whom I was to marry."  His
+manner had the firm and quiet courtesy that was his birthright.
+
+A little after dark, Rowan emerged into the street.  His carriage
+was waiting for him and he entered it and went home.  Some minutes
+later, Judge Morris came down and walked to the Hardages'.  He rang
+and asked for Professor Hardage and waited for him on the
+door-step.  When Professor Hardage appeared, he said to him very
+solemnly: "Get your hat."
+
+The two men walked away, the Judge directing their course toward
+the edge of the town.  "Let us get to a quiet place," he said,
+"where we can talk without being overheard."  It was a pleasant
+summer night and the moon was shining, and they stepped off the
+sidewalk and took the middle of the pike.  The Judge spoke at last,
+looking straight ahead.
+
+"He had a child, and when he asked Isabel to marry him he told her."
+
+They walked on for a while without anything further being said.
+When Professor Hardage spoke, his tone was reflective:
+
+"It was this that made it impossible for her to marry him.  Her
+love for him was everything to her; he destroyed himself for her
+when he destroyed himself as an ideal.  Did he tell you the story?"
+
+"Told everything."
+
+By and by the Judge resumed: "It was a student's love affair, and
+he would have married her.  She said that if she married him, there
+would never be any happiness for her in life; she was not in his
+social class, and, moreover, their marriage would never be
+understood as anything but a refuge from their shame, and neither
+of them would be able to deny this.  She disappeared sometime after
+the birth of the child.  More than a year later, maybe it was two
+years, he received a letter from her stating that she was married
+to a man in her own class and that her husband suspected nothing,
+and that she expected to live a faithful wife to him and be the
+mother of his children.  The child had been adopted, the traces of
+its parentage had been wiped out, those who had adopted it could do
+more for its life and honor than he could.  She begged him not to
+try to find her or ruin her by communicating the past to her
+husband.  That's about all."
+
+"The old tragedy--old except to them."
+
+"Old enough.  Were we not speaking the other day of how the old
+tragedies are the new ones?  I get something new out of this; you
+get the old.  What strikes me about it is that the man has declined
+to shirk--that he has felt called upon not to injure any other life
+by his silence.  I wish I had a right to call it the mettle of a
+young American, his truthfulness.  As he put the case to me, what
+he got out of it was this: Here was a girl deceiving her husband
+about her past--otherwise he would never have married her.  As the
+world values such things, what it expected of Rowan was that he
+should go off and marry a girl and conceal his past.  He said that
+he would not lie to a classmate in college, he would not cheat a
+professor; was it any better silently to lie to and cheat the woman
+that he loved and expected to make the mother of his children?
+Whatever he might have done with any one else, there was something
+in the nature of the girl whom he did come to love that made it
+impossible: she drove untruthfulness out of him as health drives
+away disease.  He saved his honor with her, but he lost her."
+
+"She saved her honor through giving up him.  But it is high ground,
+it is a sad hilltop, that each has climbed to."
+
+"Hardage, we can climb so high that we freeze."
+
+They turned back.  The Judge spoke again with a certain sad pride:
+
+"I like their mettle, it is Shakespearean mettle, it is American
+mettle.  We lie in business, and we lie in religion, and we lie to
+women.  Perhaps if a man stopped lying to a woman, by and by he
+might begin to stop lying for money, and at last stop lying with
+his Maker.  But this boy, what can you and I do for him?  We can
+never tell the truth about this; and as we can try to clear him,
+unless we ourselves lie, we shall leave him the victim of a flock
+of lies."
+
+Isabel remained at home a week.
+
+During her first meeting with Rowan, she effaced all evidences that
+there had ever been a love affair between them.  They resumed their
+social relations temporarily and for a definite purpose--this was
+what she made him understand at the outset and to the end.  All
+that she said to him, all that she did, had no further significance
+than her general interest in his welfare and her determination to
+silence the scandal for which she herself was in a way innocently
+responsible.  Their old life without reference to it was assumed to
+be ended; and she put all her interest into what she assumed to be
+his new life; this she spoke of as a certainty, keeping herself out
+of it as related to it in any way.  She forced him to talk about
+his work, his plans, his ambitions; made him feel always not only
+that she did not wish to see him suffer, but that she expected to
+see him succeed.
+
+They were seen walking together and driving together.  He demurred,
+but she insisted.  "I will not accept such a sacrifice," he said,
+but she overruled him by her reply: "It is not a sacrifice; it is a
+vindication of myself, that you cannot oppose."  But he knew that
+there was more in it than what she called vindication of herself;
+there was the fighting friendship of a comrade.
+
+During these days, Isabel met cold faces.  She found herself a
+fresh target for criticism, a further source of misunderstanding.
+And there was fresh suffering, too, which no one could have
+foreseen.  Late one twilight when she and Rowan were driving, they
+passed Marguerite driving also, she being still a guest at the
+Merediths', and getting well.  Each carriage was driving slowly,
+and the road was not wide, and the wheels almost locked, and there
+was time enough for everything to be seen.  And the next day,
+Marguerite went home from the Merediths' and passed into a second
+long illness.
+
+The day came for Isabel to leave--she was going away to remain a
+long time, a year, two years.  They had had their last drive and
+twilight was falling when they returned to the Hardages'.  She was
+standing on the steps as she gave him both her hands.
+
+"Good-by," she said, in the voice of one who had finished her work.
+"I hardly know what to say--I have said everything.  Perhaps I
+ought to tell you my last feeling is, that you will make life a
+success, that nothing will pull you down.  I suppose that the life
+of each of us, if it is worth while, is not made up of one great
+effort and of one failure or of one success, but of many efforts,
+many failures, partial successes.  But I am afraid we all try at
+first to realize our dreams.  Good-by!"
+
+"Marry me," he said, tightening his grasp on her hands and speaking
+as though he had the right.
+
+She stepped quickly back from him.  She felt a shock, a delicate
+wound, and she said with a proud tear: "I did not think you would
+so misjudge me in all that I have been trying to do."
+
+She went quickly in.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+It was a morning in the middle of October when Dent and Pansy were
+married.
+
+The night before had been cool and clear after a rain and a
+long-speared frost had fallen.  Even before the sun lifted itself
+above the white land, a full red rose of the sky behind the rotting
+barn, those early abroad foresaw what the day would be.  Nature had
+taken personal interest in this union of her two children, who
+worshipped her in their work and guarded her laws in their
+characters, and had arranged that she herself should be present in
+bridal livery.
+
+The two prim little evergreens which grew one on each side of the
+door-step waited at respectful attention like heavily powdered
+festal lackeys.  The scraggy aged cedars of the yard stood about in
+green velvet and brocade incrusted with gems.  The doorsteps
+themselves were softly piled with the white flowers of the frost,
+and the bricks of the pavement strewn with multitudinous shells and
+stars of dew and air.  Every poor stub of grass, so economically
+cropped by the geese, wore something to make it shine.  In the back
+yard a clothes-line stretched between a damson and a peach tree,
+and on it hung forgotten some of Pansy's father's underclothes; but
+Nature did what she could to make the toiler's raiment look like
+diamonded banners, flung bravely to the breeze in honor of his new
+son-in-law.  Everything--the duck troughs, the roof of the stable,
+the cart shafts, the dry-goods box used as a kennel--had ugliness
+hidden away under that prodigal revelling ermine of decoration.
+The sun itself had not long risen before Nature even drew over that
+a bridal veil of silver mist, so that the whole earth was left
+wrapped in whiteness that became holiness.
+
+Pansy had said that she desired a quiet wedding, so that she
+herself had shut up the ducks that they might not get to Mrs.
+Meredith.  And then she had made the rounds and fed everything; and
+now a certain lethargy and stupor of food quieted all creatures and
+gave to the valley the dignity of a vocal solitude.
+
+The botanist bride was not in the least abashed during the
+ceremony.  Nor proud: Mrs. Meredith more gratefully noticed this.
+And she watched closely and discovered with relief that Pansy did
+not once glance at her with uneasiness or for approval.  The mother
+looked at Dent with eyes growing dim.  "She will never seem to be
+the wife of my son," she said, "but she will make her children look
+like his children."
+
+And so it was all over and they were gone--slipped away through the
+hiding white mists without a doubt of themselves, without a doubt
+of each other, mating as naturally as the wild creatures who never
+know the problems of human selection, or the problems that
+civilization leaves to be settled after selection has been made.
+
+Mrs. Meredith and Rowan and the clergyman were left with the father
+and the children, and with an unexampled wedding collation--one of
+Pansy's underived masterpieces.  The clergyman frightened the
+younger children; they had never seen his like either with respect
+to his professional robes or his superhuman clerical voice--their
+imaginations balancing unsteadily between the impossibility of his
+being a man in a nightgown and the impossibility of his being a
+woman with a mustache.
+
+After his departure their fright and apprehensions settled on Mrs.
+Meredith.  They ranged themselves on chairs side by side against a
+wall, and sat confronting her like a class in the public school
+fated to be examined in deadly branches.  None moved except when
+she spoke, and then all writhed together but each in a different
+way; the most comforting word from her produced a family spasm with
+individual proclivities.   Rowan tried to talk with the father
+about crops: they were frankly embarrassed.  What can a young man
+with two thousand acres of the best land say to an old man with
+fifty of the poorest?
+
+The mother and son drove home in silence.  She drew one of his
+hands into her lap and held it with close pressure.  They did not
+look at each other.
+
+As the carriage rolled easily over the curved driveway, through the
+noble forest trees they caught glimpses of the house now standing
+clear in afternoon sunshine.  Each had the same thought of how
+empty it waited there without Dent--henceforth less than a son, yet
+how much more; more than brother, but how much less.  How a brief
+ceremony can bind separated lives and tear bound ones apart!
+
+"Rowan," she said, as they walked slowly from the carriage to the
+porch, she having clasped his arm more intimately, "there is
+something I have wanted to do and have been trying to do for a long
+time.  It must not be put off any longer.  We must go over the
+house this afternoon.  There are a great many things that I wish to
+show you and speak to you about--things that have to be divided
+between you and Dent."
+
+"Not to-day! not to-day!" he cried, turning to her with quick
+appeal.  But she shook her head slowly, with brave cheerfulness.
+
+"Yes; to-day.  Now; and then we shall be over with it.  Wait for me
+here."  She passed down the long hall to her bedroom, and as she
+disappeared he rushed into the parlors and threw himself on a couch
+with his hands before his face; then he sprang up and came out into
+the hall again and waited with a quiet face.
+
+When she returned, smiling, she brought with her a large bunch of
+keys, and she took his arm dependently as they went up the wide
+staircase.  She led him to the upper bedrooms first--in earlier
+years so crowded and gay with guests, but unused during later ones.
+The shutters were closed, and the afternoon sun shot yellow shafts
+against floors and walls.  There was a perfume of lavender, of rose
+leaves.
+
+"Somewhere in one of these closets there is a roll of linen."  She
+opened one after another, looking into each.  "No; it is not here.
+Then it must be in there.  Yes; here it is.  This linen was spun
+and woven from flax grown on your great-great-grandfather's land.
+Look at it!  It is beautifully made.  Each generation of the family
+has inherited part and left the rest for generations yet to come.
+Half of it is yours, half is Dent's.  When it has been divided
+until there is no longer enough to divide, that will be the last of
+the home-made linen of the old time.  It was a good time, Rowan; it
+produced masterful men and masterful women, not mannish women.
+Perhaps the golden age of our nation will some day prove to have
+been the period of the home-spun Americans."
+
+As they passed on she spoke to him with an increasing, almost
+unnatural gayety.  He had a new appreciation of what her charm must
+have been when she was a girl.  The rooms were full of memories to
+her; many of the articles that she caressed with her fingers, and
+lingered over with reluctant eyes, connected themselves with days
+and nights of revelry and the joy of living; also with prides and
+deeds which ennobled her recollection.
+
+"You and Dent know that your father divided equally all that he
+had.  But everything in the house is mine, and I have made no will
+and shall not make any.  What is mine belongs to you two alike.
+Still, I have made a list of things that I think he would rather
+have, and a list of things for you--merely because I wish to give
+something to each of you directly."
+
+In a room on a lower floor she unlocked a closet, the walls of
+which were lined with shelves.  She peeped in; then she withdrew
+her head and started to lock the door again; but she changed her
+mind and laughed.
+
+"Do you know what these things are?" She touched a large box, and
+he carried it over to the bed and she lifted the top off, exposing
+the contents.  "Did you ever see anything so _black_?   This was
+the clerical robe in which one of your ancestors used to read his
+sermons.  He is the one who wrote the treatise on 'God Properly and
+Unproperly Understood.'  He was the great seminarian in your
+father's family--the portrait in the hall, you know.  I shall not
+decide whether you or Dent must inherit this; decide for
+yourselves; I imagine you will end it in the quarrel.  How black it
+is, and what black sermons flew out of it--ravens, instead of white
+doves, of the Holy Spirit.  He was the friend of Jonathan Edwards."
+She made a wry face as he put the box back into the closet; and she
+laughed again as she locked it in.
+
+"Here are some things from my side of the family."  And she drew
+open a long drawer and spoke with proud reticence.  They stood
+looking down at part of the uniform of an officer of the
+Revolution.  She lifted one corner of it and disclosed a sword
+beneath.  She lifted another corner of the coat and exposed a roll
+of parchment.  "I suppose I should have had this parchment framed
+and hung up downstairs, so that it would be the first thing seen by
+any one entering the front door; and this sword should have been
+suspended over the fireplace, or have been exposed under a glass
+case in the parlors; and the uniform should have been fitted on a
+tailor's manikin; and we should have lectured to our guests on our
+worship of our ancestors--in the new American way, in the
+Chino-American way.  But I'm afraid we go to the other extreme,
+Rowan; perhaps we are proud of the fact that we are not boastful.
+Instead of concerning ourselves with those who shed glory on us, we
+have concerned ourselves with the question whether we are shedding
+glory on them.  Still, I wonder whether our ancestors may not
+possibly be offended that we say so little about them!"
+
+She led him up and down halls and from floor to floor.
+
+"Of course you know this room--the nursery.  Here is where you
+began to be a bad boy; and you began before you can remember.  Did
+you never see these things before?  They were your first
+soldiers--I have left them to Dent.  And here are some of Dent's
+things that I have left to you.  For one thing, his castanets.  His
+father and I never knew why he cried for castanets.  He said that
+Dent by all the laws of spiritual inheritance from his side should
+be wanting the timbrel and harp--Biblical influence, you
+understand; but that my influence interfered and turned timbrel and
+harp into castanets.  Do you remember the day when you ran away
+with Dent and took him to a prize fight?  After that you wanted
+boxing-gloves, and Dent was crazy for a sponge.  You fought him,
+and he sponged you.  Here is the sponge; I do not know where the
+gloves are.  And here are some things that belong to both of you;
+they are mine; they go with me."  She laid her hand on a little box
+wrapped and tied, then quickly shut the closet.
+
+In a room especially fragrant with lavender she opened a press in
+the wall and turned her face away from him for a moment.
+
+"This is my bridal dress.  This was my bridal veil; it has been the
+bridal veil of girls in my family for a good many generations.
+These were my slippers; you see I had a large foot; but it was well
+shaped--it was a woman's foot.  That was my vanity--not to have a
+little foot.  I leave these things to you both.  I hope each of you
+may have a daughter to wear the dress and the veil."  For the first
+time she dashed some tears from her eyes.  "I look to my sons for
+sons and daughters."
+
+It was near sunset when they stood again at the foot of the
+staircase.  She was white and tired, but her spirit refused to be
+conquered.
+
+"I think I shall He down now," she said, "so I shall say good night
+to you here, Rowan.  Fix the tray for me yourself, pour me out some
+tea, and butter me a roll."  They stood looking into each other's
+eyes.  She saw things in his which caused her suddenly to draw his
+forehead over and press her lips to one and then to the other,
+again and again.
+
+The sun streamed through the windows, level and red, lighting up
+the darkened hall, lighting up the head and shoulders of his mother.
+
+An hour later he sat at the head of his table alone--a table
+arranged for two instead of three.  At the back of his chair waited
+the aged servitor of the household, gray-haired, discreet, knowing
+many things about earlier days on which rested the seal of
+incorruptible silence.  A younger servant performed the duties.
+
+He sat at the head of his table and excused the absence of his
+mother and forced himself with the pride and dignity of his race to
+give no sign of what had passed that day.  His mother's maid
+entered, bringing him in a crystal vase a dark red flower for his
+coat.  She had always given him that same dark red flower after he
+had turned into manhood.  "It is your kind," she said; "I
+understand."
+
+He arranged the tray for her, pouring out her tea, buttering the
+rolls.  Then he forced himself to eat his supper as usual.  From
+old candlesticks on the table a silver radiance was shed on the
+massive silver, on the gem-like glass.  Candelabra on the
+mantelpiece and the sideboard lighted up the browned oak of the
+walls.
+
+He left the table at last, giving and hearing a good night.  The
+servants efficiently ended their duties and put out the lights.  In
+the front hall lamps were left burning; there were lamps and
+candles in the library.  He went off to a room on the ground floor
+in one ell of the house; it was his sitting room, smoking room, the
+lounging place of his friends.  In one corner stood a large desk,
+holding old family papers; here also were articles that he himself
+had lately been engaged on--topics relating to scientific
+agriculture, soils, and stock-raising.  It was the road by which
+some of the country gentlemen who had been his forefathers passed
+into a larger life of practical affairs--going into the Legislature
+of the state or into the Senate; and he had thought of this as a
+future for himself.  For an hour or two he looked through family
+papers.
+
+Then he put them aside and squarely faced the meaning of the day.
+His thoughts traversed the whole track of Dent's life--one straight
+track upward.  No deviations, no pitfalls there, no rising and
+falling.  And now early marriage and safety from so many problems;
+with work and honors and wifely love and children: work and rest
+and duty to the end.  Dent had called him into his room that
+morning after he was dressed for his wedding and had started to
+thank him for his love and care and guardianship and then had
+broken down and they had locked their arms around each other,
+trying not to say what could not be said.
+
+He lived again through that long afternoon with his mother.  What
+had the whole day been to her and how she had risen to meet with
+nobility all its sadnesses!  Her smile lived before him; and her
+eyes, shining with increasing brightness as she dwelt upon things
+that meant fading sunlight: she fondling the playthings of his
+infancy, keeping some of them to be folded away with her at last;
+touching her bridal dress and speaking her reliance on her sons for
+sons and daughters; at the close of the long trying day standing at
+the foot of the staircase white with weariness and pain, but so
+brave, so sweet, so unconquerable.  He knew that she was not
+sleeping now, that she was thinking of him, that she had borne
+everything and would bear everything not only because it was due to
+herself, but because it was due to him.
+
+He turned out the lights and sat at a window opening upon the
+night.  The voices of the land came in to him, the voices of the
+vanished life of its strong men.
+
+He remembered the kind of day it was when he first saw through its
+autumn trees the scattered buildings of his university.  What
+impressions it had made upon him as it awaited him there, gray with
+stateliness, hoary with its honors, pervaded with the very breath
+and spirit of his country.  He recalled his meeting with his
+professors, the choosing of his studies, the selection of a place
+in which to live.  Then had followed what had been the great
+spectacle and experience of his life--the assembling of picked
+young men, all eager like greyhounds at the slips to show what was
+in them, of what stuff they were made, what strength and hardihood
+and robust virtues, and gifts and grace for manly intercourse.  He
+had been caught up and swept off his feet by that influence.
+Looking back as he did to that great plateau which was his home,
+for the first time he had felt that he was not only a youth of an
+American commonwealth, but a youth of his whole country.   They
+were all American youths there, as opposed to English youths and
+German youths and Russian youths.  There flamed up in him the
+fierce passion, which he believed to be burning in them all, to
+show his mettle--the mettle of his state, the mettle of his nation.
+To him, newly come into this camp of young men, it lay around the
+walls of the university like a white spiritual host, chosen youths
+to be made into chosen men.  And he remembered how little he then
+knew that about this white host hung the red host of those
+camp-followers, who beleaguer in outer darkness every army of men.
+
+Then had followed warfare, double warfare: the ardent attack on
+work and study; athletic play, good fellowship, visits late at
+night to the chambers of new friends--chambers rich in furniture
+and pictures, friends richer in old names and fine manners and
+beautiful boyish gallant ways; his club and his secret society, and
+the whole bewildering maddening enchantment of student life, where
+work and duty and lights and wine and poverty and want and flesh
+and spirit strive together each for its own.  At this point he put
+these memories away, locked them from himself in their long silence.
+
+Near midnight he made his way quietly back into the main hall.  He
+turned out the lamps and lighted his bedroom candle and started
+toward the stairway, holding it in front of him a little above his
+head, a low-moving star through the gloom.  As he passed between
+two portraits, he paused with sudden impulse and, going over to
+one, held his candle up before the face and studied it once more.
+A man, black-browed, black-robed, black-bearded, looked down into
+his eyes as one who had authority to speak.  He looked far down
+upon his offspring, and he said to him: "You may be one of those
+who through the flesh are chosen to be damned.  But if He chooses
+to damn you, then be damned, but do not question His mercy or His
+justice: it is not for you to alter the fixed and the eternal."
+
+He crossed with his candle to the opposite wall and held it up
+before another face: a man full of red blood out to the skin;
+full-lipped, red-lipped; audacious about the forehead and brows,
+and beautiful over his thick careless hair through which a girl's
+fingers seemed lately to have wandered.  He looked level out at his
+offspring as though he still stood throbbing on the earth and he
+spoke to him: "I am not alive to speak to you with my voice, but I
+have spoken to you through my blood.  When the cup of life is
+filled, drain it deep.  Why does nature fill it if not to have you
+empty it?"
+
+He blew his candle out in the eyes of that passionate face, and
+holding it in his hand, a smoking torch, walked slowly backward and
+forward in the darkness of the hall with only a little pale
+moonlight struggling in through a window here and there.
+
+Then with a second impulse he went over and stood close to the dark
+image who had descended into him through the mysteries of nature.
+"You," he said, "who helped to make me what I am, you had the
+conscience and not the temptation.  And you," he said, turning to
+the hidden face across the hall, "who helped to make me what I am,
+you had the temptation and not the conscience.  What does either of
+you know of me who had both?
+
+"And what do I know about either of you," he went on, taking up
+again the lonely vigil of his walk and questioning; "you who
+preached against the Scarlet Woman, how do I know you were not the
+scarlet man?  I may have derived both from you--both conscience and
+sin--without hypocrisy.  All those years during which your face was
+hardening, your one sincere prayer to God may have been that He
+would send you to your appointed place before you were found out by
+men on earth.  And you with your fresh red face, you may have lain
+down beside the wife of your youth, and have lived with her all
+your years, as chaste as she."
+
+He resumed his walk, back and forth, back and forth; and his
+thoughts changed:
+
+"What right have I to question them, or judge them, or bring them
+forward in my life as being responsible for my nature?  If I roll
+back the responsibility to them, had they not fathers? and had not
+their fathers fathers? and if a man rolls back his deeds upon those
+who are his past, then where will responsibility be found at all,
+and of what poor cowardly stuff is each of us?"
+
+How silent the night was, how silent the great house!  Only his
+slow footsteps sounded there like the beating of a heavy heart
+resolved not to fail.
+
+At last they died away from the front of the house, passing inward
+down a long hallway and growing more muffled; then the sound of
+them ceased altogether: he stood noiselessly before his mother's
+door.
+
+He stood there, listening if he might hear in the intense stillness
+a sleeper's breathing.  "Disappointed mother," he said as silently
+as a spirit might speak to a spirit.
+
+Then he came back and slowly began to mount the staircase.
+
+"Is it then wrong for a man to do right?  Is it ever right to do
+wrong?" he said finally.  "Should I have had my fling and never
+have cared and never have spoken?  Is there a true place for
+deception in the world?  May our hypocrisy with each other be a
+virtue?  If you have done evil, shall you live the whited
+sepulchre?  Ah, Isabel, how easily I could have deceived you!  Does
+a woman care what a man may have done, if he be not found out?  Is
+not her highest ideal for him a profitable reputation, not a
+spotless character?  No, I will not wrong you by these thoughts.
+It was you who said to me that you once loved all that you saw in
+me, and believed that you saw everything.  All that you asked of me
+was truthfulness that had no sorrow."
+
+He reached the top of the stairs and began to feel his way toward
+his room.
+
+"To have one chance in life, in eternity, for a white name, and to
+lose it!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Autumn and winter had passed.  Another spring was nearly gone.  One
+Monday morning of that May, the month of new growths and of old
+growths with new starting-points on them, Ambrose Webb was walking
+to and fro across the fresh oilcloth in his short hall; the front
+door and the back door stood wide open, as though to indicate the
+receptivity of his nature in opposite directions; all the windows
+were wide open, as though to bring out of doors into his house: he
+was much more used to the former; during married life the open had
+been more friendly than the interior.  But he was now also master
+of the interior and had been for nearly a year.
+
+Some men succeed best as partial automata, as dogs for instance
+that can be highly trained to pull little domestic carts.  Ambrose
+had grown used to pulling his cart: he had expected to pull it for
+the rest of his days; and now the cart had suddenly broken down
+behind him and he was left standing in the middle of the long
+life-road.  But liberty was too large a destiny for a mind of that
+order; the rod of empire does not fit such hands; it was
+intolerable to Ambrose that he was in a world where he could do as
+he pleased.
+
+On this courageous Monday, therefore,--whatsoever he was to do
+during the week he always decided on Mondays,--after months of
+irresolution he finally determined to make a second dash for
+slavery.  But he meant to be canny; this time he would choose a
+woman who, if she ruled him, would not misrule him; what he could
+stand was a sovereign, not a despot, and he believed that he had
+found this exceptionally gifted and exceptionally moderated being:
+it was Miss Anna Hardage.
+
+From the day of Miss Anna's discovery that Ambrose had a dominating
+consort, she had been, she had declared she should be, much kinder
+to him.  When his wife died, Miss Anna had been kinder still.
+Affliction present, affliction past, her sympathy had not failed
+him.
+
+He had fallen into the habit of lingering a little whenever he took
+his dairy products around to the side porch.  Every true man yearns
+for the eyes of some woman; and Ambrose developed the feeling that
+he should like to live with Miss Anna's.  He had no gift for
+judging human conduct except by common human standards; and so at
+bottom he believed that Miss Anna in her own way had been telling
+him that if the time ever came, she could be counted on to do the
+right thing by him.
+
+So Ambrose paced the sticky oilcloth this morning as a man who has
+reached the hill of decision.  He had bought him a new buggy and
+new harness.  Hitched to the one and wearing the other was his
+favorite roan mare with a Roman nose and a white eye, now dozing at
+the stiles in the front yard.  He had curried her and had combed
+her mane and tail and had had her newly shod, and altogether she
+may have felt too comfortable to keep awake.  He himself seemed to
+have received a coating of the same varnish as his buggy.  Had you
+pinned a young beetle in the back of his coat or on either leg of
+his trousers, as a mere study in shades of blackness, it must have
+been lost to view at the distance of a few yards through sheer
+harmony with its background.  Under his Adam's apple there was a
+green tie--the bough to the fruit.  His eyes sparkled as though
+they had lately been reset and polished by a jeweller.
+
+What now delayed and excited him at this last moment before setting
+out was uncertainty as to the offering he should bear Miss Anna.
+Fundamental instincts vaguely warned him that love's altar must be
+approached with gifts.  He knew that some brought fortune, some
+warlike deeds, some fame, some the beauty of their strength and
+youth.  He had none of these to offer; but he was a plain farmer,
+and he could give her what he had so often sold her--a pound of
+butter.
+
+He had awaited the result of the morning churning; but the butter
+had tasted of turnips, and Ambrose did not think that the taste of
+turnips represented the flavor of his emotion.  Nevertheless, there
+was one thing that she preferred even to butter; he would ensnare
+her in her own weakness, catch her in her own net: he would take
+her a jar of cream.
+
+Miss Anna was in her usual high spirits that morning.  She was
+trying a new recipe for some dinner comfort for Professor Hardage,
+when her old cook, who also answered the doorbell, returned to the
+kitchen with word that Mr. Webb was in the parlor.
+
+"Why, I paid him for his milk," exclaimed Miss Anna, without
+ceasing to beat and stir.  "And what is he doing in the parlor?
+Why didn't he come around to the side door?  I'll be back in a
+moment."  She took off her apron from an old habit of doing so
+whenever she entered the parlor.
+
+She gave her dairyman the customary hearty greeting, hurried back
+to get him a glass of water, inquired dispassionately about grass,
+inundated him with a bounteous overflow of her impersonal humanity.
+But he did not state his business, and she grew impatient to return
+to her confection.
+
+"Do I owe you for anything, Mr. Webb?" she suddenly asked, groping
+for some clew to this lengthening labyrinthine visit.
+
+He rose and going to the piano raked heavily off of the top of it a
+glass jar and brought it over to her and resumed his seat with a
+speaking countenance.
+
+"Cream!" cried Miss Anna, delighted, running her practised eye
+downward along the bottle to discover where the contents usually
+began to get blue: it was yellow to the bottom.  "How much is it?
+I'm afraid we are too poor to buy so much cream all at once."
+
+"It has no price; it is above price."
+
+"How much is it, Mr. Webb?" she insisted with impatience.
+
+"It is a free gift."
+
+"Oh, what a beautiful present!" exclaimed Miss Anna, holding it up
+to the light admiringly.   "How can I ever thank you."
+
+"Don't thank me: you could have the dairy!  You could have the
+cows, the farm."
+
+"O dear, no!" cried Miss Anna, "that would be altogether too much!
+One bottle goes far beyond all that I ever hoped for."
+
+"I wish ail women were like you."
+
+"O dear, no! that would not do at all!  I am an old maid, and women
+must marry, must, must!  What would become of the world?"
+
+"You need not be an old maid unless you wish."
+
+"Now, I had never thought of that!" observed Miss Anna, in a very
+peculiar tone.  "But we'll not talk about myself; let us talk about
+yourself.  You are looking extremely well--now aren't you?"
+
+"No one has a better right.  It is due you to let you know this.
+There's good timber in me yet."
+
+"Due _me_!  I am not interested in timber."
+
+"Anna," he said, throwing his arms around one of his knees, "our
+hour has come--we need not wait any longer."
+
+"Wait for _what_?" inquired Miss Anna, bending toward him with the
+scrutiny of a near-sighted person trying to make out some looming
+horror.
+
+"Our marriage."
+
+Miss Anna rose as by an inward explosion.
+
+"Go, _buzzard_!"
+
+He kept his seat and stared at her with a dropped jaw.  Habit was
+powerful in him; and there was something in her anger, in that
+complete sweeping of him out other way, that recalled the domestic
+usages of former years and brought to his lips an involuntary
+time-worn expression:
+
+"I meant nothing offensive."
+
+"I do not know what you meant, and I do not care: go!"
+
+He rose and stood before her, and with a flash of sincere anger he
+spoke his honest mind: "It was you who put the notion in my head.
+You encouraged me, encouraged me systematically; and now you are
+pretending.  You are a bad woman."
+
+"I think I am a bad woman after what has happened to me this
+morning," said Miss Anna, dazed and ready to break down.
+
+He hesitated when he reached the door, smarting with his honest
+hurt; and he paused there and made a request.
+
+"At least I hope that you will never mention this; it might injure
+me."  He did not explain how, but he seemed to know.
+
+"Do you suppose I'd tell my Maker if He did not already know it?"
+She swept past him into the kitchen.
+
+"As soon as you have done your work, go clean the parlor," she said
+to the cook.  "Give it a good airing.  And throw that cream away,
+throw the bottle away."
+
+A few moments later she hurried with her bowl into the pantry;
+there she left it unfinished and crept noiselessly up the
+backstairs to her room.
+
+That evening as Professor Hardage sat opposite to her, reading,
+while she was doing some needlework, he laid his book down with the
+idea of asking her some question.  But he caught sight of her
+expression and studied it a few moments.  It was so ludicrous a
+commingling of mortification and rage that he laughed outright.
+
+"Why, Anna, what on earth is the matter?"
+
+At the first sound of his voice she burst into hysterical sobs.
+
+He came over and tried to draw her fingers away from her eyes.
+"Tell me all about it."
+
+She shook her head frantically.
+
+"Yes, tell me," he urged.  "Is there anything in all these years
+that you have not told me?"
+
+"I cannot," she sobbed excitedly.  "I am disgraced."
+
+He laughed.  "What has disgraced you?"
+
+"A man."
+
+"Good heavens!" he cried, "has somebody been making love to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His face flushed.  "Come," he said seriously, "what is the meaning
+of this, Anna?"
+
+She told him.
+
+"Why aren't you angry with him?" she complained, drying her eyes.
+"You sit there and don't say a word!"
+
+"Do you expect me to be angry with any soul for loving you and
+wishing to be loved by you?  He cast his mite into the treasury,
+Anna."
+
+"I didn't mind the mite," she replied.  "But he said I encouraged
+him, that I encouraged him _systematically_."
+
+"Did you expect him to be a philosopher?"
+
+"I did not expect him to be a--"  She hesitated at the harsh word.
+
+"I'm afraid you expected him to be a philosopher.  Haven't you been
+kind to him?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"Systematically kind?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"Did you have any motive?"
+
+"You know I had no motive--aren't you ashamed!"
+
+"But did you expect him to be genius enough to understand that?
+Did you suppose that he could understand such a thing as kindness
+without a motive?  Don't be harsh with him, Anna, don't be hard on
+him: he is an ordinary man and judged you by the ordinary standard.
+You broke your alabaster box at his feet, and he secretly suspected
+that you were working for something more valuable than the box of
+ointment.  The world is full of people who are kind without a
+motive; but few of those to whom they are kind believe this."
+
+Before Miss Anna fell asleep that night, she had resolved to tell
+Harriet.  Every proposal of marriage is known at least to three
+people.  The distinction in Miss Anna's conduct was not in telling,
+but in not telling until she had actually been asked.
+
+Two mornings later Ambrose was again walking through his hall.
+There is one compensation for us all in the large miseries of
+life--we no longer feel the little ones.  His experience in his
+suit for Miss Anna's hand already seemed a trifle to Ambrose, who
+had grown used to bearing worse things from womankind.  Miss Anna
+was not the only woman in the world, he averred, by way of swift
+indemnification.  Indeed, in the very act of deciding upon her, he
+had been thinking of some one else.  The road of life had divided
+equally before him: he had chosen Miss Anna as a traveller chooses
+the right fork; the left fork remained and he was now preparing to
+follow that: it led to Miss Harriet Crane.
+
+As Ambrose now paced his hallway, revolving certain details
+connected with his next venture and adventure, the noise of an
+approaching carriage fell upon his ear, and going to the front door
+he recognized the brougham of Mrs. Conyers.  But it was Miss
+Harriet Crane who leaned forward at the window and bowed smilingly
+to him as he hurried out.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Webb?" she said, putting out her hand and
+shaking his cordially, at the same time giving him a glance of
+new-born interest.  "You know I have been threatening to come out
+for a long time.  I must owe you an enormous bill for pasturage,"
+she picked up her purse as she spoke, "and I have come to pay my
+debts.  And then I wish to see my calf," and she looked into his
+eyes very pleasantly.
+
+"You don't owe me anything," replied Ambrose.  "What is grass?
+What do I care for grass?  My mind is set on other things."
+
+He noticed gratefully how gentle and mild she looked; there was
+such a beautiful softness about her and he had had hardness enough.
+He liked her ringlets: they were a novelty; and there hung around
+her, in the interior of the carriage, a perfume that was unusual to
+his sense and that impressed him as a reminder of her high social
+position.  But Ambrose reasoned that if a daughter of his neighbor
+could wed a Meredith, surely he ought to be able to marry a Crane.
+
+"If you want to see the calf," he said, but very reluctantly, "I'll
+saddle my horse and we'll go over to the back pasture."
+
+"Don't saddle your horse," objected Harriet, opening the carriage
+door and moving over to the far cushion, "ride with me."
+
+He had never ridden in a brougham, and as he got in very nervously
+and awkwardly, he reversed his figure and tried to sit on the
+little front seat on which lay Harriet's handkerchief and parasol.
+
+"Don't ride backwards, Mr. Webb," suggested Harriet.  "Unless you
+are used to it, you are apt to have a headache," and she tapped the
+cushion beside her as an invitation to him.  "Now tell me about my
+calf," she said after they were seated side by side.
+
+As she introduced this subject, Ambrose suddenly looked out of the
+window.   She caught sight of his uneasy profile.
+
+"Now, don't tell me that there's any bad hews about it!" she cried.
+"It is the only pet I have."
+
+"Miss Harriet," he said, turning his face farther away, "you forget
+how long your calf has been out here; it isn't a calf any longer:
+it has had a calf."
+
+He spoke so sternly that Harriet, who all her life had winced
+before sternness, felt herself in some wise to be blamed.  And
+coolness was settling down upon them when she desired only a
+melting and radiant warmth.
+
+"Well," she objected apologetically, "isn't it customary?  What's
+the trouble?  What's the objection?  This is a free country!
+Whatever is natural is right!  Why are you so displeased?"
+
+About the same hour the next Monday morning Ambrose was again
+pacing his hallway and thinking of Harriet.  At least she was no
+tyrant: the image of her softness rose before him again.  "I make
+no mistake this time."
+
+His uncertainty at the present moment was concerned solely with the
+problem of what his offering should be in this case: under what
+image should love present itself?  The right thought came to him by
+and by; and taking from his storeroom an ornamental basket with a
+top to it, he went out to his pigeon house and selected two blue
+squabs.  They were tender and soft and round; without harshness,
+cruelty, or deception.  Whatever they seemed to be, that they were;
+and all that they were was good.
+
+But as Ambrose walked back to the house, he lifted the top of the
+basket and could but admit that they did look bare.  Might they
+not, as a love token, be--unrefined?  He crossed to a flower bed,
+and, pulling a few rose-geranium leaves, tucked them here and there
+about the youngsters.
+
+It was not his intention to present these to Harriet in person: he
+had accompanied the cream--he would follow the birds; they should
+precede him twenty-four hours and the amative poison would have a
+chance to work.
+
+During that forenoon his shining buggy drawn by his roan mare,
+herself symbolic of softness, drew up before the entrance of the
+Conyers homestead.  Ambrose alighted; he lifted the top of the
+basket--all was well.
+
+"These pets are for your Miss Harriet," he said to the maid who
+answered his ring.
+
+As the maid took the basket through the hall after having watched
+him drive away, incredulous as to her senses, she met Mrs. Conyers,
+who had entered the hall from a rear veranda.
+
+"Who rang?" she asked; "and what is that?"
+
+The maid delivered her instructions.  Mrs. Conyers took the basket
+and looked in.
+
+"Have them broiled for my supper," she said with a little click of
+the teeth, and handing the basket to the maid, passed on into her
+bedroom.
+
+Harriet had been spending the day away from home.  She returned
+late.  The maid met her at the front door and a few moments of
+conversation followed.  She hurried into the supper room; Mrs.
+Conyers sat alone.
+
+"Mother," exclaimed Harriet with horror, "have you _eaten_ my
+squabs?"
+
+Mrs. Conyers stabbed at a little pile of bones on the side plate.
+"This is what is left of them," she said, touching a napkin to her
+gustatory lips.  "There are your leaves," she added, pointing to a
+little vase in front of Harriet's plate.  "When is he going to send
+you some more?  But tell him we have geraniums."
+
+The next day Ambrose received a note:
+
+"Dear Mr. Webb: I have been thinking how pleasant my visit to you
+was that morning.  It has not been possible for me to get the
+carriage since or I should have been out to thank you for your
+beautiful present.  The squabs appealed to me.  A man who loves
+them must have tender feeling; and that is what all my life I have
+been saying: Give me a man with a heart!  Sometime when you are in
+town, I may meet you on the street somewhere and then I can thank
+you more fully than I do now.  I shall always cherish the memory of
+your kind deed.  You must give me the chance to thank you very
+soon, or I shall fear that you do not care for my thanks.  I take a
+walk about eleven o'clock.
+
+  "Sincerely yours,
+
+    "HARRIET CRANE."
+
+Ambrose must have received the note.  A few weeks later Miss Anna
+one morning received one herself delivered by a boy who had ridden
+in from the farm; the boy waited with a large basket while she read:
+
+"Dearest Anna: It is a matter of very little importance to mention
+to you of course, but I am married.  My husband and I were married
+at ------ yesterday afternoon.  He met me at an appointed place and
+we drove quietly out of town.  What I want you to do at once is,
+send me some clothes, for I left all the Conyers apparel where it
+belonged.  Send me something of everything.  And as soon as I am
+pinned in, I shall invite you out.  Of course I shall now give
+orders for whatever I desire; and then I shall return to Mrs.
+Conyers the things I used on my bridal trip.
+
+"This is a very hurried note, and of course I have not very much to
+say as yet about my new life.  As for my husband, I can at least
+declare with perfect sincerity that he is mine.  I have made one
+discovery already, Anna: he cannot be bent except where he has
+already been broken.  I am discovering the broken places and shall
+govern him accordingly.
+
+"Do try to marry, Anna!  You have no idea how a married woman feels
+toward one of her sex who is single.
+
+"I want you to be sure to stand at the windows about five o'clock
+this afternoon and see the Conyers' cows all come travelling home:
+they graze no more these heavenly pastures.  It will be the first
+intimation that Mrs. Conyers receives that I am no longer the
+unredeemed daughter of her household.  Her curiosity will, of
+course, bring her out here as fast as the horse can travel.  But,
+oh, Anna, my day has come at last!  At last she shall realize that
+I am strong, _strong_!  I shall receive her with the front door
+locked and talk to her out of the window; and I expect to talk to
+her a long, _long_ time.  I shall have the flowers moved from the
+porch to keep them from freezing during that interview.
+
+"As soon as I am settled, as one has so much more time in the
+country than in town, I may, after all, take up that course of
+reading: would you object?
+
+"It's a wise saying that every new experience brings some new
+trouble: I longed for youth before I married; but to marry after
+you are old--that, Anna, is sorrow indeed.
+
+  "Your devoted friend,
+
+    "HARRIET CRANE WEBB.
+
+"P.S. Don't send any but the _plainest_ things; for I remember,
+noble friend, how it pains you to see me _overdressed_."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+It was raining steadily and the night was cold.  Miss Anna came
+hurriedly down into the library soon after supper.  She had on an
+old waterproof; and in one hand she carried a man's cotton
+umbrella--her own--and in the other a pair of rubbers.  As she sat
+down and drew these over her coarse walking shoes, she talked in
+the cheery tone of one who has on hand some congenial business.
+
+"I may get back late and I may not get back at all; it depends upon
+how the child is.  But I wish it would not rain when poor little
+children are sick at night--it is the one thing that gives me the
+blues.  And I wish infants could speak out and tell their symptoms.
+When I see grown people getting well as soon as they can minutely
+narrate to you all their ailments, my heart goes out to babies.
+Think how they would crow and gurgle, if they could only say what
+it is all about.  But I don't see why people at large should not be
+licensed to bring in a bill when their friends insist upon
+describing their maladies to them: doctors do.  But I must be
+going.  Good night."
+
+She rose and stamped her feet into the rubbers to make them fit
+securely; and then she came across to the lamp-lit table beside
+which he sat watching her fondly--his book dropped the while upon
+his lap.  He grasped her large strong hand in his large strong
+hand; and she leaned her side against his shoulder and put her arm
+around his neck.
+
+"You are getting younger, Anna," he said, looking up into her face
+and drawing her closer.
+
+"Why not?" she answered with a voice of splendid joy.  "Harriet is
+married; what troubles have I, then?  And she patronizes--or
+matronizes--me and tyrannizes over Ambrose: so the world is really
+succeeding at last.  But I wish her husband had not asked me
+_first_; that is her thorn."
+
+"And the thorn will grow!"
+
+"Now, don't sit up late!" she pleaded.  "I turned your bed down and
+arranged the pillows wrong end out as you will have them; and I put
+out your favorite night-shirt--the one with the sleeves torn off
+above the elbows and the ravellings hanging down just as you
+require.  Aren't you tired of books yet?  Are you never going to
+get tired?  And the same books!  Why, I get fresh babies every few
+years--a complete change."
+
+"How many generations of babies do you suppose there have been
+since this immortal infant was born?" he asked, laying his hand
+reverently over the book on his lap as if upon the head of a divine
+child.
+
+"I don't know and I don't care," she replied.  "I wish the immortal
+infant would let you alone."  She stooped and kissed his brow, and
+wrung his hand silently, and went out into the storm.  He heard her
+close the street door and heard the rusty click of her cotton
+umbrella as she raised it.  Then he turned to the table at his
+elbow and kindled his deep-bowled pipe and drew over his legs the
+skirts of his long gown, coarse, austere, sombre.
+
+He looked comfortable.  A rainy night may depress a woman nursing a
+sick child that is not her own--a child already fighting for its
+feeble, unclaimed, repudiated life, in a world of weeping clouds;
+but such a night diffuses cheer when the raindrops are heard
+tapping the roof above beloved bookshelves, tapping the
+window-panes; when there is low music in the gutter on the back
+porch; when a student lamp, throwing its shadow over the ceiling
+and the walls, reserves its exclusive lustre for lustrous
+pages--pages over which men for centuries have gladly burnt out the
+oil of their brief lamps, their iron and bronze, their silver and
+gold and jewelled lamps--many-colored eyes of the nights of ages.
+
+It was now middle September of another year and Professor Hardage
+had entered upon the work of another session.  The interval had
+left no outward mark on him.  The mind stays young a long time when
+nourished by a body such as his; and the body stays young a long
+time when mastered by such a mind.  Day by day faithfully to do
+one's work and to be restless for no more; without bitterness to
+accept obscurity for ambition; to possess all vital passions and to
+govern them; to stand on the world's thoroughfare and see the young
+generations hurrying by, and to put into the hands of a youth here
+and there a light which will burn long after our own personal taper
+is extinguished; to look back upon the years already gone as not
+without usefulness and honor, and forward to what may remain as
+safe at least from failure or any form of shame, and thus for one's
+self to feel the humility of the part before the greatness of the
+whole of life, and yet the privileges and duties of the individual
+to the race--this brings blessedness if it does not always bring
+happiness, and it had brought both to him.
+
+He sat at peace beside his lamp.  The interval had brought changes
+to his towns-people.  As he had walked home this afternoon, he had
+paused and looked across at some windows of the second story of a
+familiar corner.   The green shutters, tightly closed, were gray
+with cobweb and with dust.  One sagged from a loosened hinge and
+flapped in the rising autumn wind, showing inside a window sash
+also dust-covered and with a newspaper crammed through a broken
+pane.  Where did Ravenel Morris live now?  Did he live at all?
+
+Accustomed as he was to look through the distances of human
+history, to traverse the areas of its religions and see how its
+great conflicting faiths have each claimed the unique name of
+revelation for itself, he could not anywhere discover what to him
+was clear proof either of the separate existence of the soul or of
+its immortal life hereafter.  The security of that belief was
+denied him.  He had wished for it, had tried to make it his.  But
+while it never became a conviction, it remained a force.  Under all
+that reason could affirm or could deny, there dwelt unaccountable
+confidence that the light of human life, leaping from headland to
+headland,--the long transmitted radiance of thought,--was not to go
+out with the inevitable physical extinction of the species on this
+planet.  Somewhere in the universe he expected to meet his own, all
+whom he had loved, and to see this friend.  Meantime, he accepted
+the fact of death in the world with that uncomplaining submission
+to nature which is in the strength and sanity of genius.  As
+acquaintances left him, one after another, memory but kindled
+another lamp; hope but disclosed another white flower on its
+mysterious stem.
+
+He sat at peace.  The walls of the library showed their changes.
+There were valuable maps on Caesar's campaigns which had been sent
+him from Berlin; there were other maps from Athens; there was
+something from the city of Hannibal, and something from Tiber.
+Indeed, there were not many places in Isabel's wandering from which
+she had not sent home to him some proof that he was remembered.
+And always she sent letters which were more than maps or books,
+being in themselves charts to the movements of her spirit.  They
+were regular; they were frank; they assured him how increasingly
+she needed his friendship.  When she returned, she declared she
+would settle down to be near him for the rest of life.  Few names
+were mentioned in these letters: never Rowan's; never Mrs.
+Osborn's--that lifelong friendship having been broken; and in truth
+since last March young Mrs. Osborn's eyes had been sealed to the
+reading of all letters.  But beneath everything else, he could
+always trace the presence of one unspoken certainty--that she was
+passing through the deeps without herself knowing what height or
+what heath her feet would reach at last, there to abide.
+
+As he had walked homeward this afternoon through the dust,
+something else had drawn his attention: he was passing the Conyers
+homestead, and already lights were beginning to twinkle in the many
+windows; there was to be a ball that night, and he thought of the
+unconquerable woman ruling within, apparently gaining still in
+vitality and youth.  "Unjailed malefactors often attain great
+ages," he said to himself, as he turned away and thought of the
+lives she had helped to blight and shorten.
+
+As the night advanced, he fell under the influence of his book, was
+drawn out of his poor house, away from his obscure town, his
+unknown college, quitted his country and his age, passing backward
+until there fell around him the glorious dawn of the race before
+the sunrise of written history: the immortal still trod the earth;
+the human soldier could look away from his earthly battle-field and
+see, standing on a mountain crest, the figure and the authority of
+his Divine Commander.  Once more it was the flower-dyed plain,
+blood-dyed as well; the ships drawn up by the gray, the wrinkled
+sea; over on the other side, well-built Troy; and the crisis of the
+long struggle was coming.  Hector, of the glancing plume, had come
+back to the city for the last time, mindful of his end.
+
+He read once more through the old scene that is never old, and then
+put his book aside and sat thoughtful.  "_I know not if the gods
+will not overthrow me. . . .   I have very sore shame if, like a
+coward, I shrink away from battle; moreover mine own soul
+forbiddeth me. . . .  Destiny . . .  no man hast escaped, be he
+coward or be he valiant, when once he hath been born_."
+
+His eyes had never rested on any spot in human history, however
+separated in time and place, where the force of those words did not
+seem to reign.  Whatsoever the names under which men have conceived
+and worshipped their gods or their God, however much they have
+believed that it was these or it was He who overthrew them and made
+their destinies inescapable, after all, it is the high compulsion
+of the soul itself, the final mystery of personal choice, that
+sends us forth at last to our struggles and to our peace: "_mine
+own soul forbiddeth me_"--there for each is right and wrong, the
+eternal beauty of virtue.
+
+He did not notice the sound of approaching wheels, and that the
+sound ceased at his door.
+
+A moment later and Isabel with light footsteps stood before him.
+He sprang up with a cry and put his arms around her and held her.
+
+"You shall never go away again."
+
+"No, I am never going away again; I have come back to marry Rowan."
+
+These were her first words to him as they sat face to face.  And
+she quickly went on:
+
+"How is he?"
+
+He shook his head reproachfully at her: "When I saw him at least he
+seemed better than you seem."
+
+"I knew he was not well--I have known it for a long time.  But you
+saw him--in town--on the street--with his friends--attending to
+business?"
+
+"Yes--in town--on the street--with his friends--attending to
+business."
+
+"May I stay here?  I ordered my luggage to be sent here."
+
+"Your room is ready and has always been ready and waiting since the
+day you left.  I think Anna has been putting fresh flowers in it
+all autumn.  You will find some there to-night.  She has insisted
+of late that you would soon be coming home."
+
+An hour later she came down into the library again.  She had
+removed the traces of travel, and she had travelled slowly and was
+not tired.  All this enabled him to see how changed she was; and
+without looking older, how strangely oldened and grown how quiet of
+spirit.  She had now indeed become sister for him to those images
+of beauty that were always haunting him--those far, dim images of
+the girlhood of her sex, with their faces turned away from the sun
+and their eyes looking downward, pensive in shadow, too freighted
+with thoughts of their brief fate and their immortality.
+
+"I must have a long talk with you before I try to sleep.  I must
+empty my heart to you once."
+
+He knew that she needed the relief, and that what she asked of him
+during these hours would be silence.
+
+"I have tried everything, and everything has failed.  I have tried
+absence, but absence has not separated me from him.  I have tried
+silence, but through the silence I have never ceased speaking to
+him.  Nothing has really ever separated us; nothing ever can.  It
+is more than will or purpose, it is my life.  It is more than life
+to me, it is love."
+
+She spoke very quietly, and at first she seemed unable to progress
+very far from the beginning.  After every start, she soon came back
+to that one beginning.
+
+"It is of no use to weigh the right and the wrong of it: I tried
+that at first, and I suppose that is why I made sad mistakes.  You
+must not think that I am acting now from a sense of duty to him or
+to myself.  Duty does not enter into my feeling: it is love; all
+that I am forbids me to do anything else."
+
+But after a while she went back and bared before him in a way the
+history of her heart.  "The morning after he told me, I went to
+church.  I remember the lessons of the day and the hymns, and how I
+left the church before the sermon, because everything seemed to be
+on his side, and no one was on mine.  He had done wrong and was
+guilty; and I had been wrong and was innocent; and the church
+comforted him and overlooked me; and I was angry and walked out of
+it.
+
+"And do you remember the day I came to see you and you proposed
+everything to me, and I rejected everything?  You told me to go
+away for a while, to throw myself into the pleasures of other
+people; you reminded me of prayer and of the duty of forgiveness;
+you told me to try to put myself in his place, and reminded me of
+self-sacrifice, and then said at last that I must leave it to time,
+which sooner or later settles everything.  I rejected everything
+that you suggested.  But I have accepted everything since, and have
+learned a lesson and a service from each: the meaning of prayer and
+of forgiveness and of self-sacrifice; and what the lapse of time
+can do to bring us to ourselves and show us what we wish.  I say, I
+have lived through all these, and I have gotten something out of
+them all; but however much they may mean, they never constitute
+love; and it is my love that brings me back to him now."
+
+Later on she recurred to the idea of self-sacrifice: much other
+deepest feeling seemed to gather about that.
+
+"I am afraid that you do not realize what it means to a woman when
+a principle like this is involved.  Can any man ever know?  Does he
+dream what it means to us women to sacrifice ourselves as they
+often require us to do?  I have been travelling in old lands--so
+old that the history of each goes back until we can follow it with
+our eyes no longer.  But as far as we can see, we see this
+sorrow--the sorrow of women who have wished to be first in the love
+of the men they have loved.  You, who read everything!  Cannot you
+see them standing all through history, the sad figures of girls who
+have only asked for what they gave, love in its purity and its
+singleness--have only asked that there should have been no other
+before them?  And cannot you see what a girl feels when she
+consents to accept anything less,--that she is lowered to herself
+from that time on,--has lost her own ideal of herself, as well as
+her ideal of the man she loves?  And cannot you see how she lowers
+herself in his eyes also and ceases to be his ideal, through her
+willingness to live with him on a lower plane?  That is our wound.
+That is our trouble and our sorrow: I have found it wherever I have
+gone."
+
+Long before she said this to him, she had questioned him closely
+about Rowan.  He withheld from her knowledge of some things which
+he thought she could better bear to learn later and by degrees.
+
+"I knew he was not well," she said; "I feared it might be worse.
+Let me tell you this: no one knows him as I do.  I must speak
+plainly.  First, there was his trouble; that shadowed for
+him one ideal in his life.  Then this drove him to a kind of
+self-concealment; and that wounded another ideal--his love of
+candor.  Then he asked me to marry him, and he told me the truth
+about himself and I turned him off.  Then came the scandals that
+tried to take away his good name, and I suppose have taken it away.
+And then, through all this, were the sufferings he was causing
+others around him, and the loss of his mother.  I have lived
+through all these things with him while I have been away, and I
+understand; they sap life.  I am going up to write to him now,
+and will you post the letter to-night?  I wish him to come to
+see me at once, and our marriage must take place as soon as
+possible--here--very quietly."
+
+
+Rowan came the next afternoon.   She was in the library; and he
+went in and shut the door, and they were left alone.
+
+Professor Hardage and Miss Anna sat in an upper room.  He had no
+book and she had no work; they were thinking only of the two
+downstairs.  And they spoke to each other in undertones, breaking
+the silence with brief sentences, as persons speak when awaiting
+news from sick-rooms.
+
+Daylight faded.  Outside the lamplighter passed, torching the grimy
+lamps.  Miss Anna spoke almost in a whisper: "Shall I have some
+light sent in?"
+
+"No, Anna."
+
+"Did you tell him what the doctors have said about his health?"
+
+"No; there was bad news enough without that for one day.  And then
+happiness might bring back health to him.  The trouble that
+threatens him will have to be put down as one of the consequences
+of all that has occurred to him--as part of what he is and of what
+he has done.  The origin of disease may lie in our troubles--our
+nervous shocks, our remorses, and better strivings."
+
+The supper hour came.
+
+"I do not wish any supper, Anna."
+
+"Nor I.  How long they stay together!"
+
+"They have a great deal to say to each other, Anna."
+
+"I know, I know.  Poor children!"
+
+"I believe he is only twenty-five."
+
+"When Isabel comes up, do you think I ought to go to her room and
+see whether she wants anything?"
+
+"No, Anna."
+
+"And she must not know that we have been sitting up, as though we
+felt sorry for them and could not go on with our own work."
+
+"I met Marguerite and Barbee this afternoon walking together.  I
+suppose she will come back to him at last.  But she has had her
+storm, and he knows it, and he knows there will never be any storm
+for him.  She is another one of those girls of mine--not sad, but
+with half the sun shining on them.  But half a sun shining
+steadily, as it will always shine on her, is a great deal."
+
+"Hush!" said Miss Anna, in a whisper, "he is gone!  Isabel is
+coming up the steps."
+
+They heard her and then they did not hear her, and then again and
+then not again.
+
+Miss Anna started up:
+
+"She needs me!"
+
+He held her back:
+
+"No, Anna! Not to help is to help."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+One afternoon late in the autumn of the following year, when a
+waiting stillness lay on the land and shimmering sunlight opened up
+the lonely spaces of woods and fields, the Reaper who comes to all
+men and reaps what they have sown, approached the home of the
+Merediths and announced his arrival to the young master of the
+house: he would await his pleasure.
+
+Rowan had been sitting up, propped by his pillows.  It was the room
+of his grandfather as it had been that of the man preceding; the
+bed had been their bed; and the first to place it where it stood
+may have had in mind a large window, through which as he woke from
+his nightly sleep he might look far out upon the land, upon rolling
+stately acres.
+
+Rowan looked out now: past the evergreens just outside to the
+shining lawn beyond; and farther away, upon fields of brown
+shocks--guiltless harvest; then toward a pasture on the horizon.
+He could see his cattle winding slowly along the edge of a russet
+woodland on which the slanting sunlight fell.  Against the blue sky
+in the silvery air a few crows were flying: all went in the same
+direction but each went without companions.  He watched their wings
+curiously with lonely, following eyes.  Whither home passed they?
+And by whose summons?  And with what guidance?
+
+A deep yearning stirred him, and he summoned his wife and the nurse
+with his infant son.  He greeted her; then raising himself on one
+elbow and leaning over the edge of the bed, he looked a long time
+at the boy slumbering on the nurse's lap.
+
+The lesson of his brief span of years gathered into his gaze.
+
+"Life of my life," he said, with that lesson on his lips, "sign of
+my love, of what was best in me, this is my prayer for you: may you
+find one to love you such as your father found; when you come to
+ask her to unite her life with yours, may you be prepared to tell
+her the truth about yourself, and have nothing to tell that would
+break her heart and break the hearts of others.  May it be said of
+you that you are a better man than your father."
+
+He had the child lifted and he kissed his forehead and his eyes.
+"By the purity of your own life guard the purity of your sons for
+the long honor of our manhood."  Then he made a sign that the nurse
+should withdraw.
+
+When she had withdrawn, he put his face down on the edge of the
+pillow where his wife knelt, her face hidden.  His hair fell over
+and mingled with her hair.  He passed his arm around her neck and
+held her close.
+
+"All your troubles came to you because you were true to the
+highest.  You asked only the highest from me, and the highest was
+more than I could give.  But be kind to my memory.  Try to forget
+what is best forgotten, but remember what is worth remembering.
+Judge me for what I was; but judge me also for what I wished to be.
+Teach my son to honor my name; and when he is old enough to
+understand, tell him the truth about his father.  Tell him what it
+was that saddened our lives.  As he looks into his mother's face,
+it will steady him."
+
+He put both arms around her neck.
+
+"I am tired of it all," he said.  "I want rest.  Love has been more
+cruel to me than death."
+
+A few days later, an afternoon of the same autumnal stillness, they
+bore him across his threshold with that gentleness which so often
+comes too late--slowly through his many-colored woods, some leaves
+drifting down upon the sable plumes and lodging in them---along the
+turnpike lined with dusty thistles--through the watching town, a
+long procession, to the place of the unreturning.
+
+They laid him along with his fathers.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12482 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12482 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12482)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mettle of the Pasture, by James Lane Allen
+
+
+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 Mettle of the Pasture
+
+Author: James Lane Allen
+
+Release Date: June 1, 2004  [eBook #12482]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE METTLE OF THE PASTURE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+THE METTLE OF THE PASTURE
+
+BY
+
+JAMES LANE ALLEN
+
+Author of "The Choir Invisible," "A Kentucky Cardinal," etc., etc.
+
+New York, 1903
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To My Sister
+
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST
+
+I
+
+She did not wish any supper and she sank forgetfully back into the
+stately oak chair.  One of her hands lay palm upward on her white
+lap; in the other, which drooped over the arm of the chair, she
+clasped a young rose dark red amid its leaves--an inverted torch of
+love.
+
+Old-fashioned glass doors behind her reached from a high ceiling to
+the floor; they had been thrown open and the curtains looped apart.
+Stone steps outside led downward to the turf in the rear of the
+house.  This turf covered a lawn unroughened by plant or weed; but
+over it at majestic intervals grew clumps of gray pines and
+dim-blue, ever wintry firs.  Beyond lawn and evergreens a flower
+garden bloomed; and beyond the high fence enclosing this, tree-tops
+and house-tops of the town could be seen; and beyond these--away in
+the west--the sky was naming now with the falling sun.
+
+A few bars of dusty gold hung poised across the darkening spaces of
+the supper room.  Ripples of the evening air, entering through the
+windows, flowed over her, lifting the thick curling locks at the
+nape of her neck, creeping forward over her shoulders and passing
+along her round arms under the thin fabric of her sleeves.
+
+They aroused her, these vanishing beams of the day, these arriving
+breezes of the night; they became secret invitations to escape from
+the house into the privacy of the garden, where she could be alone
+with thoughts of her great happiness now fast approaching.
+
+A servant entered noiselessly, bringing a silver bowl of frozen
+cream.  Beside this, at the head of the table before her
+grandmother, he placed scarlet strawberries gathered that morning
+under white dews.  She availed herself of the slight interruption
+and rose with an apology; but even when love bade her go, love also
+bade her linger; she could scarce bear to be with them, but she
+could scarce bear to be alone.  She paused at her grandmother's
+chair to stroke the dry bronze puffs on her temples--a unique
+impulse; she hesitated compassionately a moment beside her aunt,
+who had never married; then, passing around to the opposite side of
+the table, she took between her palms the sunburnt cheeks of a
+youth, her cousin, and buried her own tingling cheek in his hair.
+Instinct at that moment drew her most to him because he was young
+as she was young, having life and love before him as she had; only,
+for him love stayed far in the future; for her it came to-night.
+
+When she had crossed the room and reached the hall, she paused and
+glanced back, held by the tension of cords which she dreaded to
+break.  She felt that nothing would ever be the same again in the
+home of her childhood.  Until marriage she would remain under its
+dear honored roof, and there would be no outward interruption of
+its familiar routine; but for her all the bonds of life would have
+become loosened from old ties and united in him alone whom this
+evening she was to choose as her lot and destiny.  Under the
+influence of that fresh fondness, therefore, which wells up so
+strangely within us at the thought of parting from home and home
+people, even though we may not greatly care for them, she now stood
+gazing at the picture they formed as though she were already
+calling it back through the distances of memory and the changes of
+future years.
+
+They, too, had shifted their positions and were looking at her with
+one undisguised expression of pride and love; and they smiled as
+she smiled radiantly back at them, waving a last adieu with her
+spray of rose and turning quickly in a dread of foolish tears.
+
+"Isabel."
+
+It was the youthful voice of her grandmother.  She faced them again
+with a little frown of feigned impatience.
+
+"If you are going into the garden, throw something around your
+shoulders."
+
+"Thank you, grandmother; I have my lace."
+
+Crossing the hall, she went into the front parlor, took from a
+damask sofa a rare shawl of white lace and, walking to a mirror,
+threw it over her head, absently noting the effect in profile.  She
+lifted this off and, breaking the rose from part of its stem,
+pinned that on her breast.  Then, stepping aside to one of the
+large lofty windows, she stood there under the droop of the
+curtains, sunk into reverie again and looking out upon the yard and
+the street beyond.
+
+Hardly a sound disturbed the twilight stillness.  A lamplighter
+passed, torching the grim lamps.  A sauntering carrier threw the
+evening newspaper over the gate, with his unintelligible cry.  A
+dog-cart rumbled by, and later, a brougham; people were not yet
+returned from driving on the country turnpikes.  Once, some belated
+girls clattered past on ponies.  But already little children,
+bare-armed, bare-necked, swinging lanterns, and attended by proud
+young mothers, were on their way to a summer-night festival in the
+park.  Up and down the street family groups were forming on the
+verandas.  The red disks of cigars could be seen, and the laughter
+of happy women was wafted across the dividing fences and shrubbery,
+and vines.
+
+Breaking again through her reverie, which seemed to envelop her,
+wherever she went, like a beautiful cloud, she left the window and
+appeared at the front door.  Palms stood on each side of the
+granite steps, and these arched their tropical leaves far over
+toward her quiet feet as she passed down.  Along the pavement were
+set huge green boxes, in which white oleanders grew, and flaming
+pomegranates, and crepe myrtle thickly roofed with pink.  She was
+used to hover about them at this hour, but she strolled past,
+unmindful now, the daily habit obliterated, the dumb little tie
+quite broken.  The twisted newspaper lay white on the shadowed
+pavement before her eyes and she did not see that.  She walked on
+until she reached the gate and, folding her hands about one of the
+brass globes surmounting the iron spikes, leaned over and probed
+with impatient eyes the long dusk of the street; as far as he could
+be seen coming she wished to see him.
+
+It was too early.  So she filled her eyes with pictures of the
+daylight fading over woods and fields far out in the country.  But
+the entire flock of wistful thoughts settled at last about a large
+house situated on a wooded hill some miles from town.  A lawn
+sloped upward to it from the turnpike, and there was a gravelled
+driveway.  She unlatched the gate, approached the house, passed
+through the wide hall, ascended the stairs, stood at the door of
+his room--waiting.  Why did he not come?  How could he linger?
+
+Dreamily she turned back; and following a narrow walk, passed to
+the rear of the house and thence across the lawn of turf toward the
+garden.
+
+A shower had fallen early in the day and the grass had been cut
+afterwards.  Afternoon sunshine had drunk the moisture, leaving the
+fragrance released and floating.  The warmth of the cooling earth
+reached her foot through the sole of her slipper.  On the plume of
+a pine, a bird was sending its last call after the bright hours,
+while out of the firs came the tumult of plainer kinds as they
+mingled for common sleep.  The heavy cry of the bullbat fell from
+far above, and looking up quickly for a sight of his winnowing
+wings under the vast purpling vault she beheld the earliest stars.
+
+Thus, everywhere, under her feet, over her head, and beyond the
+reach of vision, because inhabiting that realm into which the
+spirit alone can send its aspiration and its prayer, was one
+influence, one spell: the warmth of the good wholesome earth, its
+breath of sweetness, its voices of peace and love and rest, the
+majesty of its flashing dome; and holding all these safe as in the
+hollow of a hand the Eternal Guardianship of the world.
+
+As she strolled around the garden under the cloudy flush of the
+evening sky dressed in white, a shawl of white lace over one arm, a
+rose on her breast, she had the exquisiteness of a long past,
+during which women have been chosen in marriage for health and
+beauty and children and the power to charm.  The very curve of her
+neck implied generations of mothers who had valued grace.
+Generations of forefathers had imparted to her walk and bearing
+their courage and their pride.  The precision of the eyebrow, the
+chiselled perfection of the nostril, the loveliness of the short
+red lip; the well-arched feet, small, but sure of themselves; the
+eyes that were kind and truthful and thoughtful; the sheen of her
+hair, the fineness of her skin, her nobly cast figure,--all these
+were evidences of descent from a people, that had reached in her
+the purity, without having lost the vigor, of one of its highest
+types.
+
+She had supposed that when he came the servant would receive him
+and announce his arrival, but in a little while the sound of a step
+on the gravel reached her ear; she paused and listened.  It was
+familiar, but it was unnatural--she remembered this afterwards.
+
+She began to walk away from him, her beautiful head suddenly arched
+far forward, her bosom rising and falling under her clasped hands,
+her eyes filling with wonderful light.  Then regaining composure
+because losing consciousness of herself in the thought of him, she
+turned and with divine simplicity of soul advanced to meet him.
+
+Near the centre of the garden there was an open spot where two
+pathways crossed; and it was here, emerging from the shrubbery,
+that they came in sight of each other.  Neither spoke.  Neither
+made in advance a sign of greeting.  When they were a few yards
+apart she paused, flushing through her whiteness; and he, dropping
+his hat from his hand, stepped quickly forward, gathered her hands
+into his and stood looking down on her in silence.  He was very
+pale and barely controlled himself.
+
+"Isabel!" It was all he could say.
+
+"Rowan!" she answered at length.  She spoke under her breath and
+stood before him with her head drooping, her eyes on the ground.
+Then he released her and she led the way at once out of the garden.
+
+When they had reached the front of the house, sounds of
+conversation on the veranda warned them that there were guests, and
+without concealing their desire to be alone they passed to a rustic
+bench under one of the old trees, standing between the house and
+the street; they were used to sitting there; they had known each
+other all their lives.
+
+A long time they forced themselves to talk of common and trivial
+things, the one great meaning of the hour being avoided by each.
+Meanwhile it was growing very late.  The children had long before
+returned drowsily home held by the hand, their lanterns dropped on
+the way or still clung to, torn and darkened.  No groups laughed on
+the verandas; but gas-jets had been lighted and turned low as
+people undressed for bed.  The guests of the family had gone.  Even
+Isabel's grandmother had not been able further to put away sleep
+from her plotting brain in order to send out to them a final
+inquisitive thought--the last reconnoitring bee of all the
+In-gathered hive.  Now, at length, as absolutely as he could have
+wished, he was alone with her and secure from interruption.
+
+The moon had sunk so low that its rays fell in a silvery stream on
+her white figure; only a waving bough of the tree overhead still
+brushed with shadow her neck and face.  As the evening waned, she
+had less to say to him, growing always more silent in new dignity,
+more mute with happiness.
+
+He pushed himself abruptly away from her side and bending over
+touched his lips reverently to the back of one of her hands, as
+they lay on the shawl in her lap.
+
+"Isabel," and then he hesitated.
+
+"Yes," she answered sweetly.  She paused likewise, requiring
+nothing more; it was enough that he should speak her name.
+
+He changed his position and sat looking ahead.  Presently he began
+again, choosing his words as a man might search among terrible
+weapons for the least deadly.
+
+"When I wrote and asked you to marry me, I said I should come
+to-night and receive your answer from your own lips.  If your
+answer had been different, I should never have spoken to you of my
+past.  It would not have been my duty.  I should not have had the
+right.  I repeat, Isabel, that until you had confessed your love
+for me, I should have had no right to speak to you about my past.
+But now there is something you ought to be told at once."
+
+She glanced up quickly with a rebuking smile.  How could he wander
+so far from the happiness of moments too soon to end?  What was his
+past to her?
+
+He went on more guardedly.
+
+"Ever since I have loved you, I have realized what I should have to
+tell you if you ever returned my love.  Sometimes duty has seemed
+one thing, sometimes another.  This is why I have waited so
+long--more than two years; the way was not clear.  Isabel, it will
+never be clear.  I believe now it is wrong to tell you; I believe
+It is wrong not to tell you.  I have thought and thought--it is
+wrong either way.  But the least wrong to you and to myself--that
+is what I have always tried to see, and as I understand my duty,
+now that you are willing to unite your life with mine, there is
+something you must know."
+
+He added the last words as though he had reached a difficult
+position and were announcing his purpose to hold it.  But he paused
+gloomily again.
+
+She had scarcely heard him through wonderment that he could so
+change at such a moment.  Her happiness began to falter and darken
+like departing sunbeams.  She remained for a space uncertain of
+herself, knowing neither what was needed nor what was best; then
+she spoke with resolute deprecation:
+
+"Why discuss with me your past life?  Have I not known you always?"
+
+These were not the words of girlhood.  She spoke from the emotions
+of womanhood, beginning to-night in the plighting of her troth.
+
+"You have trusted me too much, Isabel."
+
+Repulsed a second time, she now fixed her large eyes upon him with
+surprise.  The next moment she had crossed lightly once more the
+widening chasm.
+
+"Rowan," she said more gravely and with slight reproach, "I have
+not waited so long and then not known the man whom I have chosen."
+
+"Ah," he cried, with a gesture of distress.
+
+Thus they sat: she silent with new thoughts; he speechless with his
+old ones.  Again she was the first to speak.  More deeply moved by
+the sight of his increasing excitement, she took one of his hands
+into both of hers, pressing it with a delicate tenderness.
+
+"What is it that troubles you, Rowan?  Tell me!  It is my duty to
+listen.  I have the right to know."
+
+He shrank from what he had never heard in her voice
+before--disappointment in him.  And it was neither girlhood nor
+womanhood which had spoken now: it was comradeship which is
+possible to girlhood and to womanhood through wifehood alone: she
+was taking their future for granted.  He caught her hand and lifted
+it again and again to his lips; then he turned away from her.
+
+Thus shut out from him again, she sat looking out into the night.
+
+But in a woman's complete love of a man there is something deeper
+than girlhood or womanhood or wifehood: it is the maternal--that
+dependence on his strength when he is well and strong, that passion
+of protection and defence when he is frail or stricken.  Into her
+mood and feeling toward him even the maternal had forced its way.
+She would have found some expression for it but he anticipated her.
+
+"I am thinking of you, of my duty to you, of your happiness."
+
+She realized at last some terrible hidden import in all that he had
+been trying to confess.  A shrouded mysterious Shape of Evil was
+suddenly disclosed as already standing on the threshold of the
+House of Life which they were about to enter together.  The night
+being warm, she had not used her shawl.  Now she threw it over her
+head and gathered the weblike folds tightly under her throat as
+though she were growing cold.  The next instant, with a swift
+movement, she tore it from her head and pushed herself as far as
+possible away from him out into the moonlight; and she sat there
+looking at him, wild with distrust and fear.
+
+He caught sight of her face.
+
+"Oh, I am doing wrong," he cried miserably.  "I must not tell you
+this!"
+
+He sprang up and hurried over to the pavement and began to walk to
+and fro.  He walked to and fro a long time; and after waiting for
+him to return, she came quickly and stood in his path.  But when he
+drew near her he put out his hand.
+
+"I cannot!" he repeated, shaking his head and turning away.
+
+Still she waited, and when he approached and was turning away
+again, she stepped forward and laid on his arm her quivering
+finger-tips.
+
+"You must," she said.  "You _shall_ tell me!" and if there was
+anger in her voice, if there was anguish in it, there was the
+authority likewise of holy and sovereign rights.  But he thrust her
+all but rudely away, and going to the lower end of the pavement,
+walked there backward and forward with his hat pulled low over his
+eyes--walked slowly, always more slowly.  Twice he laid his hand on
+the gate as though he would have passed out.  At last he stopped
+and looked back to where she waited in the light, her face set
+immovably, commandingly, toward him.  Then he came back and stood
+before her.
+
+The moon, now sinking low, shone full on his face, pale, sad, very
+quiet; and into his eyes, mournful as she had never known any eyes
+to be.  He had taken off his hat and held it in his hand, and a
+light wind blew his thick hair about his forehead and temples.
+She, looking at him with senses preternaturally aroused, afterwards
+remembered all this.
+
+Before he began to speak he saw rush over her face a look of final
+entreaty that he would not strike her too cruel a blow.  This, when
+he had ceased speaking, was succeeded by the expression of one who
+has received a shock beyond all imagination.  Thus they stood
+looking into each other's eyes; then she shrank back and started
+toward the house.
+
+He sprang after her.
+
+"You are leaving me!" he cried horribly.
+
+She walked straight on, neither quickening nor slackening her pace
+nor swerving, although his body began unsteadily to intercept hers.
+
+He kept beside her.
+
+"Don't!  Isabel!" he prayed out of his agony.  "Don't leave me like
+this--!"
+
+She walked on and reached the steps of the veranda.  Crying out in
+his longing he threw his arms around her and held her close.
+
+"You must not! You shall not!  Do you know what you are doing,
+Isabel?"
+
+She made not the least reply, not the least effort to extricate
+herself.  But she closed her eyes and shuddered and twisted her
+body away from him as a bird of the air bends its neck and head as
+far as possible from a repulsive captor; and like the heart of such
+a bird, he could feel the throbbing of her heart.
+
+Her mute submission to his violence stung him: he let her go.  She
+spread out her arms as though in a rising flight of her nature and
+the shawl, tossed backward from her shoulders, fell to the ground:
+it was as if she cast off the garment he had touched.  Then she
+went quickly up the steps.  Before she could reach the door he
+confronted her again; he pressed his back against it.  She
+stretched out her hand and rang the bell.  He stepped aside very
+quickly--proudly.  She entered, closing and locking noiselessly the
+door that no sound might reach the servant she had summoned.  As
+she did so she heard him try the knob and call to her in an
+undertone of last reproach and last entreaty:
+
+"_Isabel!--Isabel!--Isabel_!"
+
+Hurrying through the hall, she ran silently up the stairs to her
+room and shut herself in.
+
+Her first feeling was joy that she was there safe from him and from
+every one else for the night.  Her instant need was to be alone.
+It was this feeling also that caused her to go on tiptoe around the
+room and draw down the blinds, as though the glimmering windows
+were large eyes peering at her with intrusive wounding stare.  Then
+taking her position close to a front window, she listened.  He was
+walking slowly backward and forward on the pavement reluctantly,
+doubtfully; finally he passed through the gate.  As it clanged
+heavily behind him, Isabel pressed her hands convulsively to her
+heart as though it also had gates which had closed, never to reopen.
+
+Then she lighted the gas-jets beside the bureau and when she caught
+sight of herself the thought came how unchanged she looked.  She
+stood there, just as she had stood before going down to supper,
+nowhere a sign of all the deep displacement and destruction that
+had gone on within.
+
+But she said to herself that what he had told her would reveal
+itself in time.  It would lie in the first furrows deepening down
+her cheeks; it would be the earliest frost of years upon her hair.
+
+A long while she sat on the edge of the couch in the middle of the
+room under the brilliant gaslight, her hands forgotten in her lap,
+her brows arched high, her eyes on the floor.  Then her head
+beginning to ache, a new sensation for her, she thought she should
+bind a wet handkerchief to it as she had often done for her aunt;
+but the water which the maid had placed in the room had become
+warm.  She must go down to the ewer in the hall.  As she did so,
+she recollected her shawl.
+
+It was lying on the wet grass where it had fallen.  There was a
+half-framed accusing thought that he might have gone for it; but
+she put the thought away; the time had passed for courtesies from
+him.  When she stooped for the shawl, an owl flew viciously at her,
+snapping its bill close to her face and stirring the air with its
+wings.  Unnerved, she ran back into the porch, but stopped there
+ashamed and looking kindly toward the tree in which it made its
+home.
+
+An old vine of darkest green had wreathed itself about the pillars
+of the veranda on that side; and it was at a frame-like opening in
+the massive foliage of this that the upper part of her pure white
+figure now stood revealed in the last low, silvery, mystical light.
+The sinking of the moon was like a great death on the horizon,
+leaving the pall of darkness, the void of infinite loss.
+
+She hung upon this far spectacle of nature with sad intensity,
+figuring from it some counterpart of the tragedy taking place
+within her own mind.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Isabel slept soundly, the regular habit of healthy years being too
+firmly entrenched to give way at once.  Meanwhile deep changes were
+wrought out in her.
+
+When we fall asleep, we do not lay aside the thoughts of the day,
+as the hand its physical work; nor upon awakening return to the
+activity of these as it to the renewal of its toil, finding them
+undisturbed.  Our most piercing insight yields no deeper conception
+of life than that of perpetual building and unbuilding; and during
+what we call our rest, it is often most active in executing its
+inscrutable will.  All along the dark chimneys of the brain,
+clinging like myriads of swallows deep-buried and slumbrous in
+quiet and in soot, are the countless thoughts which lately winged
+the wide heaven of conscious day.  Alike through dreaming and
+through dreamless hours Life moves among these, handling and
+considering each of the unredeemable multitude; and when morning
+light strikes the dark chimneys again and they rush forth, some
+that entered young have matured; some of the old have become
+infirm; many of which have dropped in singly issue as companies;
+and young broods flutter forth, unaccountable nestlings of a night,
+which were not in yesterday's blue at all.  Then there are the
+missing--those that went in with the rest at nightfall but were
+struck from the walls forever.  So all are altered, for while we
+have slept we have still been subject to that on-moving energy of
+the world which incessantly renews us yet transmutes us--double
+mystery of our permanence and our change.
+
+It was thus that nature dealt with Isabel on this night: hours of
+swift difficult transition from her former life to that upon which
+she was now to enter.  She fell asleep overwhelmed amid the ruins
+of the old; she awoke already engaged with the duties of the new.
+At sundown she was a girl who had never confessed her love; at
+sunrise she was a woman who had discarded the man she had just
+accepted.  Rising at once and dressing with despatch, she entered
+upon preparations for completing her spiritual separation from
+Rowan in every material way.
+
+The books he had lent her--these she made ready to return this
+morning.  Other things, also, trifles in themselves but until now
+so freighted with significance.  Then his letters and notes, how
+many, how many they were!  Thus ever about her rooms she moved on
+this mournful occupation until the last thing had been disposed of
+as either to be sent back or to be destroyed.
+
+And then while Isabel waited for breakfast to be announced, always
+she was realizing how familiar seemed Rowan's terrible confession,
+already lying far from her across the fields of memory--with a path
+worn deep between it and herself as though she had been traversing
+the distance for years; so old can sorrow grow during a little
+sleep.  When she went down they were seated as she had left them
+the evening before, grandmother, aunt, cousin; and they looked up
+with the same pride and fondness.  But affection has so different a
+quality in the morning.  Then the full soundless rides which come
+in at nightfall have receded; and in their stead is the glittering
+beach with thin waves that give no rest to the ear or to the
+shore--thin noisy edge of the deeps of the soul.
+
+This fresh morning mood now ruled them; no such wholesome relief
+had come to her.  So that their laughter and high spirits jarred
+upon her strangely.  She had said to herself upon leaving them the
+evening before that never again could they be the same to her or
+she the same to them.  But then she had expected to return isolated
+by incommunicable happiness; now she had returned isolated by
+incommunicable grief.  Nevertheless she glided Into her seat with
+feigned cheerfulness, taking a natural part in their conversation;
+and she rose at last, smiling with the rest.
+
+But she immediately quitted the house, eager to be out of doors
+surrounded by things that she loved but that could not observe her
+or question her in return--alone with things that know not evil.
+
+These were the last days of May.  The rush of Summer had already
+carried it far northward over the boundaries of Spring, and on this
+Sunday morning it filled the grounds of Isabel's home with early
+warmth.  Quickened by the heat, summoned by the blue, drenched with
+showers and dews, all things which have been made repositories of
+the great presence of Life were engaged in realizing the utmost
+that it meant to them.
+
+It was in the midst of this splendor of light and air, fragrance,
+colors, shapes, movements, melodies and joys that Isabel, the
+loftiest receptacle of life among them all, soon sat in a secluded
+spot, motionless and listless with her unstanched and desperate
+wound.  Everything seemed happy but herself; the very brilliancy of
+the day only deepened the shadow under which she brooded.  As she
+had slipped away from the house, she would soon have escaped from
+the garden had there been any further retreat.
+
+It was not necessary long to wait for one.  Borne across the brown
+roofs and red chimneys of the town and exploding in the crystal air
+above her head like balls of mellow music, came the sounds of the
+first church bells, the bells of Christ Church.
+
+They had never conveyed other meaning to her than that proclaimed
+by the town clock: they sounded the hour.  She had been too
+untroubled during her young life to understand their aged argument
+and invitation.
+
+Held In the arms of her father, when a babe, she had been duly
+christened.  His death had occurred soon afterwards, then her
+mother's.  Under the nurture of a grandmother to whom religion was
+a convenience and social form, she had received the strictest
+ceremonial but in no wise any spiritual training.  The first
+conscious awakening of this beautiful unearthly sense had not taken
+place until the night of her confirmation--a wet April evening when
+the early green of the earth was bowed to the ground, and the
+lilies-of-the-valley in the yard had chilled her fingers as she had
+plucked them (chosen flower of her consecration); she and they but
+rising alike into their higher lives out of the same mysterious
+Mother.
+
+That night she had knelt among the others at the chancel and the
+bishop who had been a friend of her father's, having approached her
+in the long line of young and old, had laid his hands the more
+softly for his memories upon her brow with the impersonal prayer:
+
+"_Defend, O Lord, this thy child with thy heavenly grace, that she
+may continue thine forever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit
+more and more, until she come unto thy Everlasting Kingdom_."
+
+For days afterwards a steady radiance seemed to Isabel to rest upon
+her wherever she went, shed straight from Eternity.  She had
+avoided her grandmother, secluded herself from the closest
+companions, been very thoughtful.
+
+Years had elapsed since.  But no experience of the soul is ever
+wasted or effaceable; and as the sound of the bells now reached her
+across the garden, they reawoke the spiritual impulses which had
+stirred within her at confirmation.  First heard whispering then,
+the sacred annunciation now more eloquently urged that in her
+church, the hour of real need being come, she would find refuge,
+help, more than earthly counsellor.
+
+She returned unobserved to the house and after quick simple
+preparation, was on her way.
+
+When she slipped shrinkingly into her pew, scarce any one had
+arrived.  Several women in mourning were there and two or three
+aged men.  It is the sorrowful and the old who head the human host
+in its march toward Paradise: Youth and Happiness loiter far behind
+and are satisfied with the earth.  Isabel looked around with a
+poignant realization of the broken company over into which she had
+so swiftly crossed.
+
+She had never before been in the church when it was empty.  How
+hushed and solemn it waited in its noonday twilight--the Divine
+already there, faithful keeper of the ancient compact; the human
+not yet arrived.  Here indeed was the refuge she had craved; here
+the wounded eye of the soul could open unhurt and unafraid; and she
+sank to her knees with a quick prayer of the heart, scarce of the
+lips, for Isabel knew nothing about prayer in her own words--that
+she might have peace of mind during these guarded hours: there
+would be so much time afterwards in which to remember--so many
+years in which to remember!
+
+How still it was!  At first she started at every sound: the barely
+audible opening and shutting of a pew door by some careful hand;
+the grating of wheels on the cobblestones outside as a carriage was
+driven to the entrance; the love-calls of sparrows building in the
+climbing oak around the Gothic windows.
+
+Soon, however, her ear became sealed to all outward disturbance.
+She had fled to the church, driven by many young impulses, but
+among them was the keen hope that her new Sorrow, which had begun
+to follow her everywhere since she awoke, would wait outside when
+she entered those doors: so dark a spirit would surely not stalk
+behind her into the very splendor of the Spotless.  But as she now
+let her eyes wander down the isle to the chancel railing where she
+had knelt at confirmation, where bridal couples knelt in receiving
+the benediction, Isabel felt that this new Care faced her from
+there as from its appointed shrine; she even fancied that in effect
+it addressed to her a solemn warning:
+
+"Isabel, think not to escape me in this place!  It is here that
+Rowan must seem to you most unworthy and most false; to have
+wronged you most cruelly.  For it was here, at this altar, that you
+had expected to kneel beside him and be blessed in your marriage.
+In years to come, sitting where you now sit, you may live to see
+him kneel here with another, making her his wife.  But for you,
+Isabel, this spot must ever mean the renunciation of marriage, the
+bier of love.  Then do not think to escape me here, me, who am
+Remembrance."
+
+And Isabel, as though a command had been laid upon her, with her
+eyes fixed on the altar over which the lights of the stained glass
+windows were joyously playing, gave herself up to memories of all
+the innocent years that she had known Rowan and of the blind years
+that she had loved him.
+
+She was not herself aware that marriage was the only sacrament of
+religion that had ever possessed interest for her.  Recollection
+told her no story of how even as a child she had liked to go to the
+crowded church with other children and watch the procession of the
+brides--all mysterious under their white veils, and following one
+and another so closely during springs and autumns that in truth
+they were almost a procession.  Or with what excitement she had
+watched each walk out, leaning on the arm of the man she had chosen
+and henceforth to be called his in ail things to the end while the
+loud crash of the wedding march closed their separate pasts with a
+single melody.
+
+But there were mothers in the church who, attracted by the child's
+expression, would say to each other a little sadly perhaps, that
+love and marriage were destined to be the one overshadowing or
+overshining experience in life to this most human and poetic soul.
+
+After she had learned of Rowan's love for her and had begun to
+return his love, the altar had thenceforth become the more personal
+symbol of their destined happiness.  Every marriage that she
+witnessed bound her more sacredly to him.  Only a few months before
+this, at the wedding of the Osborns--Kate being her closest friend,
+and George Osborn being Rowan's--he and she had been the only
+attendants; and she knew how many persons in the church were
+thinking that they might be the next to plight their vows; with
+crimsoning cheeks she had thought it herself.
+
+Now there returned before Isabel's eyes the once radiant procession
+of the brides--but how changed!  And bitter questioning she
+addressed to each!  Had any such confession been made to any one of
+them--either before marriage or afterwards--by the man she had
+loved?  Was it for some such reason that one had been content to
+fold her hands over her breast before the birth of her child?  Was
+this why another lived on, sad young wife, motherless?  Was this
+why in the town there were women who refused to marry at all?  So
+does a little knowledge of evil move backward and darken for us
+even the bright years in which it had no place.
+
+The congregation were assembling rapidly.  Among those who passed
+further down were several of the girls of Isabel's set.  How fresh
+and sweet they looked as they drifted gracefully down the aisles
+this summer morning!  How light-hearted!  How far away from her in
+her new wretchedness!  Some, after they were seated, glanced back
+with a smile.  She avoided their eyes.
+
+A little later the Osborns entered, the bride and groom of a few
+months before.  Their pew was immediately in front of hers.  Kate
+wore mourning for her mother.  As she seated herself, she lifted
+her veil halfway, turned and slipped a hand over the pew into
+Isabel's.  The tremulous pressure of the fingers spoke of present
+trouble; and as Isabel returned it with a quick response of her
+own, a tear fell from the hidden eyes.
+
+The young groom's eyes were also red and swollen, but for other
+reasons; and he sat in the opposite end of the pew as far as
+possible from his wife's side.  When she a few moments later leaned
+toward him with timidity and hesitation, offering him an open
+prayer-book, he took it coldly and laid it between them on the
+cushion.  Isabel shuddered: her new knowledge of evil so cruelly
+opened her eyes to the full understanding of so much.
+
+Little rime was left for sympathy with Kate.  Nearer the pulpit was
+another pew from which her thoughts had never been wholly
+withdrawn.  She had watched it with the fascination of abhorrence;
+and once, feeling that she could not bear to see him come in with
+his mother and younger brother, she had started to leave the
+church.  But just then her grandmother had bustled richly in,
+followed by her aunt; and more powerful with Isabel already than
+any other feeling was the wish to bury her secret--Rowan's
+secret--in the deepest vault of consciousness, to seal it up
+forever from the knowledge of the world.
+
+The next moment what she so dreaded took place.  He walked quietly
+down the aisle as usual, opened the pew for his mother and brother
+with the same courtesy, and the three bent their heads together in
+prayer.
+
+"Grandmother," she whispered quickly, "will you let me pass!  I am
+not very well, I think I shall go home."
+
+Her grandmother, not heeding and with her eyes fixed upon the same
+pew, whispered in return;
+
+"The Merediths are here," and continued her satisfying scrutiny of
+persons seated around.
+
+Isabel herself had no sooner suffered the words to escape than she
+regretted them.  Resolved to control herself from this time on, she
+unclasped her prayer-book, found the appointed reading, and
+directed her thoughts to the service soon to begin.
+
+It was part of the confession of David that reached her, sounding
+across how many centuries.  Wrung from him who had been a young man
+himself and knew what a young man is.  With time enough afterwards
+to think of this as soldier, priest, prophet, care-worn king, and
+fallible judge over men--with time enough to think of what his days
+of nature had been when he tended sheep grazing the pastures of
+Bethlehem or abided solitary with the flock by night, lowly
+despised work, under the herded stars.  Thus converting a young
+man's memories into an older man's remorses.
+
+As she began to read, the first outcry gripped and cramped her
+heart like physical pain; where all her life she had been repeating
+mere words, she now with eyes tragically opened discerned forbidden
+meanings:
+
+"_Thou art about my path and about my bed . . .  the darkness is no
+darkness to thee. . . .  Thine eyes did see my substance being yet
+imperfect . . .  look well if there be any wickedness in me; and
+lead me in the way everlasting . . .  haste thee unto me . . .
+when I cry unto thee.  O let not my heart be inclined to an evil
+thing_."
+
+She was startled by a general movement throughout the congregation.
+The minister had advanced to the reading desk and begun to read:
+
+"_I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him: Father, I
+have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to
+be called thy son_."
+
+Ages stretched their human wastes between these words of the New
+Testament and those other words of the Old; but the parable of
+Christ really finished the prayer of David: in each there was the
+same young prodigal--the ever-falling youth of humanity.
+
+Another moment and the whole congregation knelt and began the
+confession.  Isabel also from long custom sank upon her knees and
+started to repeat the words, "We have erred and strayed from thy
+ways like lost sheep."  Then she stopped.  She declined to make
+that confession with Rowan or to join in any service that he shared
+and appropriated.
+
+The Commandments now remained and for the first time she shrank
+from them as being so awful and so near.  All our lives we placidly
+say over to ourselves that man is mortal; but not until death
+knocks at the threshold and enters do we realize the terrors of our
+mortality.  All our lives we repeat with dull indifference that man
+is erring; but only when the soul most loved and trusted has gone
+astray, do we begin to realize the tragedy of human imperfection.
+So Isabel had been used to go through the service, with bowed head
+murmuring at each response, "_Lord have mercy upon us and incline
+our hearts to keep this law_."
+
+But the laws themselves had been no more to her than pious archaic
+statements, as far removed as the cherubim, the candlesticks and
+the cedar of Solomon's temple.  If her thoughts had been forced to
+the subject, she would have perhaps admitted the necessity of these
+rules for men and women ages ago.  Some one of them might have
+meant much to a girl in those dim days: to Rebecca pondering who
+knows what temptation at the well; to Ruth tempted who knows how in
+the corn and thinking of Boaz and the barn; to Judith plotting in
+the camp; to Jephtha's daughter out on the wailing mountains.
+
+But to-day, sitting in an Episcopal church in the closing years of
+the nineteenth century, holding a copy of those old laws, and
+thinking of Rowan as the breaker of the greatest of them, Isabel
+for the first time awoke to realization of how close they are
+still--those voices from the far land of Shinar; how all the men
+and women around her in that church still waged their moral battles
+over those few texts of righteousness; how the sad and sublime
+wandering caravans of the whole race forever pitch their nightly
+tents beneath that same mountain of command.
+
+Thick and low sounded the response of the worshippers.  She could
+hear her grandmother's sonorous voice, a mingling of worldly
+triumph and indifference; her aunt's plaintive and aggrieved.  She
+could hear Kate's needy and wounded.  In imagination she could hear
+his proud, noble mother's; his younger brother's.  Against the
+sound of his responses she closed all hearing; and there low on her
+knees, in the ear of Heaven itself, she recorded against him her
+unforgiveness and her dismissal forever.
+
+An organ melody followed, thrillingly sweet; and borne outward on
+it the beseeching of the All-Merciful:
+
+  "'Art thou weary, art thou languid,
+    Art thou sore distressed?
+  Come to me!' saith one; 'and, coming,
+    Be at rest!'"
+
+It was this hymn that brought her in a passion to her feet.
+
+With whatsoever other feelings she had sought the church, it was at
+least with the hope that it had a message for her.  She had indeed
+listened to a personal message, but it was a message delivered to
+the wrong person; for at every stage of the worship she, the
+innocent, had been forgotten and slighted; Rowan, the guilty, had
+been considered and comforted.  David had his like in mind and
+besought pardon for him; the prophet of old knew of a case like his
+and blessed him; the apostle centuries afterward looked on and did
+not condemn; Christ himself had in a way told the multitude the
+same story that Rowan had told her,--counselling forgiveness.  The
+very hymns of the church were on Rowan's side--every one gone in
+search of the wanderer.  For on this day Religion, universal mother
+of needy souls and a minister of all comforts, was in the mood to
+deal only with youth and human frailty.
+
+She rebelled.  It was like commanding her to dishonor a woman's
+strongest and purest instincts.  It called upon her to sympathize
+with the evil that had blighted her life.  And Rowan himself!--in
+her anger and suffering she could think of him in no other way than
+as enjoying this immortal chorus of anxiety on his account; as
+hearing it all with complacency and self-approval.  It had to her
+distorted imagination the effect of offering a reward to him for
+having sinned; he would have received no such attention had he
+remained innocent.
+
+With one act of complete revulsion she spurned it all: the moral
+casuistry that beguiled him, the church that cloaked him; spurned
+psalm and prophet and apostle, Christ and parable and song.
+
+"Grandmother," she whispered, "I shall not wait for the sermon."
+
+A moment later she issued from the church doors and took her way
+slowly homeward through the deserted streets, under the lonely blue
+of the unanswering sky.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The Conyers homestead was situated in a quiet street on the
+southern edge of the town.  All the houses in that block had been
+built by people of English descent near the close of the eighteenth
+or at the beginning of the nineteenth century.  Each was set apart
+from each by lawns, yards and gardens, and further screened by
+shrubs and vines in accordance with old English custom. Where they
+grew had once been the heart of a wilderness; and above each house
+stood a few old forest trees, indifferent guardsmen of the camping
+generations.
+
+The architects had given to the buildings good strong characters;
+the family living in each for a hundred years or more had long
+since imparted reputation.  Out of the windows girlish brides had
+looked on reddening springs and whitening winters until they had
+become silver-haired grandmothers themselves; then had looked no
+more; and succeeding eyes had watched the swift pageants of the
+earth, and the swifter pageants of mortal hope and passion.  Out of
+the front doors, sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons had gone away
+to the cotton and sugar and rice plantations of the South, to new
+farm lands of the West, to the professions in cities of the North.
+The mirrors within held long vistas of wavering forms and vanishing
+faces; against the walls of the rooms had beaten unremembered tides
+of strong and of gentle voices.  In the parlors what scenes of
+lights and music, sheen of satins, flashing of gems; in the dining
+rooms what feastings as in hale England, with all the robust humors
+of the warm land, of the warm heart.
+
+Near the middle of the block and shaded by forest trees, stood with
+its heirlooms and treasures the home of Isabel's grandmother. Known
+to be heiress to this though rich in her own right was Isabel
+herself, that grandmother's idol, the only one of its beautiful
+women remaining yet to be married; and to celebrate with
+magnificence in this house Isabel's marriage to Rowan Meredith had
+long been planned by the grandmother as the last scene of her own
+splendid social drama: having achieved that, she felt she should be
+willing to retire from the stage--and to play only behind the
+curtain.
+
+It was the middle of the afternoon of the same Sunday.  In the
+parlors extending along the eastern side of the house there was a
+single sound: the audible but healthful breathing of a sleeper
+lying on a sofa in the coolest corner.  It was Isabel's grandmother
+nearing the end of her customary nap.
+
+Sometimes there are households in which two members suggest the
+single canvas of a mediaeval painter, depicting scenes that
+represent a higher and a lower world: above may be peaks, clouds,
+sublimity, the Transfiguration; underneath, the pursuits and
+passions of local worldly life--some story of loaves and fishes and
+of a being possessed by a devil.  Isabel and her grandmother were
+related as parts of some such painting: the grandmother was the
+bottom of the canvas.
+
+In a little while she awoke and uncoiling her figure, rolled softly
+over on her back and stretched like some drowsy feline of the
+jungle; then sitting up with lithe grace she looked down at the
+print of her head on the pillow and deftly smoothed it out.  The
+action was characteristic: she was careful to hide the traces of
+her behavior, and the habit was so strong that it extended to
+things innocent as slumber.  Letting her hands drop to the sofa,
+she yawned and shook her head from side to side with that short
+laugh by which we express amusement at our own comfort and well-
+being.
+
+Beside the sofa, toe by toe and heel by heel, sat her slippers--the
+pads of this leopardess of the parlors.  She peered over and worked
+her nimble feet into these.  On a little table at the end of the
+sofa lay her glasses, her fan, and a small bell.  She passed her
+fingers along her temples in search of small disorders in the scant
+tufts of her hair, put on her glasses, and took the fan.  Then she
+glided across the room to one of the front windows, sat down and
+raised the blind a few inches in order to peep out: so the
+well-fed, well-fanged leopardess with lowered head gazes idly
+through her green leaves.
+
+It was very hot.  With her nostrils close to the opening In the
+shutters, she inhaled the heated air of the yard of drying grass.
+On the white window-sill just outside, a bronze wasp was whirling
+excitedly, that cautious stinger which never arrives until summer
+is sure.  The oleanders in the big green tubs looked wilted though
+abundantly watered that morning.
+
+She shot a furtive glance at the doors and windows of the houses
+across the street.  All were closed; and she formed her own
+pictures of how people inside were sleeping, lounging, idly reading
+until evening coolness should invite them again to the verandas and
+the streets.
+
+No one passed but gay strolling negroes. She was seventy years old,
+but her interest in life was insatiable; and it was in part,
+perhaps, the secret of her amazing vitality and youthfulness that
+her surroundings never bored her; she derived instant pleasure from
+the nearest spectacle, always exercising her powers humorously upon
+the world, never upon herself.  For lack of other entertainment she
+now fell upon these vulnerable figures, and began to criticise and
+to laugh at them: she did not have to descend far to reach this
+level.  Her undimmed eyes swept everything--walk, imitative
+manners, imitative dress.
+
+Suddenly she withdrew her face from the blinds; young Meredith had
+entered the gate and was coming up the pavement.  If anything could
+greatly have increased her happiness at this moment it would have
+been the sight of him.  He had been with Isabel until late the
+night before; he had attended morning service and afterward gone
+home with his mother and brother (she had watched the carriage as
+it rolled away down the street); he had returned at this unusual
+hour.  Such eagerness had her approval; and coupling it with
+Isabel's demeanor upon leaving the table the previous evening,
+never before so radiant with love, she felt that she had ground for
+believing the final ambition of her life near its fulfilment.
+
+As he advanced, the worldly passions other nature--the jungle
+passions--she had no others--saluted him with enthusiasm.  His head
+and neck and bearing, stature and figure, family and family
+history, house and lands--she inventoried them all once more and
+discovered no lack.   When he had rung the bell, she leaned back;
+in her chair and eavesdropped with sparkling eyes.
+
+"Is Miss Conyers at home?"
+
+The maid replied apologetically:
+
+"She wished to be excused to-day, Mr. Meredith."
+
+A short silence followed.  Then he spoke as a man long conscious of
+a peculiar footing:
+
+"Will you tell her Mr. Meredith would like to see her," and without
+waiting to be invited he walked into the library across the hall.
+
+She heard the maid go upstairs with hesitating step.
+
+Some time passed before she came down. She brought a note and
+handed it to him, saying with some embarrassment:
+
+"She asked me to give you this note, Mr. Meredith."
+
+Listening with sudden tenseness of attention, Mrs. Conyers heard
+him draw the sheet from the envelope and a moment later crush it.
+
+She placed her eyes against the shutters and watched him as he
+walked away; then she leaned back in her chair, thoughtful and
+surprised.  What was the meaning of this? The events of the day
+were rapidly reviewed: that Isabel had not spoken with her after
+breakfast; that she had gone to service at an unusual hour and had
+left the church before the sermon; that she had effaced herself at
+dinner and at once thereafter had gone up to her rooms, where she
+still remained.
+
+Returning to the sofa she lay down, having first rung her bell.
+When the maid appeared, she rubbed her eyelids and sat sleepily up
+as though just awakened: she remembered that she had eavesdropped,
+and the maid must be persuaded that she had not.  Guilt is a bad
+logician.
+
+"Where is your Miss Isabel?"
+
+"She is in her room, Miss Henrietta."
+
+"Go up and tell her that I say come down into the parlors: it is
+cooler down here. And ask her whether she'd like some sherbet.  And
+bring me some--bring it before you go."
+
+A few moments later the maid reentered with the sherbet.  She
+lifted the cut-glass dish from the silver waiter with soft purrings
+of the palate, and began to attack the minute snow mountain around
+the base and up the sides with eager jabs and stabs, depositing the
+spoonfuls upon a tongue as fresh as a child's.  Momentarily she
+forgot even her annoyance; food instantly absorbed and placated her
+as it does the carnivora.
+
+The maid reentered.
+
+"She says she doesn't wish any sherbet, Miss Henrietta."
+
+"Did she say she would come down?"
+
+"She did not say, Miss Henrietta."
+
+"Go back and tell her I'd like to see her: ask her to come down
+into the parlors." Then she hurried hack to the sherbet.  She
+wanted her granddaughter, but she wanted that first.
+
+Her thoughts ascended meantime to Isabel in the room above.  She
+finished the sherbet. She waited.  Impatience darkened to
+uneasiness and anger.  Still she waited; and her finger nails began
+to scratch audibly at the mahogany of her chair and a light to burn
+in the tawny eyes.
+
+
+In the room overhead Isabel's thoughts all this time were
+descending to her grandmother.  Before the message was delivered
+it had been her intention to go down.  Once she had even reached
+the head of the staircase; but then had faltered and shrunk
+back. When the message came, it rendered her less inclined to
+risk the interview. Coming at such an hour, that message was
+suspicious. She, moreover, naturally had learned to dread her
+grandmother's words when they looked most innocent.  Thus she,
+too, waited--lacking the resolution to descend.
+
+As she walked homeward from church she realized that she must take
+steps at once to discard Rowan as the duty of her social position.
+And here tangible perplexities instantly wove themselves across her
+path. Conscience had promptly arraigned him at the altar of
+religion.  It was easy to condemn him there.  And no one had the
+right to question that arraignment and that condemnation.  But
+public severance of all relations with him in her social world--how
+should she accomplish that and withhold her justification?
+
+Her own kindred would wish to understand the reason.  The branches
+of these scattered far and near were prominent each in its sphere,
+and all were intimately bound together by the one passion of
+clannish allegiance to the family past.  She knew that Rowan's
+attentions had continued so long and had been so marked, that
+her grandmother had accepted marriage between them as a foregone
+conclusion, and in letters had disseminated these prophecies
+through the family connection.  Other letters had even come back
+to Isabel, containing evidence only too plain that Rowan had
+been discussed and accepted in domestic councils.  Against all
+inward protests of delicacy, she had been forced to receive
+congratulations that in this marriage she would preserve the
+traditions of the family by bringing into it a man of good blood
+and of unspotted name; the two idols of all the far separated
+hearthstones.
+
+To the pride of all these relatives she added her own pride--the
+highest.  She was the last of the women in the direct line yet
+unwedded, and she was sensitive that her choice should not in honor
+and in worth fall short of the alliances that had preceded hers.
+Involved in this sense of pride she felt that she owed a duty to
+the generations who had borne her family name in this country and
+to the still earlier generations who had given it distinction in
+England--land of her womanly ideals.  To discard now without a word
+of explanation the man whose suit she had long been understood to
+favor would create wide disappointment and provoke keen question.
+
+Further difficulties confronted her from Rowan's side.  His own
+family and kindred were people strong and not to be trifled with,
+proud and conservative like her own. Corresponding resentments
+would be aroused among them, questions would be asked that had no
+answers.  She felt that her life in its most private and sacred
+relation would be publicly arraigned and have open judgment passed
+upon it by conflicting interests and passions--and that the mystery
+which contained her justification must also forever conceal it.
+
+Nevertheless Rowan must be discarded; she must act quickly and for
+the best.
+
+On the very threshold one painful necessity faced her: the reserve
+of years must be laid aside and her grandmother admitted to
+confidence in her plans.  Anything that she might do could not
+escape those watchful eyes long since grown impatient. Moreover
+despite differences of character, she and her grandmother had
+always lived together, and they must now stand together before
+their world in regard to this step.
+
+
+"Did you wish to see me about anything, grandmother?"
+
+Mrs. Conyers had not heard Isabel's quiet entrance.  She was at the
+window still: she turned softly in her chair and looked across the
+darkened room to where Isabel sat facing her--a barely discernible
+white figure.
+
+From any other member other family she would roughly have demanded
+the explanation she desired.  She was the mother of strong men
+(they were living far from her now), and even in his manhood no one
+of them had ever crossed her will without bearing away the scars of
+her anger, and always of her revenge.  But before this grandchild,
+whom she had reared from infancy, she felt the brute cowardice
+which is often the only tribute that a debased nature can pay to
+the incorruptible.  Her love must have its basis in some abject
+emotion: it took its origin from fear.
+
+An unforeseen incident, occurring when Isabel was yet a child and
+all but daily putting forth new growths of nature, rendered very
+clear even then the developing antagonism and prospective
+relationship of these two characters.  In a company of ladies the
+grandmother, drawing the conversation to herself, remarked with a
+suggestive laugh that as there were no men present she would tell a
+certain story.  "Grandmother," interposed Isabel, vaguely startled,
+"please do not say anything that you would not say before a man;"
+and for an instant, amid the hush, the child and the woman looked
+at each other like two repellent intelligences, accidentally
+meeting out of the heavens and the pit.
+
+This had been the first of a long series of antagonism and recoils,
+and as the child had matured, the purity and loftiness of her
+nature had by this very contact grown chilled toward austerity.
+Thus nature lends a gradual protective hardening to a tender
+surface during abrasion with a coarser thing.  It left Isabel more
+reserved with her grandmother than with any one else of all the
+persons who entered into her life.
+
+For this reason Mrs. Conyers now foresaw that this interview would
+be specially difficult.  She had never enjoyed Isabel's confidence
+in regard to her love affairs--and the girl had had her share of
+these; every attempt to gain it had been met by rebuffs so
+courteous but decisive that they had always wounded her pride and
+sometimes had lashed her to secret fury.
+
+
+"Did you wish to see me about anything, grandmother?"
+
+The reply came very quickly: "I wanted to know whether you were
+well."
+
+"I am perfectly well.  Why did you think of asking?"
+
+"You did not seem well in church."
+
+"I had forgotten.  I was not well in church."
+
+Mrs. Conyers bent over and drew a chair in front of her own.  She
+wished to watch Isabel's face.  She had been a close student of
+women's faces--and of many men's.
+
+"Sit here.  There is a breeze through the window."
+
+"Thank you.  I'd rather sit here."
+
+Another pause ensued.
+
+"Did you ever know the last of May to be so hot?"
+
+"I cannot remember now."
+
+"Can you imagine any one calling on such an afternoon?"
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"I am glad no one has been here.  While I was asleep I thought I
+heard the bell."
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"You were wise not to stay for the sermon."  Mrs. Conyers' voice
+trembled with anger as she passed on and on, seeking a penetrable
+point for conversation.  "I do not believe in using the church to
+teach young men that they should blame their fathers for their own
+misdeeds.  If I have done any good in this world, I do not expect
+my father and mother to be rewarded for it in the next; if I have
+done wrong, I do not expect my children to be punished.  I shall
+claim the reward and I shall stand the punishment, and that is the
+end of it.  Teaching young men to blame their parents because they
+are prodigals is nonsense, and injurious nonsense.  I hope you do
+not imagine," she said, with a stroke of characteristic coarseness,
+"that you get any of your faults from me."
+
+"I have never held you responsible, grandmother."
+
+Mrs. Conyers could wait no longer.
+
+"Isabel," she asked sharply, "why did you not see Rowan when he
+called a few minutes ago?"
+
+"Grandmother, you know that I do not answer such questions."
+
+How often in years gone by such had been Isabel's answer!  The
+grandmother awaited it now.  To her surprise Isabel after some
+moments of hesitation replied without resentment:
+
+"I did not wish to see him."
+
+There was a momentary pause; then this unexpected weakness was met
+with a blow.
+
+"You were eager enough to see him last night."
+
+"I can only hope," murmured Isabel aloud though wholly to herself,
+"that I did not make this plain to him."
+
+"But what has happened since?"
+
+Nothing was said for a while.  The two women had been unable to see
+each other clearly.  A moment later Isabel crossed the room quickly
+and taking the chair in front of her grandmother, searched that
+treacherous face imploringly for something better in it than she
+had ever seen there.  Could she trust the untrustworthy?  Would
+falseness itself for once be true?
+
+"Grandmother," she said, and her voice betrayed how she shrank from
+her own words, "before you sent for me I was about to come down.  I
+wished to speak with you about a very delicate matter, a very
+serious matter.  You have often reproached me for not taking you
+into my confidence.  I am going to give you my confidence now."
+
+At any other moment the distrust and indignity contained in the
+tone of this avowal would not have escaped Mrs. Conyers. But
+surprise riveted her attention. Isabel gave her no time further:
+
+"A thing has occurred in regard to which we must act together for
+our own sakes--on account of the servants in the house--on account
+of our friends, so that there may be no gossip, no scandal."
+
+Nothing at times so startles us as our own words.  As the girl
+uttered the word "scandal," she rose frightened as though it faced
+her and began to walk excitedly backward and forward.  Scandal had
+never touched her life.  She had never talked scandal; had never
+thought scandal. Dwelling under the same roof with it as the master
+passion of a life and forced to encounter it in so many repulsive
+ways, she had needed little virtue to regard it with abhorrence.
+
+Now she perceived that it might be perilously near herself.  When
+all questions were asked and no reasons were given, would not the
+seeds of gossip fly and sprout and bear their kinds about her path:
+and the truth could never be told.  She must walk on through the
+years, possibly misjudged, giving no sign.
+
+After a while she returned to her seat.
+
+"You must promise me one thing," she said with white and trembling
+lips.  "I give you my confidence as far as I can; beyond that I
+will not go.  And you shall not ask.  You are not to try to find
+out from me or any one else more than I tell you.  You must give me
+your word of honor!"
+
+She bent forward and looked her grandmother wretchedly in the eyes.
+
+Mrs. Conyers pushed her chair back as though a hand had struck her
+rudely in the face.
+
+"Isabel," she cried, "do you forget to whom you are speaking?"
+
+"Ah, grandmother," exclaimed Isabel, reckless of her words by
+reason of suffering, "it is too late for us to be sensitive about
+our characters."
+
+Mrs. Conyers rose with insulted pride: "Do not come to me with your
+confidence until you can give it."
+
+Isabel recrossed the room and sank into the seat she had quitted.
+Mrs. Conyers remained standing a moment and furtively resumed hers.
+
+Whatever her failings had been--one might well say her
+crimes--Isabel had always treated her from the level of her own
+high nature.  But Mrs. Conyers had accepted this dutiful demeanor
+of the years as a tribute to her own virtues.  Now that Isabel, the
+one person whose respect she most desired, had openly avowed deep
+distrust of her, the shock was as real as anything life could have
+dealt.
+
+She glanced narrowly at Isabel: the girl had forgotten her.
+
+Mrs. Conyers could shift as the wind shifts; and one of her
+characteristic resources in life had been to conquer by feigning
+defeat: she often scaled her mountains by seeming to take a path
+which led to the valleys.  She now crossed over and sat down with a
+peace-making laugh.  She attempted to take Isabel's hand, but it
+was quickly withdrawn.  Fearing that this movement indicated a
+receding confidence Mrs. Conyers ignored the rebuff and pressed her
+inquiry in a new, entirely practical, and pleasant tone:
+
+"What is the meaning of all this, Isabel?"
+
+Isabel turned upon her again a silent, searching, wretched look of
+appeal.
+
+Mrs. Conyers realized that it could not be ignored: "You know that
+I promise anything.  What did I ever refuse you?"
+
+Isabel sat up but still remained silent. Mrs. Conyers noted the
+indecision and shrugged her shoulders with a careless dismissal of
+the whole subject:
+
+"Let us drop the subject, then.  Do you think it will rain?"
+
+"Grandmother, Rowan must not come here any more."  Isabel stopped
+abruptly. "That is all."
+
+. . . "I merely wanted you to understand this at once.  We must not
+invite him here any more."
+
+. . . "If we meet him at the houses of our friends, we must do what
+we can not to be discourteous to them if he is their guest."
+
+. . . "If we meet Rowan alone anywhere, we must let him know that
+he is not on the list of our acquaintances any longer.  That is
+all."
+
+Isabel wrung her hands.
+
+Mrs. Conyers had more than one of the traits of the jungle: she
+knew when to lie silent and how to wait.  She waited longer now,
+but Isabel had relapsed into her own thoughts.  For her the
+interview was at an end; to Mrs. Conyers it was beginning. Isabel's
+words and manner had revealed a situation far more serious than she
+had believed to exist.  A sense of personal slights and wounds gave
+way to apprehension.  The need of the moment was not passion and
+resentment, but tact and coolness and apparent unconcern.
+
+"What is the meaning of this, Isabel?" She spoke in a tone of frank
+and cordial interest as though the way were clear at last for the
+establishment of complete confidence between them.
+
+"Grandmother, did you not give me your word?" said Isabel, sternly.
+Mrs. Conyers grew indignant: "But remember in what a light you
+place me!  I did not expect you to require me to be unreasonable
+and unjust. Do you really wish me to be kept in the dark in a
+matter like this?  Must I refuse to speak to Rowan and have no
+reason? Close the house to him and not know why? Cut him in public
+without his having offended me?  If he should ask why I treat him
+in this way, what am I to tell him?"
+
+"He will never ask," said Isabel with mournful abstraction.
+
+"But tell _me_ why you wish me to act so strangely."
+
+"Believe that I have reasons."
+
+"But ought I not to know what these reasons are if I must act upon
+them as though they were my own?"
+
+Isabel saw the stirrings of a mind that brushed away honor as an
+obstacle and that was not to be quieted until it had been
+satisfied.  She sank back into her chair, saying very simply with
+deep disappointment and with deeper sorrow:
+
+"Ah, I might have known!"
+
+Mrs. Conyers pressed forward with gathering determination:
+
+"What happened last night?"
+
+"I might have known that it was of no use," repeated Isabel.
+
+Mrs. Conyers waited several moments and then suddenly changing her
+course feigned the dismissal of the whole subject: "I shall pay no
+attention to this.  I shall continue to treat Rowan as I have
+always treated him."
+
+Isabel started up: "Grandmother, if you do, you will regret it."
+Her voice rang clear with hidden meaning and with hidden warning.
+
+It fell upon the ear of the other with threatening import.  For her
+there seemed to be in it indeed the ruin of a cherished plan, the
+loss of years of hope and waiting. Before such a possibility tact
+and coolness and apparent unconcern were swept away by passion,
+brutal and unreckoning: "Do you mean that you have refused Rowan?
+Or have you found out at last that he has no intention of marrying
+you--has never had any?"
+
+Isabel rose: "Excuse me," she said proudly and turned away.  She
+reached the door and pausing there put out one of her hands against
+the lintel as if with weakness and raised the other to her forehead
+as though with bewilderment and indecision.
+
+Then she came unsteadily back, sank upon her knees, and hid her
+face in her grandmother's lap, murmuring through her fingers: "I
+have been rude to you, grandmother!  Forgive me!  I do not know
+what I have been saying.  But any little trouble between us is
+nothing, nothing! And do as I beg you--let this be sacred and
+secret!  And leave everything to me!"
+
+She crept closer and lifting her face looked up into her
+grandmother's.  She shrank back shuddering from what she saw there,
+burying her face in her hands; then rising she hurried from the
+room,
+
+Mrs. Conyers sat motionless.
+
+Was it true then that the desire and the work of years for this
+marriage had come to nothing?  And was it true that this
+grandchild, for whom she had planned and plotted, did not even
+respect her and could tell her so to her face?
+
+Those insulting words rang in her ears still: "_You must give me
+your word of honor . . . it is too late to be sensitive about our
+characters_."
+
+She sat perfectly still: and in the parlors there might have been
+heard at intervals the scratching of her sharp finger nails against
+the wood of the chair.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The hot day ended.  Toward sunset a thunder-shower drenched the
+earth, and the night had begun cool and refreshing.
+
+Mrs. Conyers was sitting on the front veranda, waiting for
+her regular Sunday evening visitor.  She was no longer the
+self-revealed woman of the afternoon, but seemingly an affable,
+harmless old lady of the night on the boundary of her social world.
+She was dressed with unfailing: elegance--and her taste lavished
+itself especially on black silk and the richest lace.  The shade of
+heliotrope satin harmonized with the yellowish folds of her hair.
+Her small, warm, unwrinkled hands were without rings, being too
+delicately beautiful.  In one she held a tiny fan, white and soft
+like the wing of a moth; on her lap lay a handkerchief as light as
+smoke or a web of gossamer.
+
+She rocked softly.  She unfolded and folded the night-moth fan
+softly.  She touched the handkerchief to her rosy youthful lips
+softly.  The south wind blew in her face softly.  Everything about
+her was softness, all her movements were delicate and refined.
+Even the early soft beauty of her figure was not yet lost.  (When a
+girl of nineteen, she had measured herself by the proportions of
+the ideal Venus; and the ordeal had left her with a girdle of
+golden reflections.)
+
+But if some limner had been told the whole truth of what she was
+and been requested to imagine a fitting body for such a soul, he
+would never have painted Mrs. Conyers as she looked.  Nature is not
+frank in her characterizations, lest we remain infants in
+discernment.  She allows foul to appear fair, and bids us become
+educated in the hardy virtues of insight and prudence.  Education
+as yet had advanced but little; and the deepest students in the
+botany of women have been able to describe so few kinds that no
+man, walking through the perfumed enchanted wood, knows at what
+moment he may step upon or take hold of some unknown deadly variety.
+
+As the moments passed, she stopped rocking and peered toward the
+front gate under the lamp-post, saying to herself:
+
+"He is late."
+
+At last the gate was gently opened and gently shut.
+
+"Ah," she cried, leaning back in her chair smiling and satisfied.
+Then she sat up rigid.  A change passed over her such as comes over
+a bird of prey when it draws its feathers in flat against its body
+to lessen friction in the swoop.  She unconsciously closed the
+little fan, the little handkerchief disappeared somewhere.
+
+As the gate had opened and closed, on the bricks of the pavement
+was heard only the tap of his stout walking-stick; for he was gouty
+and wore loose low shoes of the softest calfskin, and these made no
+noise except the slurring sound of slippers.
+
+Once he stopped, and planting his cane far out in the grass,
+reached stiffly over and with undisguised ejaculations of
+discomfort snipped off a piece of heliotrope in one of the tubs of
+oleander.   He shook away the raindrops and drew it through his
+buttonhole, and she could hear his low "Ah! ah!  ah!" as he thrust
+his nose down into it.
+
+"There's nothing like it," he said aloud as though he had
+consenting listeners, "it outsmells creation."
+
+He stopped at another tub of flowers where a humming-bird moth was
+gathering honey and jabbed his stick sharply at it, taking care
+that the stick did not reach perilously near.
+
+"Get away, sir," he said; "you've had enough, sir.  Get away, sir."
+
+Having reached a gravel walk that diverged from the pavement, he
+turned off and went over to a rose-bush and walked around tapping
+the roses on their heads as he counted them--cloth-of-gold roses.
+"Very well done," he said, "a large family--a good sign."
+
+Thus he loitered along his way with leisure to enjoy all the chance
+trifles that gladdened it; for he was one of the old who return at
+the end of life to the simple innocent things that pleased them as
+children.
+
+She had risen and advanced to the edge of the veranda.
+
+"Did you come to see me or did you come to see my flowers?" she
+called out charmingly.
+
+"I came to see the flowers, madam," he called back.  "Most of all,
+the century plant: how is she?"
+
+She laughed delightedly: "Still harping on my age, I see."
+
+"Still harping, but harping your praises.  Century plants are not
+necessarily old: they are all young at the beginning!  I merely
+meant you'd be blooming at a hundred."
+
+"You are a sly old fox," she retorted with a spirit.  "You give a
+woman a dig on her age and then try to make her think it a
+compliment."
+
+"I gave myself a dig that time: the remark had to be excavated," he
+said aloud but as though confidentially to himself.  Open
+disrespect marked his speech and manner with her always; and sooner
+or later she exacted full punishment.
+
+Meantime he had reached the steps.  There he stopped and taking off
+his straw hat looked up and shook it reproachfully at the heavens.
+
+"What a night, what a night!" he exclaimed.  "And what an injustice
+to a man wading up to his knees in life's winters."
+
+"How do you do," she said impatiently, always finding it hard to
+put up with his lingerings and delays.  "Are you coming in?"
+
+"Thank you, I believe I am.  But no, wait.  I'll not come in until
+I have made a speech.  It never occurred to me before and it will
+never again.  It's now or never.
+
+"The life of man should last a single year.  He should have one
+spring for birth and childhood, for play and growth, for the ending
+of his dreams and the beginning of his love.  One summer for strife
+and toil and passion.  One autumn in which to gather the fruits of
+his deeds and to live upon them, be they sweet or bitter.  One
+winter in which to come to an end and wrap himself with resignation
+in the snows of nature.  Thus he should never know the pain of
+seeing spring return when there was nothing within himself to bud
+or be sown.  Summer would never rage and he have no conflicts nor
+passions.  Autumn would not pass and he with idle hands neither
+give nor gather.  And winter should not end without extinguishing
+his tormenting fires, and leaving him the peace of eternal cold."
+
+"Really," she cried, "I have never heard anything as fine as that
+since I used to write compositions at boarding-school."
+
+"It may be part of one of mine!" he replied.  "We forget ourselves,
+you know, and then we think we are original."
+
+"Second childhood," she suggested.  "Are you really coming in?"
+
+"I am, madam," he replied.  "And guided by your suggestion, I come
+as a second child."
+
+When he had reached the top step, he laid his hat and cane on the
+porch and took her hands in his--pressing them abstemiously.
+
+"Excuse me if I do not press harder," he said, lowering his voice
+as though he fancied they might be overheard.  "I know you are
+sensitive in these little matters; but while I dislike to appear
+lukewarm, really, you know it is too late to be ardent," and he
+looked at her ardently.
+
+She twisted her fingers out of his with coy shame.
+
+"What an old fox," she repeated gayly.
+
+"Well, you know what goes with the fox--the foxess, or the foxina."
+
+She had placed his chair not quite beside hers yet designedly near,
+where the light of the chandelier in the hall would fall out upon
+him and passers could see that he was there: she liked to have him
+appear devoted.  For his part he was too little devoted to care
+whether he sat far or near, in front or behind.  As the light
+streamed out upon him, it illumined his noble head of soft, silvery
+hair, which fell over his ears and forehead, forgotten and
+disordered, like a romping boy's.  His complexion was ruddy--too
+ruddy with high living; his clean-shaven face beautiful with
+candor, gayety, and sweetness; and his eyes, the eyes of a kind
+heart--saddened.  He had on a big loose shirt collar such as men
+wore in Thackeray's time and a snow-white lawn tie.  In the bosom
+of his broad-pleated shirt, made glossy with paraffin starch, there
+was set an old-fashioned cluster-diamond stud--so enormous that it
+looked like a large family of young diamonds in a golden nest.
+
+As he took his seat, he planted his big gold-headed ebony cane
+between his knees, put his hat on the head of his cane, gave it a
+twirl, and looking over sidewise at her, smiled with an equal
+mixture of real liking and settled abhorrence.
+
+For a good many years these two had been--not friends: she was
+incapable of so true a passion; he was too capable to misapply it
+so unerringly.  Their association had assumed the character of one
+of those belated intimacies, which sometimes spring up in the lives
+of aged men and women when each wants companionship but has been
+left companionless.
+
+Time was when he could not have believed that any tie whatsoever
+would ever exist between them.  Her first husband had been his
+first law partner; and from what he had been forced to observe
+concerning his partner's fireside wretchedness during his few years
+of married life, he had learned to fear and to hate her.  With his
+quick temper and honest way he made no pretence of hiding his
+feeling--declined her invitations--cut her openly in society--and
+said why.  When his partner died, not killed indeed but
+broken-spirited, he spoke his mind on the subject more publicly and
+plainly still.
+
+She brewed the poison of revenge and waited.
+
+A year or two later when his engagement was announced her opportunity
+came.  In a single day it was done--so quietly, so perfectly, that
+no one knew by whom.  Scandal was set running--Scandal, which no
+pursuing messengers of truth and justice can ever overtake and drag
+backward along its path.  His engagement was broken; she whom he was
+to wed in time married one of his friends; and for years his own life
+all but went to pieces.
+
+Time is naught, existence a span.  One evening when she was old
+Mrs. Conyers, and he old Judge Morris, she sixty and he sixty-five,
+they met at an evening party.  In all those years he had never
+spoken to her, nurturing his original dislike and rather suspecting
+that it was she who had so ruined him.  But on this night there had
+been a great supper and with him a great supper was a great
+weakness: there had been wine, and wine was not a weakness at all,
+but a glass merely made him more than happy, more than kind.  Soon
+after supper therefore he was strolling through the emptied rooms
+in a rather lonesome way, his face like a red moon in a fog,
+beseeching only that it might shed its rays impartially on any
+approachable darkness.
+
+Men with wives and children can well afford to turn hard cold faces
+to the outside world: the warmth and tenderness of which they are
+capable they can exercise within their own restricted enclosures.
+No doubt some of them consciously enjoy the contrast in their two
+selves--the one as seen abroad and the other as understood at home.
+But a wifeless, childless man--wandering at large on the heart's
+bleak common--has much the same reason to smile on all that he has
+to smile on any: there is no domestic enclosure for him: his
+affections must embrace humanity.
+
+As he strolled through the rooms, then, in his appealing way,
+seeking whom he could attach himself to, he came upon her seated in
+a doorway connecting two rooms.  She sat alone on a short sofa,
+possibly by design, her train so arranged that he must step over it
+if he advanced--the only being in the world that he hated.  In the
+embarrassment of turning his back upon her or of trampling her
+train, he hesitated; smiling with lowered eyelids she motioned him
+to a seat by her side.
+
+"What a vivacious, agreeable old woman," he soliloquized with
+enthusiasm as he was driven home that night, sitting in the middle
+of the carriage cushions with one arm swung impartially through the
+strap on each side.  "And she has invited me to Sunday evening
+supper.  Me!--after all these years--in that house!  I'll not go."
+
+But he went.
+
+"I'll not go again," he declared as he reached home that night and
+thought it over.  "She is a bad woman."
+
+But the following Sunday evening he reached for his hat and cane:
+"I must go somewhere," he complained resentfully.  "The saints of
+my generation are enjoying the saint's rest.  Nobody is left but a
+few long-lived sinners, of whom I am a great part.  They are the
+best I can find, and I suppose they are the best I deserve."
+
+Those who live long miss many.  Without exception his former
+associates at the bar had been summoned to appear before the Judge
+who accepts no bribe.
+
+The ablest of the middle-aged lawyers often hurried over to consult
+him in difficult cases.  All of them could occasionally listen
+while he, praiser of a bygone time, recalled the great period of
+practice when he was the favorite criminal lawyer of the first
+families, defending their sons against the commonwealth which he
+always insisted was the greater criminal.   The young men about
+town knew him and were ready to chat with him on street
+corners--but never very long at a time.  In his old law offices he
+could spend part of every day, guiding or guying his nephew Barbee,
+who had just begun to practice.  But when all his social resources
+were reckoned, his days contained great voids and his nights were
+lonelier still.  The society of women remained a necessity of his
+life; and the only woman in town, always bright, always full of
+ideas, and always glad to see him (the main difficulty) was Mrs.
+Conyers.
+
+So that for years now he had been going regularly on Sunday
+evenings.  He kept up apologies to his conscience regularly also;
+but it must have become clear that his conscience was not a fire to
+make him boil; it was merely a few coals to keep him bubbling.
+
+In this acceptance of her at the end of life there was of course
+mournful evidence of his own deterioration.  During the years
+between being a young man and being an old one he had so far
+descended toward her level, that upon renewing acquaintance with
+her he actually thought that she had improved.
+
+Youth with its white-flaming ideals is the great separator; by
+middle age most of us have become so shaken down, on life's rough
+road, to a certain equality of bearing and forbearing, that
+miscellaneous comradeship becomes easy and rather comforting; while
+extremely aged people are as compatible and as miserable as
+disabled old eagles, grouped with a few inches of each other's
+beaks and claws on the sleek perches of a cage.
+
+This evening therefore, as he took his seat and looked across at
+her, so richly dressed, so youthful, soft, and rosy, he all but
+thanked heaven out loud that she was at home.
+
+"Madam," he cried, "you are a wonderful and bewitching old
+lady"--it was on the tip of his tongue to say "beldam."
+
+"I know it," she replied briskly, "have you been so long in finding
+it out?"
+
+"It is a fresh discovery every time I come."
+
+"Then you forget me in the meanwhile."
+
+"I never forget you unless I am thinking of Miss Isabel.  How is
+she?"
+
+"Not well."
+
+"Then I'm not well! No one is well!  Everybody must suffer if she
+is suffering.  The universe sympathizes."
+
+"She is not ill.  She is in trouble."
+
+"But she must not be in trouble!  She has done nothing to be in
+trouble about.  Who troubles her?  What troubles her?"
+
+"She will not tell."
+
+"Ah!" he cried, checking himself gravely and dropping the subject.
+
+She noted the decisive change of tone: it was not by this direct
+route that she would be able to enter his confidence.
+
+"What did you think of the sermon this morning?"
+
+"The sermon on the prodigal?  Well, it is too late for such sermons
+to be levelled at me; and I never listen to those aimed at other
+people."
+
+"At what other people do you suppose this one could have been
+directed?"  She asked the question most carelessly, lifting her
+imponderable handkerchief and letting it drop into her lap as a
+sign of how little her interest weighed.
+
+"It is not my duty to judge."
+
+"We cannot help our thoughts, you know."
+
+"I think we can, madam; and I also think we can hold our tongues,"
+and he laughed at her very good-naturedly.  "Sometimes we can even
+help to hold other people's--if they are long."
+
+"Oh, what a rude speech to a lady!" she exclaimed gallantly.  "Did
+you see the Osborns at church?  And did you notice him?  What an
+unhappy marriage!  He is breaking Kate's heart.  And to think that
+his character--or the lack of it--should have been discovered only
+when it was too late!  How can you men so cloak yourselves before
+marriage?  Why not tell women the truth then instead of leaving
+them to find it out afterward?  Are he and Rowan as good friends as
+ever?"  The question was asked with the air of guilelessness.
+
+"I know nothing about that," he replied dryly.  "I never knew Rowan
+to drop his friends because they had failings: it would break up
+all friendships, I imagine."
+
+"Well, I cannot help _my_ thoughts, and I think George Osborn was
+the prodigal aimed at in the sermon.  Everybody thought so."
+
+"How does she know what everybody thought?" commented the Judge to
+himself.  He tapped the porch nervously with his cane, sniffed his
+heliotrope and said irrelevantly:
+
+"Ah me, what a beautiful night!  What a beautiful night!"
+
+The implied rebuff provoked her.  Irritation winged a venomous
+little shaft:
+
+"At least no woman has ever held _you_ responsible for her
+unhappiness."
+
+"You are quite right, madam," he replied, "the only irreproachable
+husband in this world is the man who has no wife."
+
+"By the way," she continued, "in all these years you have not told
+me why you never married.  Come now, confess!"
+
+How well she knew!  How often as she had driven through the streets
+and observed him sitting alone in the door of his office or walking
+aimlessly about, she had leaned back and laughed.
+
+"Madam," he replied, for he did not like the question, "neither
+have you ever told me why you married three times.  Come now,
+confess."
+
+It would soon be time for him to leave; and still she had not
+gained her point.
+
+"Rowan was here this afternoon," she remarked carelessly.  He was
+sitting so that the light fell sidewise on his face.  She noted how
+alert it became, but he said nothing.
+
+"Isabel refused to see him."
+
+He wheeled round and faced her with pain and surprise.
+
+"Refused to see him!"
+
+"She has told me since that she never intends to see him."
+
+"Never intends to see Rowan again!" he repeated the incredible
+words, "not see Rowan again!"
+
+"She says we are to drop him from the list of our acquaintances."
+
+"Ah!" he cried with impetuous sadness, "they must not quarrel!
+They _must_ not!"
+
+"But they _have_ quarrelled," she replied, revealing her own
+anxiety.  "Now they must be reconciled.   That is why I come to
+you.  I am Isabel's guardian; you were Rowan's.  Each of us wishes
+this marriage.  Isabel loves Rowan.  I know that; therefore it is
+not her fault.  Therefore it is Rowan's fault.  Therefore he has
+said something or he has done something to offend her deeply.
+Therefore if you do not know what this Is, you must find out.  And
+you must come and tell me.  May I depend upon you?"
+
+He had become grave.  At length he said: "I shall go straight to
+Rowan and ask him."
+
+"No!" she cried, laying her hand heavily on his arm, "Isabel bound
+me to secrecy.  She does not wish this to be known."
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, angry at being entrapped into a broken
+confidence, "then Miss Isabel binds me also: I shall honor her
+wish," and he rose.
+
+She kept her seat but yawned so that he might notice it.  "You are
+not going?"
+
+"Yes, I am going.  I have stayed too long already.  Good night!
+Good night!"  He spoke curtly over his shoulders as he hurried down
+the steps.
+
+She had forgotten him before he reached the street, having no need
+just then to keep him longer in mind.  She had threshed out the one
+grain of wheat, the single compact little truth, that she wanted.
+This was the certainty that Judge Morris, who was the old family
+lawyer of the Merediths, and had been Rowan's guardian, and had
+indeed known him intimately from childhood, was in ignorance of any
+reason for the present trouble; otherwise he would not have said
+that he should go to Rowan and ask the explanation.  She knew him
+to be incapable of duplicity; in truth she rather despised him
+because he had never cultivated a taste for the delights and
+resources of hypocrisy.
+
+Her next step must be to talk at once with the other person vitally
+interested--Rowan's mother.  She felt no especial admiration for
+that grave, earnest, and rather sombre lady; but neither did she
+feel admiration for her sterling knife and fork: still she made
+them serviceable for the ulterior ends of being.
+
+Her plan then embraced a visit to Mrs. Meredith in the morning with
+the view of discovering whether she was aware of the estrangement,
+and if aware whether she would in any unintentional way throw light
+upon the cause of it.  Moreover--and this was kept clearly in
+view--there would be the chance of meeting Rowan himself, whom she
+also determined to see as soon as possible: she might find him at
+home, or she might encounter him on the road or riding over his
+farm.  But this visit must be made without Isabel's knowledge.  It
+must further be made to appear incidental to Mrs. Meredith
+herself---or to Rowan.  She arranged therefore with that tortuous
+and superfluous calculation of which hypocrisy is such a
+master--and mistress--that she would at breakfast, in Isabel's
+presence, order the carriage, and announce her intention of going
+out to the farm of Ambrose Webb.  Ambrose Webb was a close neighbor
+of the Merediths.  He owned a small estate, most of which was good
+grass-land that was usually rented for pasture.  She had for years
+kept her cows there when dry.  This arrangement furnished her the
+opportunity for more trips to the farm than interest in her dairy
+warranted; it made her Mrs. Meredith's most frequent incidental
+visitor.
+
+Having thus determined upon her immediate course for the prompt
+unravelling of this mysterious matter, she dismissed it from her
+mind, passed into her bedroom and was soon asleep: a smile played
+over the sweet old face.
+
+
+The Judge walked slowly across the town in the moonlight.
+
+It was his rule to get home to his rooms by ten o'clock; and people
+living on the several streets leading that way were used to hearing
+him come tapping along before that hour.  If they sat in their
+doorways and the night was dark, they gave him a pleasant greeting
+through the darkness; if there was a moon or if he could be seen
+under a lamp post, they added smiles.  No one loved him supremely,
+but every one liked him a little--on the whole, a stable state for
+a man.  For his part he accosted every one that he could see in a
+bright cheery way and with a quick inquiring glance as though every
+heart had its trouble and needed just a little kindness.  He was
+reasonably sure that the old had their troubles already and that
+the children would have theirs some day; so that it was merely the
+difference between sympathizing with the present and sympathizing
+with the future.  As he careened along night after night, then,
+friendly little gusts of salutation blew the desolate drifting
+figure over the homeward course.
+
+His rooms were near the heart of the town, In a shady street well
+filled with law offices: these were of red brick with green
+shutters--green when not white with dust.  The fire department was
+in the same block, though he himself did not need to be safeguarded
+from conflagrations: the fires which had always troubled him could
+not have been reached with ladder and hose.  There were two or
+three livery stables also, the chairs of which he patronized
+liberally, but not the vehicles.  And there was a grocery, where he
+sometimes bought crystallized citron and Brazil nuts, a curious
+kind of condiment of his own devising: a pound of citron to a pound
+of nuts, if all were sound.  He used to keep little brown paper
+bags of these locked in his drawer with legal papers and munched
+them sometimes while preparing murder cases.
+
+At the upper corner of the block, opposite each other, were a
+saloon and the jail, two establishments which contributed little to
+each other's support, though well inclined to do so.  The law
+offices seemed of old to have started in a compact procession for
+the jail, but at a certain point to have paused with the
+understanding that none should seek undue advantage by greater
+proximity.  Issuing from this street at one end and turning to the
+left, you came to the courthouse--the bar of chancery; issuing from
+it at the other end and turning to the right, you came to the
+hotel--the bar of corn.  The lawyers were usually solicitors at
+large and impartial practitioners at each bar.  In the court room
+they sometimes tried to prove an alibi for their clients; at the
+hotel they often succeeded in proving one for themselves.
+
+These law offices were raised a foot or two above the level of the
+street.  The front rooms could be used for clients who were so
+important that they should be seen; the back rooms were for such as
+brought business, but not necessarily fame.  Driving through this
+street, the wives of the lawyers could lean forward in their
+carriages and if their husbands were busy, they could smile and
+bow; if their husbands were idle, they could look straight ahead.
+
+He passed under the shadow of the old court-house where in his
+prime he had fought his legal battles against the commonwealth.  He
+had been a great lawyer and he knew it (if he had married he might
+have been Chief Justice).  Then he turned the corner and entered
+the street of jurisprudence and the gaol.  About midway he reached
+the staircase opening from the sidewalk; to his rooms above.
+
+He was not poor and he could have lived richly had he wished.  But
+when a man does not marry there are so many other things that he
+never espouses; and he was not wedded to luxury.  As he lighted the
+chandelier over the centre-table in his sitting room, the light
+revealed an establishment every article of which, if it had no
+virtues, at least possessed habits: certainly everything had its
+own way.  He put his hat and cane on the table, not caring to go
+back to the hatrack in his little hall, and seated himself in his
+olive morocco chair.  As he did so, everything in the room--the
+chairs, the curtains, the rugs, the card-table, the punch-bowl, the
+other walking-sticks, and the rubbers and umbrellas---seemed to say
+in an affectionate chorus: "Well, now that you are in safe for the
+night, we feel relieved.  So good night and pleasant dreams to you,
+for we are going to sleep;" and to sleep they went.
+
+The gas alone flared up and said, "I'll stay up with him."
+
+He drew out and wiped his glasses and reached for the local Sunday
+paper, his Sunday evening Bible.  He had read it in the morning,
+but he always gleaned at night: he met so many of his friends by
+reading their advertisements.  But to-night he spread it across his
+knees and turning to the table lifted the top of a box of cigars,
+an orderly responsive family; the paper slipped to the floor and
+lay forgotten behind his heels.
+
+He leaned back in the chair with his cigar in his mouth and his
+eyes directed toward the opposite wall, where in an oval frame hung
+the life-size portrait of an old bulldog.  The eyes were blue and
+watery and as full of suffering as a seats; from the extremity of
+the lower jaw a tooth stood up like a shoemaker's peg; and over the
+entire face was stamped the majesty, the patience, and the manly
+woes of a nature that had lived deeply and too long.  The Judge's
+eyes rested on this comrade face.
+
+The events of the day had left him troubled.  Any sermon on the
+prodigal always touches men; even if it does not prick their
+memories, it can always stir their imaginations.  Whenever he heard
+one, his mind went back to the years when she who afterwards became
+Rowan's mother had cast him off, so settling life for him.  For
+after that experience he had put away the thought of marriage.  "To
+be so treated once is enough," he had said sternly and proudly.
+True, in after years she had come back to him as far as friendship
+could bring her back, since she was then the wife of another; but
+every year of knowing her thus had only served to deepen the sense
+of his loss.  He had long since fallen into the habit of thinking
+this over of Sunday evenings before going to bed, and as the end of
+life closed in upon him, he dwelt upon it more and more.
+
+These familiar thoughts swarmed back to-night, but with them were
+mingled new depressing ones.  Nothing now perhaps could have caused
+him such distress as the thought that Rowan and Isabel would never
+marry.  All the love that he had any right to pour into any life,
+he had always poured with passionate and useless yearnings into
+Rowan's--son, of the only woman he had ever loved--the boy that
+should have been his own.
+
+There came an interruption.  A light quick step was heard mounting
+the stairs.  A latch key was impatiently inserted in the hall door.
+A bamboo cane was dropped loudly into the holder of the hat-rack; a
+soft hat was thrown down carelessly somewhere--it sounded like a
+wet mop flung into a corner; and there entered a young man
+straight, slender, keen-faced, with red hair, a freckled skin,
+large thin red ears, and a strong red mouth.  As he stepped forward
+into the light, he paused, parting the haircut of his eyes and
+blinking.
+
+"Good evening, uncle," he said in a shrill key.
+
+"Well, sir."
+
+Barbee looked the Judge carefully over; he took the Judge's hat and
+cane from the table and hung them in the hall; he walked over and
+picked up the newspaper from between the Judge's legs and placed it
+at his elbow; he set the ash tray near the edge of the table within
+easy reach of the cigar.  Then he threw himself into a chair across
+the room, lighted a cigarette, blew the smoke toward the ceiling
+like the steam of a little whistle signalling to stop work.
+
+"Well, uncle," he said in a tone in which a lawyer might announce
+to his partner the settlement of a long-disputed point, "Marguerite
+is in love with me!"
+
+The Judge smoked on, his eyes resting on the wall.
+
+"Yes, sir; in love with me.  The truth had to come out sometime,
+and it came out to-night.  And now the joy of life is gone for me!
+As soon as a woman falls in love with a man, his peace is at an
+end.  But I am determined that it shall not interfere with my
+practice."
+
+"What practice?"
+
+"The practice of my profession, sir!  The profession of yourself
+and of the great men of the past: such places have to be filled."
+
+"Filled, but not filled with the same thing."
+
+"You should have seen the other hapless wretches there to-night!
+Pining for a smile!  Moths begging the candle to scorch them!  And
+the candle was as cold as the north star and as distant."
+
+Barbee rose and took a turn across the room and returning to his
+chair stood before it.
+
+"If Marguerite had only waited, had concealed herself a little
+longer!  Why did she not keep me in doubt until I had won some
+great case!  Think of a scene like this: a crowded court room some
+afternoon; people outside the doors and windows craning their necks
+to see and hear me; the judge nervous and excited; the members of
+the bar beside themselves with jealousy as I arise and confront the
+criminal and jury.  Marguerite is seated just behind the jury; I
+know why she chose that seat: she wished to study me to the best
+advantage.  I try to catch her eye; she will not look at me.  For
+three hours my eloquence storms.  The judge acknowledges to a tear,
+the jurors reach for their handkerchiefs, the people in the court
+room sob like the skies of autumn.  As I finish, the accused arises
+and addresses the court: 'May it please your honor, in the face of
+such a masterly prosecution, I can no longer pretend to be
+innocent.  Sir (addressing me), I congratulate you upon your
+magnificent service to the commonwealth.  Gentlemen of the jury,
+you need not retire to bring in any verdict: I bring it in myself,
+I am guilty, and my only wish is to be hanged.  I suggest that you
+have it done at once in order that nothing may mar the success of
+this occasion!'  That night Marguerite sends for me: that would
+have been the time for declaration!  I have a notion that if I can
+extricate myself without wounding this poor little innocent, to
+forswear matrimony and march on to fame."
+
+"March on to bed."
+
+"Marguerite is going to give a ball, uncle, a brilliant ball merely
+to celebrate this irrepressible efflux and panorama of her
+emotions.  Watch me at that ball, uncle!  Mark the rising Romeo of
+the firm when Marguerite, the youthful Juliet of this town--"
+
+A hand waved him quietly toward his bedroom.
+
+"Well, good night, sir, good night.  When the lark sings at
+heaven's gate I'll greet thee, uncle.  My poor Marguerite!--Good
+night, uncle, good night."
+
+He was only nineteen.
+
+The Judge returned to his thoughts.
+
+He must have thought a long time: the clock not far away struck
+twelve.  He took off his glasses, putting them negligently on the
+edge of the ash tray which tipped over beneath their weight and
+fell to the floor: he picked up his glasses, but let the ashes lie.
+Then he stooped down to take off his shoes, not without sounds of
+bodily discomfort.
+
+Aroused by these sounds or for other reasons not to be discovered,
+there emerged from under a table on which was piled "The Lives of
+the Chief Justices" a bulldog, cylindrical and rigid with years.
+Having reached a decorous position before the Judge, by the slow
+action of the necessary machinery he lowered the posterior end of
+the cylinder to the floor and watched him.
+
+"Well, did I get them off about right?"
+
+The dog with a private glance of sympathy up into the Judge's face
+returned to his black goatskin rug under the Chief Justices; and
+the Judge, turning off the burners in the chandelier and striking a
+match, groped his way in his sock feet to his bedroom--to the bed
+with its one pillow.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Out in the country next morning it was not yet break of dawn.  The
+stars, thickly flung about, were flashing low and yellow as at
+midnight, but on the horizon the great change had begun.  Not with
+colors of rose or pearl but as the mysterious foreknowledge of the
+morning, when a vast swift herald rushes up from the east and
+sweeps onward across high space, bidding the earth be in readiness
+for the drama of the sun.
+
+The land, heavy with life, lay wrapped in silence, steeped in rest.
+Not a bird in wet hedge or evergreen had drawn nimble head from
+nimble wing.  In meadow and pasture fold and herd had sunk down
+satisfied.  A black brook brawling through a distant wood sounded
+loud in the stillness.  Under the forest trees around the home of
+the Merediths only drops of dew might have been heard splashing
+downward from leaf to leaf.  In the house all slept.  The mind,
+wakefullest of happy or of suffering things, had lost consciousness
+of joy and care save as these had been crowded down into the
+chamber which lies beneath our sleep, whence they made themselves
+audible through the thin flooring as the noise of dreams.
+
+Among the parts of the day during which man may match the elements
+of the world within him to the world without--his songs with its
+sunrises, toil with noontide, prayer with nightfall, slumber with
+dark--there is one to stir within him the greatest sense of
+responsibility: the hour of dawn.
+
+If he awaken then and be alone, he is earliest to enter the silent
+empty theatre of the earth where the human drama is soon to
+recommence.  Not a mummer has stalked forth; not an auditor sits
+waiting.  He himself, as one of the characters in this ancient
+miracle play of nature, pauses at the point of separation between
+all that he has enacted and all that he will enact.  Yesterday he
+was in the thick of action.  Between then and now lies the night,
+stretching like a bar of verdure across wearying sands.  In that
+verdure he has rested; he has drunk forgetfulness and self-renewal
+from those deep wells of sleep.  Soon the play will be ordered on
+again and he must take his place for parts that are new and
+confusing to all.  The servitors of the morning have entered and
+hung wall and ceiling with gorgeous draperies; the dust has been
+sprinkled; fresh airs are blowing; and there is music, the living
+orchestra of the living earth.  Well for the waker then if he can
+look back upon the role he has played with a quiet conscience, and
+as naturally as the earth greets the sun step forth upon the stage
+to continue or to end his brief part in the long drama of destiny.
+
+The horizon had hardly begun to turn red when a young man,
+stretched on his bed by an open window, awoke from troubled sleep.
+He lay for a few moments without moving, then he sat up on the edge
+of the bed.  His hands rested listlessly on his kneecaps and his
+eyes were fixed on the sky-line crimsoning above his distant woods.
+
+After a while he went over and sat at one of the windows, his eyes
+still fixed on the path of the coming sun; and a great tragedy of
+men sat there within him: the tragedy that has wandered long and
+that wanders ever, showing its face in all lands, retaining its
+youth in all ages; the tragedy of love that heeds not law, and the
+tragedy of law forever punishing heedless love.
+
+Gradually the sounds of life began.  From the shrubs under his
+window, from the orchard and the wet weeds of fence corners, the
+birds reentered upon their lives.  Far off in the meadows the
+cattle rose from their warm dry places, stretched themselves and
+awoke the echoes of the wide rolling land with peaceful lowing.  A
+brood mare in a grazing lot sent forth her quick nostril call to
+the foal capering too wildly about her, and nozzled it with
+rebuking affection.  On the rosy hillsides white lambs were leaping
+and bleating, or running down out of sight under the white sea-fog
+of the valleys.  A milk cart rattled along the turnpike toward the
+town.
+
+It had become broad day.
+
+He started up and crossed the hall to the bedroom opposite, and
+stood looking down at his younger brother.  How quiet Dent's sleep
+was; how clear the current of his life had run and would run
+always!  No tragedy would ever separate him and the woman he loved.
+
+When he went downstairs the perfect orderliness of his mother's
+housekeeping had been before him.  Doors and windows had been
+opened to the morning freshness, sweeping and dusting had been
+done, not a servant was in sight.  His setters lay waiting on the
+porch and as he stepped out they hurried up with glistening eyes
+and soft barkings and followed him as he passed around to the barn.
+Work was in progress there: the play of currycombs, the whirl of
+the cutting-box, the noise of the mangers, the bellowing of calves,
+the rich streamy sounds of the milking.  He called his men to him
+one after another, laying out the work of the day.
+
+When he returned to the house he saw his mother walking on the
+front pavement; she held flowers freshly plucked for the breakfast
+table: a woman of large mould, grave, proud, noble; an ideal of her
+place and time.
+
+"Is the lord of the manor ready for his breakfast?" she asked as
+she came forward, smiling.
+
+"I am ready, mother," he replied without smiling, touching his lips
+to her cheek.
+
+She linked her arm in his as they ascended the steps.  At the top
+she drew him gently around until they faced the landscape rolling
+wide before them.
+
+"It is so beautiful!" she exclaimed with a deep narrow love of her
+land.  "I never see it without thinking of it as it will be years
+hence.  I can see you riding over it then and your children playing
+around the house and some one sitting here where we stand, watching
+them at their play and watching you in the distance at your work.
+But I have been waiting a long time for her to take my place--and
+to take her own," and she leaned heavily on his arm as a sign of
+her dependence but out of weakness also (for she did not tell him
+all).  "I am impatient to hear the voice of your children, Rowan.
+Do you never wish to hear them yourself?"
+
+As they stood silent, footsteps approached through the hall and
+turning they saw Dent with a book in his hand.
+
+"Are you grand people never coming to breakfast?" he asked,
+frowning with pretended impatience, "so that a laboring man may go
+to his work?"
+
+He was of short but well-knit figure.  Spectacles and a thoughtful
+face of great refinement gave him the student's stamp.  His
+undergraduate course at college would end in a few weeks.
+Postgraduate work was to begin during the summer.  An assistant
+professorship, then a full professorship--these were successive
+stations already marked by him on the clear track of life; and he
+was now moving toward them with straight and steady aim.  Sometimes
+we encounter personalities which seem to move through the discords
+of this life as though guided by laws of harmony; they know neither
+outward check nor inward swerving, and are endowed with that
+peaceful passion for toil which does the world's work and is one of
+the marks of genius.
+
+He was one of these--a growth of the new time not comprehended by
+his mother.  She could neither understand it nor him.  The pain
+which this had given him at first he had soon outgrown; and what
+might have been a tragedy to another nature melted away in the
+steady sunlight of his entire reasonableness.  Perhaps he realized
+that the scientific son can never be the idol of a household until
+he is born of scientific parents.
+
+As mother and elder son now turned to greet him, the mother was not
+herself aware that she still leaned upon the arm of Rowan and that
+Dent walked into the breakfast room alone.
+
+Less than usual was said during the meal.  They were a reserved
+household, inclined to the small nobilities of silence.  (It is
+questionable whether talkative families ever have much to say.)
+This morning each had especial reason for self-communing.
+
+When they had finished breakfast and came out into the hall.  Dent
+paused at one of the parlor doors.
+
+"Mother" he said simply, "come into the parlor a moment, will you?
+And Rowan, I should like to see you also."
+
+They followed him with surprise and all seated themselves.
+
+"Mother," he said, addressing Her with a clear beautiful light in
+his gray eyes, yet not without the reserve which he always felt and
+always inspired, "I wish to tell you that I am engaged to Pansy
+Vaughan.  And to tell you also, Rowan.  You know that I finish
+college this year; she does also.  We came to an understanding
+yesterday afternoon and I wish you both to know it at once.  We
+expect to be married in the autumn as soon as I am of age and a man
+in my own right.  Mother, Pansy is coming to see you; and Rowan, I
+hope you will go to see Pansy.  Both of you will like her and be
+proud of her when you know her."
+
+He rose as though he had rounded his communication to a perfect
+shape.  "Now I must get to my work.  Good morning," and with a
+smile for each he walked quietly out of the room.  He knew that he
+could not expect their congratulations at that moment and that
+further conference would be awkward for all.  He could merely tell
+them the truth and leave the rest to the argument of time.
+
+
+"But I cannot believe it, Rowan!  I cannot!"
+
+Mrs. Meredith sat regarding' her elder son with incredulity and
+distress.  The shock of the news was for certain reasons even
+greater to him; so that he could not yet command himself
+sufficiently to comfort her.  After a few moments she resumed: "I
+did not know that Dent had begun to think about girls.  He never
+said so.  He has never cared for society.  He has seemed absorbed
+in his studies.  And now--Dent in love.  Dent engaged, Dent to be
+married in the autumn--why, Rowan, am I dreaming, am I in my
+senses?  And to this girl!  She has entrapped him--poor, innocent,
+unsuspecting Dent!  My poor, little, short-sighted bookworm."
+Tears sprang to her eyes, but she laughed also.  She had a mother's
+hope that this trouble would turn to comedy.  She went on quickly:
+"Did you know anything about this?  Has he ever spoken to you about
+it?"
+
+"No, I am just as much surprised.  But then Dent never speaks in
+advance."
+
+She looked at him a little timidly: "I thought perhaps it was this
+that has been troubling you.  You have been trying to hide it from
+me."
+
+He dropped his eyes quickly and made no reply.
+
+"And do you suppose he is in earnest, Rowan?"
+
+"He would never jest on such a subject."
+
+"I mean, do you think he knows his own mind?"
+
+"He always does."
+
+"But would he marry against my wishes?"
+
+"He takes it for granted that you will be pleased: he said so."
+
+"But how can he think I'll be pleased?  I have never spoken to this
+girl in my life.  I have never seen her except when we have passed
+them on the turnpike.  I never spoke to her father but once and
+that was years ago when he came here one cold winter afternoon to
+buy a shock of fodder from your father."
+
+She was a white character; but even the whiteness of ermine gains
+by being necked with blackness.  "How can he treat me with so
+little consideration?  It is just as if he had said: 'Good morning,
+mother.  I am going to disgrace the family by my marriage, but I
+know you will be delighted---good morning.'"
+
+"You forget that Dent does not think he will disgrace the family.
+He said you would be proud of her."
+
+"Well, when the day comes for me to be proud of this, there will
+not be much left to be ashamed of.  Rowan, for once I shall
+interfere."
+
+"How can you interfere?"
+
+"Then you must: you are his guardian."
+
+"I shall not be his guardian by the autumn.  Dent has arranged this
+perfectly, mother, as he always arranges everything."
+
+She returned to her point.  "But he _must_ be kept from making such
+a mistake!  Talk to him as a man.  Advise him, show him that he
+will tie a millstone around his neck, ruin his whole life.  I am
+willing to leave myself out and to forget what is due me, what is
+due you, what is due the memory of his father and of my father: for
+his own sake he must not marry this girl."
+
+He shook his head slowly.  "It is settled, mother," he added
+consolingly, "and I have so much confidence in Dent that I believe
+what he says: we shall be proud of her when we know her."
+
+She sat awhile in despair.  Then she said with fresh access of
+conviction: "This is what comes of so much science: it always tends
+to make a man common in his social tastes.  You need not smile at
+me in that pitying way, for it is true: it destroys aristocratic
+feeling; and there is more need of aristocratic feeling in a
+democracy than anywhere else: because it is the only thing that can
+be aristocratic.  That is what science has done for Dent!  And this
+girl I--the public school has tried to make her uncommon, and the
+Girl's College has attempted, to make her more uncommon; and now I
+suppose she actually thinks she _is_ uncommon: otherwise she would
+never have imagined that she could marry a son of mine.  Smile on,
+I know I amuse you!  You think I am not abreast of the times.  I am
+glad I am not.  I prefer my own.  Dent should have studied for the
+church--with his love of books, and his splendid mind, and his
+grave, beautiful character.  Then he would never have thought of
+marrying beneath him socially; he would have realized that if he
+did, he could never rise.  Once in the church and with the right
+kind of wife, he might some day have become a bishop: I have always
+wanted a bishop in the family.  But he set his heart upon a
+professorship, and I suppose a professor does not have to be
+particular about whom he marries."
+
+"A professor has to be particular only to please himself--and the
+woman.  His choice is not regulated by salaries and congregations."
+
+She returned to her point: "You breed fine cattle and fine sheep,
+and you try to improve the strain of your setters.  You know how
+you do it.  What right has Dent to injure his children in the race
+for life by giving them an inferior mother?  Are not children to be
+as much regarded in their rights of descent as rams and poodles?"
+
+"You forget that the first families in all civilizations have kept
+themselves alive and at the summit by intermarriage with good,
+clean, rich blood of people whom they have considered beneath them."
+
+"But certainly my family is not among these.  It is certainly alive
+and it is certainly not dying out.  I cannot discuss the subject
+with you, if you once begin that argument.  Are you going to call
+on her?"
+
+"Certainly.  It was Dent's wish and it is right that I should."
+
+"Then I think I shall go with you, Rowan.  Dent said she was coming
+to see me; but I think I should rather go to see her.  Whenever I
+wished to leave, I could get away, but if she came here, I
+couldn't."
+
+"When should you like to go?"
+
+"Oh, don't hurry me! I shall need time--a great deal of time!  Do
+you suppose they have a parlor?  I am afraid I shall not shine in
+the kitchen in comparison with the tins."
+
+She had a wry face; then her brow cleared and she added with relief:
+
+"But I must put this whole trouble out of my mind at present!  It
+is too close to me, I cannot even see it.  I shall call on the girl
+with you and then I shall talk quietly with Dent.  Until then I
+must try to forget it.  Besides, I got up this morning with
+something else on my mind.  It is not Dent's unwisdom that
+distresses me."
+
+Her tone indicated that she had passed to a more important topic.
+If any one had told her that her sons were not equally dear, the
+wound of such injustice would never have healed.  In all that she
+could do for both there had never been maternal discrimination; but
+the heart of a woman cannot help feeling things that the heart of a
+mother does not; and she discriminated as a woman.  This was
+evident now as she waived her young son's affairs.
+
+"It is not Dent that I have been thinking of this morning," she
+repeated.  "Why is it not you that come to tell me of your
+engagement?  Why have you not set Dent an example as to the kind of
+woman he ought to marry?  How many more years must he and I wait?"
+
+They were seated opposite each other.  He was ready for riding out
+on the farm, his hat on his crossed knees, gloves and whip in hand.
+Her heart yearned over him as he pulled at his gloves, his head
+dropped forward so that his face was hidden.
+
+"Now that the subject has come up in this unexpected way, I want to
+tell you how long I have wished to see you married.  I have never
+spoken because my idea is that a mother should not advise unless
+she believes it necessary.  And in your case it has not been
+necessary.  I have known your choice, and long before it became
+yours, it became mine.  She is my ideal among them all.  I know
+women, Rowan, and I know she is worthy of you and I could not say
+more.  She is-high-minded and that quality is so rare in either
+sex.  Without it what is any wife worth to a high-minded man?  And
+I have watched her.  With all her pride and modesty I have
+discovered her secret--she loves you.  Then why have you waited?
+Why do you still wait?"
+
+He did not answer and she continued with deeper feeling:
+
+"Life is so uncertain to all of us and of course to me!  I want to
+see you wedded to her, see her brought here as mistress of this
+house, and live to hear the laughter of your children."  She
+finished with solemn emotion: "It has been my prayer, Rowan."
+
+She became silent with her recollections of her own early life for
+a moment and then resumed:
+
+"Nothing ever makes up for the loss of such years--the first years
+of happy marriage.  If we have had these, no matter what happens
+afterward, we have not lived for nothing.  It becomes easier for us
+to be kind and good afterward, to take an interest in life, to
+believe in our fellow-creatures, and in God."
+
+He sprang up.
+
+"Mother, I cannot speak with you about this now."  He turned
+quickly and stood with his back to her, looking out of doors; and
+he spoke over his shoulder and his voice was broken: "You have had
+one disappointment this morning: it is enough.  But do not think of
+my marrying--of my ever marrying.  Dent must take my place at the
+head of the house.  It is all over with me!  But I cannot speak
+with you about this now," and he started quickly to leave the
+parlors.  She rose and put her arm around his waist, walking beside
+him.
+
+"You do not mind my speaking to, you about this, Rowan?" she said,
+sore at having touched some trouble which she felt that he had long
+been hiding from her, and with full respect for the privacies of
+his life.
+
+"No, no, no!" he cried, choking with emotion.  "Ah, mother,
+mother!"--and he gently disengaged himself from her arms.
+
+She watched him as he rode out of sight.  Then she returned and sat
+in the chair which he had, quitted, folding her hands in her lap.
+
+For her it was one of the moments when we are reminded that our
+lives are not in our keeping, and that whatsoever is to befall us
+originates in sources beyond our power.  Our wills may indeed reach
+the length of our arms or as far as our voices can penetrate space;
+but without us and within us moves one universe that saves us or
+ruins us only for its own purposes; and we are no more free amid
+its laws than the leaves of the forest are free to decide their own
+shapes and season of unfolding, to order the showers by which they
+are to be nourished and the storms which shall scatter them at last.
+
+Above every other she had cherished the wish for a marriage between
+Rowan and Isabel Conyers; now for reasons unknown to her it seemed
+that this desire was never to be realized.  She did not know the
+meaning of what Rowan had just said to her; but she did not doubt
+there was meaning behind it, grave meaning.  Her next most serious
+concern would have been that in time Dent likewise should choose a
+wife wisely; now he had announced to her his intention to wed
+prematurely and most foolishly; she could not altogether shake off
+the conviction that he would do what he had said he should.
+
+As for Dent it was well-nigh the first anxiety that he had ever
+caused her.  If her affection for him was less poignant, being
+tenderness stored rather than tenderness exercised, this resulted
+from the very absence of his demand for it.  He had always needed
+her so little, had always needed every one so little, unfolding his
+life from the first and drawing from the impersonal universe
+whatever it required with the quietude and efficiency of a
+prospering plant.  She lacked imagination, or she might have
+thought of Dent as a filial sunflower, which turned the blossom of
+its life always faithfully and beautifully toward her, but stood
+rooted in the soil of knowledge that she could not supply.
+
+What she had always believed she could see in him was the
+perpetuation under a new form of his father and the men of his
+father's line.
+
+These had for generations been grave mental workers: ministers,
+lawyers, professors in theological seminaries; narrow-minded,
+strong-minded; upright, unbending; black-browed, black-coated; with
+a passion always for dealing in justice and dealing out justice,
+human or heavenly; most of all, gratified when in theological
+seminaries, when they could assert themselves as inerrant
+interpreters of the Most High.  The portraits of two of them hung
+in the dining room now, placed there as if to watch the table and
+see that grace was never left unsaid, that there be no levity at
+meat nor heresy taken in with the pudding.  Other portraits were
+also in other rooms--they always had themselves painted for
+posterity, seldom or never their wives.
+
+Some of the books they had written were in the library, lucid
+explanations of the First Cause and of how the Judge of all the
+earth should be looked at from without and from within.  Some that
+they had most loved to read were likewise there: "Pollock's Course
+of Time"; the slow outpourings of Young, sad sectary; Milton, with
+the passages on Hell approvingly underscored--not as great poetry,
+but as great doctrine; nowhere in the bookcases a sign of the
+"Areopagitica," of "Comus," and "L'Allegro"; but most prominent the
+writings of Jonathan Edwards, hoarsest of the whole flock of New
+World theological ravens.
+
+Her marriage into this family had caused universal surprise.  It
+had followed closely upon the scandals in regard to the wild young
+Ravenel Morris, the man she loved, the man she had promised to
+marry.  These scandals had driven her to the opposite extreme from
+her first choice by one of life's familiar reactions; and in her
+wounded flight she had thrown herself into the arms of a man whom
+people called irreproachable.  He was a grave lawyer, one of the
+best of his kind; nevertheless he and she, when joined for the one
+voyage of two human spirits, were like a funeral barge lashed to
+some dancing boat, golden-oared, white-sailed, decked with flowers.
+Hope at the helm and Pleasure at the prow.
+
+For she herself had sprung from a radically different stock: from
+sanguine, hot-blooded men; congressmen shaping the worldly history
+of their fellow-beings and leaving the non-worldly to take care of
+itself; soldiers illustrious in the army and navy; hale country
+gentlemen who took the lead in the country's hardy sports and
+pleasures; all sowing their wild oats early in life with hands that
+no power could stay; not always living to reap, but always leaving
+enough reaping to be done by the sad innocent who never sow;
+fathers of large families; and even when breaking the hearts of
+their wives, never losing their love; for with their large open
+frailties being men without crime and cowardice, tyrannies,
+meannesses.
+
+With these two unlike hereditary strains before her she had, during
+the years, slowly devised the maternal philosophy of her sons.
+
+Out of those grave mental workers had come Dent--her student.  She
+loved to believe that in the making of him her own blood asserted
+itself by drawing him away from the tyrannical interpretation of
+God to the neutral investigation of the earth, from black theology
+to sunlit science--so leaving him at work and at peace, the
+ancestral antagonisms becoming neutralized by being blended.
+
+But Rowan! while he was yet a little fellow, and she and her young
+husband would sit watching him at play, characteristics revealed
+themselves which led her to shake her head rebukingly and say: "He
+gets these traits from you."  At other times contradictory
+characteristics appeared and the father, looking silently at her,
+would in effect inquire: "Whence does he derive these?"  On both
+accounts she began to look with apprehension toward this son's
+maturing years.  And always, as the years passed, evidence was
+forced more plainly upon her that in him the two natures he
+inherited were antagonistic still; each alternately uppermost; both
+in unceasing warfare; thus endowing him with a double nature which
+might in time lead him to a double life.  So that even then she had
+begun to take upon herself the burden of dreading lest she should
+not only be the mother of his life, but the mother of his
+tragedies.  She went over this again and again: "Am I to be the
+mother of his tragedies?"
+
+As she sat this young summer morning after he had left her so
+strangely, all at once the world became autumn to her remembrance.
+
+An autumn morning: the rays of the sun shining upon the silvery
+mists swathing the trees outside, upon the wet and many-colored
+leaves; a little frost on the dark grass here and there; the first
+fires lighted within; the carriage already waiting at the door; the
+breakfast hurriedly choked down--in silence; the mournful noise of
+his trunk being brought downstairs--his first trunk.  Then the
+going out upon the veranda and the saying good-by to him; and
+then--the carriage disappearing in the silver mists, with a few red
+and yellow leaves whirled high from the wheels.
+
+That was the last of the first Rowan,--youth at the threshold of
+manhood.  Now off for college, to his university in New England.
+As his father and she stood side by side (he being too frail to
+take that chill morning ride with his son) he waved his hand
+protectingly after him, crying out: "He is a good boy."  And
+she, having some wide vision of other mothers of the land who
+during these same autumn days were bidding God-speed to their
+idols--picked youth of the republic--she with some wide vision of
+this large fact stood a proud mother among them all, feeling sure
+that he would take foremost place in his college for good honest
+work and for high character and gentle manners and gallant
+bearing--with not a dark spot in him.
+
+It was toward the close of the first session, after she had learned
+the one kind of letter he always wrote, that his letters changed.
+She could not have explained how they were changed, could not have
+held the pages up to the inspection of any one else and have said,
+"See! it is here."  But she knew it was there, and it stayed there.
+She waited for his father to notice it; but if he ever noticed it,
+he never told her: nor did she ever confide her discovery to him.
+
+When vacation came, it brought a request from Rowan that he might
+be allowed to spend the summer with college friends farther
+north--camping, fishing, hunting, sailing, seeing more of his
+country.  His father's consent was more ready than her own.  The
+second session passed and with the second vacation the request was
+renewed.  "Why does he not come home?  Why does he not wish to come
+home?" she said, wandering restlessly over the house with his
+letter in her hands; going up to his bedroom and sitting down in
+the silence of it and looking at his bed--which seemed so strangely
+white that day--looking at all the preparations she had made for
+his comfort.  "Why does he not come?"
+
+Near the close of the third session he came quickly enough,
+summoned by his father's short fatal illness.
+
+Some time passed before she observed anything in him but natural
+changes after so long an absence and grief over his great loss.  He
+shut himself in his room for some days, having it out alone with
+himself, a young man's first solemn accounting to a father who has
+become a memory.  Gradually there began to emerge his new care of
+her, and tenderness, a boy's no more.  And he stepped forward
+easily into his place as the head of affairs, as his brother's
+guardian.  But as time wore on and she grew used to him as so much
+older in mere course of nature, and as graver by his loss and his
+fresh responsibilities, she made allowances for all these and
+brushed them away and beheld constantly beneath them that other
+change.
+
+Often while she sat near him when they were reading, she would look
+up and note that unaware a shadow had stolen out on his face.  She
+studied that shadow.  And one consolation she drew: that whatsoever
+the cause, it was nothing by which he felt dishonored.  At such
+moments her love broke over him with intolerable longings.  She
+remembered things that her mother had told her about her father;
+she recalled the lives of her brothers, his uncles.  She yearned to
+say: "What is it, Rowan?  You can tell me anything, anything.  I
+know so much more than you believe."
+
+But some restraint dissuaded her from bridging that reserve.  She
+may have had the feeling that she spared him a good deal by her not
+knowing.
+
+For more than a year after his return he had kept aloof from
+society--going into town only when business demanded, and accepting
+no invitations to the gayeties of the neighborhood.  He liked
+rather to have his friends come out to stay with him: sometimes he
+was off with them for days during the fishing and hunting seasons.
+Care of the farm and its stock occupied a good deal of his leisure,
+and there were times when he worked hard in the fields--she thought
+so unnecessarily.  Incessant activity of some kind had become his
+craving--the only ease.
+
+She became uneasy, she disapproved.  For a while she allowed things
+to have their way, but later she interfered--though as always with
+her silent strength and irresistible gentleness.  Making no comment
+upon his changed habits and altered tastes, giving no sign of her
+own purposes, she began the second year of his home-coming to
+accept invitations for herself and formally reentered her social
+world; reassumed her own leadership there; demanded him as her
+escort; often filled the house with young guests; made it for his
+generation what the home of her girlhood had been to her--in all
+sacrificing for him the gravity and love of seclusion which had
+settled over her during the solemn years, years which she knew to
+be parts of a still more solemn future.
+
+She succeeded.  She saw him again more nearly what he had been
+before the college days--more nearly developing that type of life
+which belonged to him and to his position.
+
+Finally she saw him in love as she wished; and at this point she
+gradually withdrew from society again, feeling that he needed her
+no more.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The noise of wheels on the gravel driveway of the lawn brought the
+reflections of Mrs. Meredith to an abrupt close.  The sound was
+extremely unpleasant to her; she did not feel in a mood to
+entertain callers this morning.  Rising with regret, she looked
+out.  The brougham of Mrs. Conyers, flashing in the sun, was being
+driven toward the house--was being driven rapidly, as though speed
+meant an urgency.
+
+If Mrs. Meredith desired no visitor at all, she particularly
+disliked the appearance of this one.  Rowan's words to her were
+full of meaning that she did not understand; but they rendered it
+clear at least that his love affair had been interrupted, if not
+been ended.  She could not believe this due to any fault of his;
+and friendly relations with the Conyers family was for her
+instantly at an end with any wrong done to him.
+
+She summoned a maid and instructed her regarding the room in which
+the visitor was to be received (not in the parlors; they were too
+full of solemn memories this morning).  Then she passed down the
+long hall to her bedchamber.
+
+The intimacy between these ladies was susceptible of exact
+analysis; every element comprising it could have been valued as
+upon a quantitative scale.  It did not involve any of those
+incalculable forces which constitute friendship--a noble mystery
+remaining forever beyond unravelling.
+
+They found the first basis of their intimacy in a common wish for
+the union of their offsprings.  This subject had never been
+mentioned between them.  Mrs. Conyers would have discussed it had
+she dared; but she knew at least the attitude of the other.
+Furthermore, Mrs. Meredith brought to this association a beautiful
+weakness: she was endowed with all but preternatural insight into
+what is fine in human nature, but had slight power of discovering
+what is base; she seemed endowed with far-sightedness in high,
+clear, luminous atmospheres, but was short-sighted in moral
+twilights.  She was, therefore, no judge of the character of her
+intimate.  As for that lady's reputation, this was well known to
+her; but she screened herself against this reputation behind what
+she believed to be her own personal discovery of unsuspected
+virtues in the misjudged.  She probably experienced as much pride
+in publicly declaring the misjudged a better woman than she was
+reputed, as that lady would have felt in secretly declaring her to
+be a worse one.
+
+On the part of Mrs. Conyers, the motives which she brought to the
+association presented nothing that must be captured and brought
+down from the heights, she was usually to be explained by mining
+rather than mounting.  Whatever else she might not have been, she
+was always ore; never rainbows.
+
+Throughout bird and animal and insect life there runs what is
+recognized as the law of protective assimilation.  It represents
+the necessity under which a creature lives to pretend to be
+something else as a condition of continuing to be itself.  The
+rose-colored flamingo, curving its long neck in volutions that
+suggest the petals of a corolla, burying its head under its wing
+and lifting one leg out of sight, becomes a rank, marvellous
+flower, blooming on too slight a stalk in its marshes.  An insect
+turns itself into one of the dried twigs of a dead stick.  On the
+margin of a shadowed pool the frog is hued like moss--greenness
+beside greenness.  Mrs. Conyers availed herself of a kind of
+protective assimilation when she exposed herself to the environment
+of Mrs. Meredith, adopting devices by which she would be taken for
+any object in nature but herself.  Two familiar devices were
+applied to her habiliments and her conversations.  Mrs. Meredith
+always dressed well to the natural limit of her bountiful years;
+Mrs. Conyers usually dressed more than well and more than a
+generation behind hers.  On occasions when she visited Rowan's
+unconcealed mother, she allowed time to make regarding herself
+almost an honest declaration.  Ordinarily she Was a rose nearly
+ready to drop, which is bound with a thread of its own color to
+look as much as possible like a bud that is nearly ready to open.
+
+Her conversations were even more assiduously tinged and fashioned
+by the needs of accommodation.  Sometimes she sat in Mrs.
+Meredith's parlors as a soul sick of the world's vanities, an urban
+spirit that hungered for country righteousness.  During a walk one
+day through the gardens she paused under the boughs of a weeping
+willow and recited, "Cromwell, I charge thee fling away ambition--"
+She uniformly imparted to Mrs. Meredith the assurance that with her
+alone she could lay aside all disguises.
+
+This morning she alighted from her carriage at the end of the
+pavement behind some tall evergreens.  As she walked toward the
+house, though absorbed with a serious purpose, she continued to be
+as observant of everything as usual.  Had an eye been observant of
+her, it would have been noticed that Mrs. Conyers in all her
+self-concealment did not conceal one thing--her walk.  This one
+element of her conduct had its curious psychology.  She had never
+been able to forget that certain scandals set going many years
+before, had altered the course of Mrs. Meredith's life and of the
+lives of some others.  After a lapse of so long a time she had no
+fear now that she should be discovered.  Nevertheless it was
+impossible for her ever to approach this house without "coming
+delicately."  She "came delicately" in the same sense that Agag,
+king of Amalek, walked when he was on his way to Saul, who was
+about to hew him to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.
+
+She approached the house now, observant of everything as she
+tripped.  Had a shutter been hung awry; if a window shade had been
+drawn too low or a pane of glass had not sparkled, or there had
+been loose paper on the ground or moulted feathers on the bricks,
+she would have discovered this with the victorious satisfaction of
+finding fault.  But orderliness prevailed.  No; the mat at the
+front door had been displaced by Rowan's foot as he had hurried
+from the house.  (The impulse was irresistible: she adjusted it
+with her toe and planted herself on it with a sense of triumph.)
+
+As she took out her own and Isabel's cards, she turned and looked
+out across the old estate.  This was the home she had designed for
+Isabel: the land, the house, the silver, the glass, the memories,
+the distinction--they must all be Isabel's.
+
+Some time passed before Mrs. Meredith appeared.  Always a woman of
+dignity and reserve, she had never before in her life perhaps worn
+a demeanor so dignified and reserved.  Her nature called for peace;
+but if Rowan had been wronged, then there was no peace--and a
+sacred war is a cruel one.  The instant that the two ladies
+confronted each other, each realized that each concealed something
+from the other.  This discovery instantly made Mrs. Meredith cooler
+still; it rendered Mrs. Conyers more cordial.
+
+"Isabel regretted that she could not come."
+
+"I am sorry."  The tone called for the dismissal of the subject.
+
+"This is scarcely a visit to you," Mrs. Conyers went on; "I have
+been paying one of my usual pastoral calls: I have been to Ambrose
+Webb's to see if my cows are ready to return to town.  Strawberries
+are ripe and strawberries call for more cream, and more cream calls
+for more calves, and more calves call for--well, we have all heard
+them!  I do not understand how a man who looks like Ambrose can so
+stimulate cattle.  Of course my cows are not as fine and fat as
+Rowan's--that is not to be expected.  The country is looking very
+beautiful.  I never come for a drive without regretting that I live
+in town."  (She would have found the country intolerable for the
+same reason that causes criminals to flock to cities.)
+
+Constraint deepened as the visit was prolonged.  Mrs. Conyers
+begged Mrs. Meredith for a recipe that she knew to be bad; and when
+Mrs. Meredith had left the room for it, she rose and looked eagerly
+out of the windows for any sign of Rowan.  When Mrs. Meredith
+returned, for the same reason she asked to be taken into the
+garden, which was in its splendor of bloom.  Mrs. Meredith culled
+for her a few of the most resplendent blossoms--she could not have
+offered to any one anything less.  Mrs. Conyers was careful not to
+pin any one of these on; she had discovered that she possessed a
+peculiarity known to some florists and concealed by those women who
+suffer from it--that flowers soon wilt when worn by them.
+
+Meanwhile as they walked she talked of flowers, of housekeeping;
+she discussed Marguerite's coming ball and Dent's brilliant
+graduation.  She enlarged upon this, praising Dent to the
+disparagement of her own grandson Victor, now in retreat from
+college on account of an injury received as centre-rush in his
+football team.  Victor, she protested, was above education; his
+college was a kind of dormitory to athletics.
+
+When we are most earnest ourselves, we are surest to feel the lack
+of earnestness in others; sincerity stirred to the depths will
+tolerate nothing less.  It thus becomes a new test of a companion.
+So a weak solution may not reveal a poison when a strong one will.
+Mrs. Meredith felt this morning as never before the real nature of
+the woman over whom for years she had tried to throw a concealing
+charity; and Mrs. Conyers saw as never before in what an impossible
+soil she had tried to plant poison oak and call it castle ivy.
+
+The ladies parted with coldness.  When she was once more seated in
+her carriage, Mrs. Conyers thrust her head through the window and
+told the coachman to drive slowly.  She tossed the recipe into a
+pine tree and took in her head.  Then she caught hold of a brown
+silk cord attached to a little brown silk curtain in the front of
+the brougham opposite her face.  It sprang aside, revealing a
+little toilette mirror.  On the cushion beside her lay something
+under a spread newspaper.  She quickly drew off her sombre visiting
+gloves; and lifting the newspaper, revealed under it a fresh pair
+of gloves, pearl-colored.  She worked her tinted hands nimbly into
+these.  Then she took out a rose-colored scarf or shawl as light as
+a summer cloud.  This she threw round her shoulders; it added no
+warmth, it added color, meaning.  There were a few other youthward
+changes and additions; and then the brown silk curtain closed over
+the mirror.
+
+Another woman leaned back in a corner of the brougham.  By a trick
+of the face she had juggled away a generation of her years.  The
+hands were moved backward on the horologe of mortality as we move
+backward the pointers on the dial of a clock: her face ticked at
+the hour of two in the afternoon of life instead of half-past five.
+
+There was still time enough left to be malicious.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+One morning about a week later she entered her carriage and was
+driven rapidly away.  A soft-faced, middle-aged woman with gray
+ringlets and nervous eyes stepped timorously upon the veranda and
+watched her departure with an expression of relief--Miss Harriet
+Crane, the unredeemed daughter of the household.
+
+She had been the only fruit of her mother's first marriage and she
+still remained attached to the parental stem despite the most
+vigorous wavings and shakings of that stem to shed its own product.
+Nearly fifty years of wintry neglect and summer scorching had not
+availed to disjoin Harriet from organic dependence upon her mother.
+And of all conceivable failings in a child of hers that mother
+could have found none so hard to forgive as the failure to attract
+a man in a world full of men nearly all bent upon being attracted.
+
+It was by no choice of Harriet's that she was born of a woman who
+valued children as a kind of social collateral, high-class
+investments to mature after long periods with at least reasonable
+profits for the original investors.  Nor was it by any volition of
+hers that she had commended herself to her mother in the beginning
+by being a beautiful and healthful child: initial pledge that she
+could be relied upon to turn out lucrative in the end.  The parent
+herself was secretly astounded that she had given birth to a child
+of so seraphic a disposition.
+
+Trouble and disappointment began with education, for education is
+long stout resistance.  You cannot polish highly a stone that is
+not hard enough to resist being highly polished.  Harriet's soft
+nature gave way before the advance of the serried phalanxes of
+knowledge: learning passed her by; and she like the many "passed
+through school."
+
+By this time her mother had grown alarmed and she brought Harriet
+out prematurely, that she might be wedded before, so to speak, she
+was discovered.  Meantime Mrs. Crane herself had married a second
+and a third time, with daughters by the last husband who were
+little younger than her eldest; and she laughingly protested that
+nothing is more confusing to a woman than to have in the house
+children by two husbands.  Hence further reason for desiring
+immediate nuptials: she could remove from the parlors the trace of
+bi-marital collaboration.
+
+At first only the most brilliant matches were planned for Harriet;
+these one by one unaccountably came to naught.  Later the mother
+began to fall back: upon those young men who should be glad to
+embrace such an opportunity; but these less desirable young men
+failed to take that peculiar view of their destinies.  In the
+meanwhile the Misses Conyers had come on as debutantes and were
+soon bespoken.  At the marriage of the youngest, Harriet's mother
+had her act as first bridesmaid and dressed her, already fading, as
+though she were the very spirit of April.
+
+The other sisters were long since gone, scattered north and south
+with half-grown families; and the big house was almost empty save
+when they came in troops to visit it.
+
+Harriet's downward career as an article of human merchandise had
+passed through what are perhaps not wholly unrecognizable stages.
+At first she had been displayed near the entrance for immediate
+purchase by the unwary.  Then she had been marked down as something
+that might be secured at a reduced price; but intending buyers
+preferred to pay more.  By and by even this label was taken off and
+she became a remnant of stock for which there was no convenient
+space--being moved from shelf to shelf, always a little more
+shop-worn, a little more out of style.  What was really needed was
+an auction.
+
+Mrs. Conyers did not take much to heart the teachings of her Bible;
+but it had at least defined for her one point of view: all
+creatures worth saving had been saved in pairs.
+
+Bitter as were those years for Harriet, others more humiliating
+followed.  The maternal attempts having been discontinued, she,
+desperate with slights and insults, had put forth some efforts of
+her own.  But it was as though one had been placed in a boat
+without oars and told to row for life: the little boat under the
+influence of cosmic tides had merely drifted into shallows and now
+lay there--forgotten.
+
+This morning as she sat idly rocking on the veranda, she felt that
+negative happiness which consists in the disappearance of a
+positively disagreeable thing.  Then she began to study how she
+should spend the forenoon most agreeably.  Isabel was upstairs; she
+would have been perfectly satisfied to talk with her; but for
+several mornings Isabel had shown unmistakable preference to be let
+alone; and in the school of life Harriet had attained the highest
+proficiency in one branch of knowledge at least--never to get in
+anybody's way.  Victor Fielding lay under the trees with a pipe and
+a book, but she never ventured near him.
+
+So Harriet bethought herself of a certain friend of hers on the
+other side of town, Miss Anna Hardage, who lived with her brother,
+Professor Hardage--two people to trust.
+
+She put on her hat which unfortunately she had chosen to trim
+herself, tied a white veil across the upper part of her face and
+got out her second-best pair of gloves: Harriet kept her best
+gloves for her enemies.  In the front yard she pulled a handful of
+white lilacs (there was some defect here or she would never have
+carried white lilacs in soiled white gloves); and passed out of the
+gate.  Her eyes were lighted up with anticipations, but ill must
+have overtaken her in transit; for when she was seated with Miss
+Anna in a little side porch looking out on the little green yard,
+they were dimmed with tears.
+
+"The same old story," she complained vehemently.  "The same
+ridicule that has been dinned into my ears since I was a child."
+
+"Ah, now, somebody has been teasing her about being an old maid,"
+said Miss Anna to herself, recognizing the signs.
+
+"This world is a very unprincipled place to live in," continued
+Harriet, her rage curdling into philosophy.
+
+"Ah, but it is the best there is just yet," maintained Miss Anna,
+stoutly.  "By and by we may all be able to do better--those of us
+who get the chance."
+
+"What shall I care then?" said Harriet, scouting eternity as a
+palliative of contemporary woes.
+
+"Wait! you are tired and you have lost your temper from thirst:
+children always do.  I'll bring something to cure you, fresh from
+the country, fresh from Ambrose Webb's farm.  Besides, you have a
+dark shade of the blues, my dear; and this remedy is capital for
+the blues.  You have but to sip a glass slowly--and where are
+they?"  And she hastened into the house.
+
+She returned with two glasses of cool buttermilk.
+
+The words and the deed were characteristic of one of the most
+wholesome women that ever helped to straighten out a crooked and to
+cool a feverish world.  Miss Anna's very appearance allayed
+irritation and became a provocation to good health, to good sense.
+Her mission in life seemed not so much to distribute honey as to
+sprinkle salt, to render things salubrious, to enable them to keep
+their tonic naturalness.  Not within the range of womankind could
+so marked a contrast have been found for Harriet as in this maiden
+lady of her own age, who was her most patient friend and who
+supported her clinging nature (which still could not resist the
+attempt to bloom) as an autumn cornstalk supports a frost-nipped
+morning-glory.
+
+If words of love had ever been whispered into Miss Anna's ear, no
+human being knew it now: but perhaps her heart also had its under
+chamber sealed with tears.  Women not even behind her back jested
+at her spinsterhood; and when that is true, a miracle takes place
+indeed.  No doubt Miss Anna was a miracle, not belonging to any
+country, race, or age; being one of those offerings to the world
+which nature now and then draws from the deeps of womanhood: a pure
+gift of God.
+
+The two old maids drained their rectifying beverage in the shady
+porch.  Whether from Miss Anna's faith in it or from the simple
+health-giving of her presence, Harriet passed through a process of
+healing; and as she handed back the empty glass, she smiled
+gratefully into Miss Anna's sparkling brown eyes.  Nature had been
+merciful to her in this, that she was as easily healed as wounded.
+She now returned to the subject which had so irritated her, as we
+rub pleasantly a spot from which a thorn has been extracted.
+
+"What do I care?" she said, straightening her hat as if to complete
+her recovery.  "But if there is one thing that can make me angry,
+Anna, it is the middle-aged, able-bodied unmarried men of this
+town.  They are perfectly, _perfectly_ contemptible."
+
+"Oh, come now!" cried Miss Anna, "I am too old to talk about such
+silly things myself; but what does a woman care whether she is
+married or not if she has had offers?  And you have had plenty of
+good offers, my dear."
+
+"No, I haven't!" said Harriet, who would tell the truth about this
+rankling misfortune.
+
+"Well, then, it was because the men knew you wouldn't have them."
+
+"No, it wasn't!" said Harriet, "it was because they knew I would."
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Miss Anna, impatiently.  "You mustn't try to palm
+off so much mock modesty on me, Harriet."
+
+"Ah, I am too old to fib about it, Anna!  I leave _that_ to my many
+sisters in misfortune."
+
+Harriet looked at her friend's work curiously: she was darning
+Professor Hardage's socks.
+
+"Why do you do that, Anna?  Socks are dirt cheap.  You might as
+well go out into the country and darn sheep."
+
+"Ah, you have never had a brother--my brother! so you cannot
+understand.  I can feel his heels pressing against my stitches when
+he is walking a mile away.   And I know whenever his fingers touch
+the buttons I have put back.  Besides, don't you like to see people
+make bad things good, and things with holes in them whole again?
+Why, that is half the work of the world, Harriet!  It is not his
+feet that make these holes," continued Miss Anna, nicely, "it is
+his shoes, his big, coarse shoes.  And his clothes wear out so
+soon.  He has a tailor who misfits him so exactly from year to year
+that there is never the slightest deviation in the botch.  I know
+beforehand exactly where all the creases will begin.  So I darn and
+mend.  The idea of his big, soft, strong feet making holes in
+anything! but, then, you have never tucked him in bed at night, my
+dear, so you know nothing about his feet."
+
+"Not I!" said Harriet, embarrassed but not shocked.
+
+Miss Anna continued fondly in a lowered voice: "You should have
+heard him the other day when he pulled open a drawer: 'Why, Anna,'
+he cried, 'where on earth did I get all these new socks?  The
+pair I left in here must have been alive: they've bred like
+rabbits.'--'Why, you've forgotten,' I said.  'It's your birthday;
+and I have made you over, so that you are as good as new--_me_!'"
+
+"I never have to be reminded of my birthday," remarked Harriet,
+reflectively.  "Anna, do you know that I have lived about
+one-eighth of the time since Columbus discovered America: doesn't
+that sound awful!"
+
+"Ah, but you don't look it," said Miss Anna, artistically, "and
+that's the main object."
+
+"Oh, I don't feel it," retorted Harriet, "and that's the main
+object too.  I'm as young as I ever was when I'm away from home;
+but I declare, Anna, there are times when my mother can make me
+feel I'm about the oldest thing alive."
+
+"Oh, come now! you mustn't begin to talk that way, or I'll have to
+give you more of the antidote.  You are threatened with a relapse."
+
+"No more," ordered Harriet with a forbidding hand, "and I repeat
+what I said.  Of course you know I never gossip, Anna; but when I
+talk to you, I do not feel as though I were talking to anybody."
+
+"Why, of course not," said Miss Anna, trying to make the most of
+the compliment, "I am nobody at all, just a mere nonentity,
+Harriet."
+
+"Anna," said Harriet, after a pause of unusual length, "if it had
+not been for my mother, I should have been married long ago.
+Thousands of worse-looking women, and of actually worse women,
+marry every year in this world and marry reasonably well.  It was
+because she tried to marry me off: that was the bottom of the
+deviltry--the men saw through her."
+
+"I am afraid they did," admitted Miss Anna, affably, looking down
+into a hole.
+
+"Of course I know I am not brilliant," conceded Harriet, "but then
+I am never commonplace."
+
+"I should like to catch any one saying such a thing."
+
+"Even if I were, commonplace women always make the best wives: do
+they not?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask that question in this porch," exclaimed Miss Anna a
+little resentfully.  "What do I know about it!"
+
+"My mother thinks I am a weak woman," continued Harriet, musingly.
+"If my day ever comes, she will know that I am, strong, Anna,
+_strong_."
+
+"Ah, now, you must forgive your mother," cried Miss Anna, having
+reached a familiar turn in this familiar dialogue.  "Whatever she
+did, she did for the best.  Certainly it was no fault of yours.
+But you could get married to-morrow if you wished and you know it,
+Harriet." (Miss Anna offered up the usual little prayer to be
+forgiven.)
+
+The balm of those words worked through Harriet's veins like a
+poison of joy.  So long as a single human being expresses faith in
+us, what matters an unbelieving world?  Harriet regularly visited
+Miss Anna to hear these maddening syllables.  She called for them
+as for the refilling of a prescription, which she preferred to get
+fresh every time rather than take home once for all and use as
+directed.
+
+Among a primitive folk who seemed to have more moral troubles than
+any other and to feel greater need of dismissing them by artificial
+means, there grew up the custom of using a curious expedient.  They
+chose a beast of the field and upon its head symbolically piled all
+the moral hard-headedness of the several tribes; after which the
+unoffending brute was banished to the wilderness and the guilty
+multitude felt relieved.  However crude that ancient method of
+transferring mental and moral burdens, it had at least this
+redeeming feature: the early Hebrews heaped their sins upon a
+creature which they did not care for and sent it away.  In modern
+times we pile our burdens upon our dearest fellow-creatures and
+keep them permanently near us for further use.  What human being
+but has some other upon whom he nightly hangs his troubles as he
+hangs his different garments upon hooks and nails in the walls
+around him?  Have we ever suspected that when once the habit of
+transferring our troubles has become pleasant to us, we thereafter
+hunt for troubles in order that we may have them to transfer, that
+we magnify the little ones in order to win the credit of having
+large ones, and that we are wonderfully refreshed by making other
+people despondent about us?  Mercifully those upon whom the burdens
+are hung often become the better for their loads; they may not live
+so long, but they are more useful.  Thus in turn the weak develop
+the strong.
+
+For years Miss Anna had sacrificially demeaned herself in the
+service of Harriet, who would now have felt herself a recreant
+friend unless she had promptly detailed every annoyance of her
+life.  She would go home, having left behind her the infinite
+little swarm of stinging things--having transferred them to the
+head of Miss Anna, around which they buzzed until they died.
+
+There was this further peculiarity in Harriet's visits: that the
+most important moments were the last; Just as a doctor, after he
+has listened to the old story of his patient's symptoms, and has
+prescribed and bandaged and patted and soothed, and has reached the
+door, turns, and noting a light in the patient's eye hears him make
+a remark which shows that all the time he has really been thinking
+about something else.
+
+Harriet now showed what was at the bottom of her own mind this
+morning:
+
+"What I came to tell you about, Anna, is that for a week life at
+home has been unendurable.  There is some trouble, some terrible
+trouble; and no matter what goes wrong, my mother always holds me
+responsible.  Positively there are times when I wonder whether I,
+without my knowing it, may not be the Origin of Evil."
+
+Miss Anna made no comment, having closed the personal subject, and
+Harriet continued:
+
+"It has scarcely been possible for me to stay in the house.
+Fortunately mother has been there very little herself.  She goes
+and goes and drives and drives.  Strange things have been
+happening.  You know that Judge Morris has not missed coming on
+Sunday evening for years.  Last night mother sat on the veranda
+waiting for him and he did not come.  I know, for I watched.  What
+have I to do but watch other people's affairs?--I have none of my
+own.  I believe the trouble is all between Isabel and Rowan."
+
+Miss Anna dropped her work and looked at Harriet with sudden
+gravity.
+
+"I can give you no idea of the real situation because it is very
+dramatic; and you know, Anna, I am not dramatic: I am merely
+historical: I tell my little tales.  But at any rate Rowan has not
+been at the house for a week.  He called last Sunday afternoon and
+Isabel refused to see him.  I know; because what have I to do but
+to interest myself in people who have affairs of interest?  Then
+Isabel had his picture in her room: it has been taken down.  She
+had some of his books: they are gone.  The house has virtually been
+closed to company.  Isabel has excused herself to callers.  Mother
+was to give a tea; the invitations were cancelled.  At table Isabel
+and mother barely speak; but when I am not near, they talk a great
+deal to each other.  And Isabel walks and walks and walks--in the
+garden, in her rooms.  I have waked up two or three times at night
+and have seen her sitting at her window.  She has always been very
+kind to me, Anna," Harriet's voice faltered, "she and you: and I
+cannot bear to see her so unhappy.  You would never believe that a
+few days would make such a change in her.  The other morning I went
+up to her room with a little bunch of violets which I had gathered
+for her myself.  When she opened the door, I saw that she was
+packing her trunks.  And the dress she had ordered for Marguerite's
+ball was lying on the bed ready to be put in.  As I gave her the
+flowers she stood looking at them a long time; then she kissed me
+without a word and quickly closed the door."
+
+
+When Harriet had gone.  Miss Anna sat awhile in her porch with a
+troubled face.  Then she went softly into the library, the windows
+of which opened out upon the porch.  Professor Hardage was standing
+on a short step-ladder before a bookcase, having just completed the
+arrangement of the top shelf.
+
+"Are you never going to get down?" she asked, looking up at him
+fondly.
+
+He closed the book with a snap and a sigh and descended.  Her
+anxious look recalled his attention,
+
+"Did I not hear Harriet harrowing you up again with her troubles?"
+he asked.  "You poor, kind soul that try to bear everybody's!"
+
+"Never mind about what I bear!  What can you bear for dinner?"
+
+"It is an outrage, Anna!  What right has she to make herself
+happier by making you miserable, lengthening her life by shortening
+yours?  For these worries always clip the thread of life at the
+end: that is where all the small debts are collected as one."
+
+"Now you must not be down on Harriet!  It makes her happier; and as
+to the end of my life, I shall be there to attend to that."
+
+"Suppose I moved away with you to some other college entirely out
+of her reach?"
+
+"I shall not suppose it because you will never do it.  If you did,
+Harriet would simply find somebody else to confide in; she _must_
+tell _everything_ to _somebody_.  But if she told any one else, a
+good many of these stories would be all over town.  She tells me
+and they get no further."
+
+"What right have you to listen to scandal in order to suppress it?"
+
+"I don't even listen always: I merely stop the stream at its
+source."
+
+"I object to your offering your mind as the banks to such a stream.
+Still I'm glad that I live near the banks," and he kissed his hand
+to her.
+
+"When one woman tells another anything and the other woman does not
+tell, remember it is not scandal--it is confidence."
+
+"Then there is no such thing as confidence," he replied, laughing.
+
+He turned toward his shelves.
+
+"Now do rest," she pleaded, "you look worn out."
+
+She had a secret notion that books instead of putting life into
+people took it out of them.  At best they performed the function of
+grindstones: they made you sharper, but they made you thinner--gave
+you more edge and left you less substance.
+
+"I wish every one of those books had a lock and I had the bunch of
+keys."
+
+"Each has a lock and key; but the key cannot be put into your
+pocket, Anna, my dear; it is the unlocking mind.  And you are not
+to speak of books as a collection of locks and keys; they make up
+the living tree of knowledge, though of course there is very little
+of the tree in this particular bookcase."
+
+"I don't see any of it," she remarked with wholesome literalness.
+
+"Well, here at the bottom are lexicons--think of them as roots and
+soil.  Above them lie maps and atlases: consider them the surface.
+Then all books are history of course.  But here is a great central
+trunk rising out of the surface which is called History in
+especial.  On each side of that, running to the right and to the
+left, are main branches.  Here for instance is the large limb of
+Philosophy--a very weighty limb indeed.  Here is the branch of
+Criticism.  Here is a bough consisting principally of leaves on
+which live unnamed venomous little insects that poison them and die
+on them: their appointed place in creation."
+
+"And so there is no positive fruit anywhere," she insisted with her
+practical taste for the substantial.
+
+"It is all food, Anna, edible and nourishing to different mouths
+and stomachs.  Some very great men have lived on the roots of
+knowledge, the simplest roots.  And here is poetry for dates and
+wild honey; and novels for cocoanuts and mushrooms.  And here is
+Religion: that is for manna."
+
+"What is at the very top?"
+
+His eyes rested upon the highest row of books.
+
+"These are some of the loftiest growths, new buds of the mind
+opening toward the unknown.  Each in its way shows the best that
+man, the earth-animal, has been able to accomplish.  Here is a
+little volume for instance which tells what he ought to be--and
+never is.  This small volume deals with the noblest ideals of the
+greatest civilizations.  Here is what one of the finest of the
+world's teachers had to say about justice.  Aspiration is at that
+end.  This little book is on the sad loveliness of Greek girls; and
+the volume beside it is about the brief human chaplets that Horace
+and some other Romans wore--and then trod on.  Thus the long story
+of light and shadow girdles the globe.  If you were nothing but a
+spirit, Anna, and could float in here some night, perhaps you would
+see a mysterious radiance streaming upward from this shelf of books
+like the northern lights from behind the world--starting no one
+knows where, sweeping away we know not whither--search-light of the
+mortal, turned on dark eternity."
+
+She stood a little behind him and watched him in silence, hiding
+her tenderness.
+
+"If I were a book," she said thoughtlessly, "where should I be?"
+
+He drew the fingers of one hand lingeringly across the New
+Testament.
+
+"Ah, now don't do that," she cried, "or you shall have no dinner.
+Here, turn round! look at the dust! look at this cravat on one end!
+look at these hands!  March upstairs."
+
+He laid his head over against hers.
+
+"Stand up!" she exclaimed, and ran out of the room.
+
+Some minutes later she came back and took a seat near the door.
+There was flour on her elbow; and she held a spoon in her hand.
+
+"Now you look like yourself," she said, regarding him with approval
+as he sat reading before the bookcase.  "I started to tell you what
+Harriet told me."
+
+He looked over the top of his book at her.
+
+"I thought you said you stopped the stream at its source.  Now you
+propose to let it run down to me--or up to me: how do you know it
+will not run past me?"
+
+"Now don't talk in that way," she said, "this is something you will
+want to know," and she related what Harriet had chronicled.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+When she had left the room, he put back into its place the volume
+he was reading: its power over him was gone.  All the voices of all
+his books, speaking to him from lands and ages, grew simultaneously
+hushed.  He crossed the library to a front window opening upon the
+narrow rocky street and sat with his elbow on the window-sill, the
+large fingers of one large hand unconsciously searching his
+brow--that habit of men of thoughtful years, the smoothing out of
+the inner problems.
+
+The home of Professor Hardage was not in one of the best parts of
+the town.  There was no wealth here, no society as it impressively
+calls itself; there were merely well-to-do human beings of ordinary
+intelligence and of kindly and unkindly natures.  The houses,
+constructed of frame or of brick, were crowded wall against wall
+along the sidewalk; in the rear were little gardens of flowers and
+of vegetables.  The street itself was well shaded; and one forest
+tree, the roots of which bulged up through the mossy bricks of the
+pavement, hung its boughs before his windows.  Throughout life he
+had found so many companions in the world outside of mere people,
+and this tree was one.  From the month of leaves to the month of no
+leaves--the period of long hot vacations--when his eyes were tired
+and his brain and heart a little tired also, many a time it
+refreshed him by all that it was and all that it stood for--this
+green tent of the woods arching itself before his treasured
+shelves.  In it for him were thoughts of cool solitudes and of
+far-away greenness; with tormenting visions also of old lands, the
+crystal-aired, purpling mountains of which, and valleys full of
+fable, he was used to trace out upon the map, but knew that he
+should never see or press with responsive feet.
+
+For travel was impossible to him.  Part of his small salary went to
+the family of a brother; part disappeared each year in the buying
+of books--at once his need and his passion; there were the expenses
+of living; and Miss Anna always exacted appropriations.
+
+"I know we have not much, but then my little boys and girls have
+nothing; and the poor must help the poorer."
+
+"Very well," he would reply, "but some day you will be a beggar
+yourself, Anna."
+
+"Oh, well then, if I am, I do not doubt that I shall be a thrifty
+old mendicant.  And I'll beg for _you_!  So don't you be uneasy;
+and give me what I want."
+
+She always looked like a middle-aged Madonna in the garb of a
+housekeeper.  Indeed, he was wont to call her the Madonna of the
+Dishes; but at these times, and in truth for all deeper ways, he
+thought of her as the Madonna of the Motherless.  Nevertheless he
+was resolute that out of this many-portioned salary something must
+yet be saved.
+
+"The time will come," he threatened, "when some younger man will
+want my professorship--and will deserve it.  I shall either be put
+out or I shall go out; and then--decrepitude, uselessness, penury,
+unless something has been hoarded.  So, Anna, out of the frail
+uncertain little basketful of the apples of life which the college
+authorities present to me once a year, we must save a few for what
+may prove a long hard winter."
+
+Professor Hardage was a man somewhat past fifty, of ordinary
+stature and heavy figure, topped with an immense head.  His was not
+what we call rather vaguely the American face.  In Germany had he
+been seen issuing from the lecture rooms of a university, he would
+have been thought at home and his general status had been assumed:
+there being that about him which bespoke the scholar, one of those
+quiet self-effacing minds that have long since passed with entire
+humility into the service of vast themes.  In social life the
+character of a noble master will in time stamp itself upon the look
+and manners of a domestic; and in time the student acquires the
+lofty hall-mark of what he serves.
+
+It was this perhaps that immediately distinguished him and set him
+apart in every company.  The appreciative observer said at once:
+"Here is a man who may not himself be great; but he is at least
+great enough to understand greatness; he is used to greatness."
+
+As so often is the case with the strong American, he was
+self-made--that glory of our boasting.  But we sometimes forget
+that an early life of hardship, while it may bring out what is best
+in a man, so often wastes up his strength and burns his ambition to
+ashes in the fierce fight against odds too great.  So that the
+powers which should have carried him far carry him only a little
+distance or leave him standing exhausted where he began.
+
+When Alfred Hardage was eighteen, he had turned his eyes toward a
+professorship in one of the great universities of his country;
+before he was thirty he had won a professorship in the small but
+respectable college of his native town; and now, when past fifty,
+he had never won anything more.  For him ambition was like the
+deserted martin box in the corner of his yard: returning summers
+brought no more birds.  Had his abilities been even more
+extraordinary, the result could not have been far otherwise.  He
+had been compelled to forego for himself as a student the highest
+university training, and afterward to win such position as the
+world accorded him without the prestige of study abroad.
+
+It became his duty in his place to teach the Greek language and its
+literature; sometimes were added classes in Latin.  This was the
+easier problem.  The more difficult problem grew out of the demand,
+that he should live intimately in a world of much littleness and
+not himself become little; feel interested in trivial minds at
+street corners, yet remain companion and critic of some of the
+greatest intellects of human kind; contend with occasional malice
+and jealousy in the college faculty, yet hold himself above these
+carrion passions; retain his intellectual manhood, yet have his
+courses of study narrowed and made superficial for him; be free yet
+submit to be patronized by some of his fellow-citizens, because
+they did him the honor to employ him for so much as a year as sage
+and moral exampler to their sons.
+
+Usually one of two fates overtakes the obscure professional scholar
+in this country: either he shrinks to the dimensions of a true
+villager and deserts the vastness of his library; or he repudiates
+the village and becomes a cosmopolitan recluse--lonely toiler among
+his books.  Few possess the breadth and equipoise which will enable
+them to pass from day to day along mental paths, which have the
+Forum of Augustus or the Groves of the Academy at one end and the
+babbling square of a modern town at the other; remaining equally at
+home amid ancient ideals and everyday realities.
+
+It was the fate of the recluse that threatened him.  He had been
+born with the scholar's temperament--this furnished the direction;
+before he had reached the age of twenty-five he had lost his wife
+and two sons--that furrowed the tendency.  During the years
+immediately following he had tried to fill an immense void of the
+heart with immense labors of the intellect.  The void remained; yet
+undoubtedly compensation for loneliness had been found in the
+fixing of his affections upon what can never die--the inexhaustible
+delight of learning.
+
+Thus the life of the book-worm awaited him but for an interference
+excellent and salutary and irresistible.  This was the constant
+companionship of a sister whose nature enabled her to find its
+complete universe in the only world that she had ever known: she
+walking ever broad-minded through the narrowness of her little
+town; remaining white though often threading its soiling ways; and
+from every life which touched hers, however crippled and confined,
+extracting its significance instead of its insignificance, shy
+harmonies instead of the easy discords which can so palpably be
+struck by any passing hand.
+
+It was due to her influence, therefore, that his life achieved the
+twofold development which left him normal in the middle years; the
+fresh pursuing scholar still but a man practically welded to the
+people among whom he lived--receiving their best and giving his
+best.
+
+But we cannot send our hearts out to play at large among our kind,
+without their coming to choose sooner or later playfellows to be
+loved more than the rest.
+
+Two intimacies entered into the life of Professor Hardage.  The
+first of these had been formed many years before with Judge Ravenel
+Morris.  They had discovered each other by drifting as lonely men
+do in the world; each being without family ties, each loving
+literature, each having empty hours.  The bond between them had
+strengthened, until it had become to each a bond of strength
+indeed, mighty and uplifting.
+
+The other intimacy was one of those for which human speech will
+never, perhaps, be called upon to body forth its describing word.
+In the psychology of feeling there are states which we gladly
+choose to leave unlanguaged.  Vast and deep-sounding as is the
+orchestra of words, there are scores which we never fling upon such
+instruments--realities that lie outside the possibility and the
+desirability of utterance as there are rays of the sun that fall
+outside the visible spectrum of solar light.
+
+What description can be given in words of that bond between two,
+when the woman stands near the foot of the upward slope of life,
+and the man is already passing down on the sunset side, with
+lengthening afternoon shadows on the gray of his temples--between
+them the cold separating peaks of a generation?
+
+Such a generation of toiling years separated Professor Hardage from
+Isabel Conyers.  When, at the age of twenty, she returned after
+years of absence in an eastern college--it was a tradition of her
+family that its women should be brilliantly educated--he verged
+upon fifty.  To his youthful desires that interval was nothing; but
+to his disciplined judgment it was everything.
+
+"Even though it could be," he said to himself, "it should not be,
+and therefore it shall not."
+
+His was an idealism that often leaves its holder poor indeed save
+in the possession of its own incorruptible wealth.  No doubt also
+the life-long study of the ideals of classic time came to his
+guidance now with their admonitions of exquisite balance, their
+moderation and essential justness.
+
+But after he had given up all hope of her, he did not hesitate to
+draw her to him in other ways; and there was that which drew her
+unfathomably to him--all the more securely since in her mind there
+was no thought that the bond between them would ever involve the
+possibility of love and marriage.
+
+His library became another home to her.  One winter she read Greek
+with him--authors not in her college course.  Afterward he read
+much more Greek to her.  Then they laid Greek aside, and he took
+her through the history of its literature and through that other
+noble one, its deathless twin.
+
+When she was not actually present, he yet took her with him through
+the wide regions of his studies---set her figure in old Greek
+landscapes and surrounded it with dim shapes of loveliness--saw her
+sometimes as the perfection that went into marble--made her a
+portion of legend and story, linking her with Nausicaa and
+Andromache and the lost others.  Then quitting antiquity with her
+altogether, he passed downward with her into the days of chivalry,
+brought her to Arthur's court, and invested her with one character
+after another, trying her by the ladies of knightly ideals--reading
+her between the lines in all the king's idyls.
+
+But last and best, seeing her in the clear white light of her own
+country and time--as the spirit of American girlhood, pure,
+refined, faultlessly proportioned in mental and physical health,
+full of kindness, full of happiness, made for love, made for
+motherhood.  All this he did in his hopeless and idealizing worship
+of her; and all this and more he hid away: for he too had his crypt.
+
+So watching her and watching vainly over her, he was the first to
+see that she was loved and that her nature was turning away from
+him, from all that he could offer--subdued by that one other call.
+
+"Now, Fates," he said, "by whatsoever names men have blindly prayed
+to you; you that love to strike at perfection, and pass over a
+multitude of the ordinary to reach the rare, stand off for a few
+years!  Let them be happy together in their love, their marriage,
+and their young children.  Let the threads run freely and be
+joyously interwoven.  Have mercy at least for a few years!"
+
+A carriage turned a corner of the street and was driven to the
+door.  Isabel got out, and entered the hall without ringing.
+
+He met her there and as she laid her hands in his without a word,
+he held them and looked at her without a word.  He could scarcely
+believe that in a few days her life could so have drooped as under
+a dreadful blight.
+
+"I have come to say good-by," and with a quiver of the lips she
+turned her face aside and brushed past him, entering the library.
+
+He drew his own chair close to hers when she had seated herself.
+
+"I thought you and your grandmother were going later: is not this
+unexpected?"
+
+"Yes, it is very unexpected."
+
+"But of course she is going with you?"
+
+"No, I am going alone."
+
+"For the summer?"
+
+"Yes, for the summer.  I suppose for a long time."
+
+She continued to sit with her cheek leaning against the back of the
+chair, her eyes directed outward through the windows.  He asked
+reluctantly:
+
+"Is there any trouble?"
+
+"Yes, there is trouble."
+
+"Can you tell me what it is?"
+
+"No, I cannot tell you what it is.  I cannot tell any one what it
+is."
+
+"Is there anything I can do?"
+
+"No, there is nothing you can do.  There is nothing any one can do."
+
+Silence followed for some time.  He smiled at her sadly:
+
+"Shall I tell you what the trouble is?"
+
+"You do not know what it is.  I believe I wish you did know.  But I
+cannot tell you."
+
+"Is it not Rowan?"
+
+She waited awhile without change of posture and answered at length
+without change of tone:
+
+"Yes, it is Rowan."
+
+The stillness of the room became intense and prolonged; the
+rustling of the leaves about the window sounded like noise.
+
+"Are you not going to marry him, Isabel?"
+
+"No, I am not going to marry him.  I am never going to marry him."
+
+She stretched out her hand helplessly to him.  He would not take it
+and it fell to her side: at that moment he did not dare.  But of
+what use is it to have kept faith with high ideals through trying
+years if they do not reward us at last with strength in the crises
+of character?  No doubt they rewarded him now: later he reached
+down and took her hand and held it tenderly.
+
+"You must not go away.  You must be reconciled, to him.  Otherwise
+it will sadden your whole summer.  And it will sadden his."
+
+"Sadden, the whole summer," she repeated, "a summer?  It will
+sadden a life.  If there is eternity, it will sadden eternity."
+
+"Is it so serious?"
+
+"Yes, it is as serious as anything, could be."
+
+After a while she sat up wearily and turned her face to him for the
+first time.
+
+"Cannot you help me?" she asked.  "I do not believe I can bear
+this.  I do not believe I can bear it."
+
+Perhaps it is the doctors who hear that tone oftenest--little
+wonder that they are men so often with sad or with calloused faces.
+
+"What can I do?"
+
+"I do not know what you can do.  But cannot you do something?  You
+were the only person in the world that I could go to.  I did not
+think I could ever come to you; but I had to come.  Help me."
+
+He perceived that commonplace counsel would be better than no
+counsel at all.
+
+"Isabel," he asked, "are you suffering because you have wronged
+Rowan or because you think he has wronged you?"
+
+"No, no, no," she cried, covering her face with her hands, "I have
+not wronged him!  I have not wronged any one!  He has wronged me!"
+
+"Did he ever wrong you before?"
+
+"No, he never wronged me before.  But this covers everything--the
+whole past."
+
+"Have you ever had any great trouble before, Isabel?"
+
+"No, I have never had any great trouble before.  At times in my
+life I may have thought I had, but now I know."
+
+"You do not need to be told that sooner or later all of us have
+troubles that we think we cannot bear."
+
+She shook her head wearily: "It does not do any good to think of
+that!  It does not help me in the least!"
+
+"But it does help if there is any one to whom we can tell our
+troubles."
+
+"I cannot tell mine."
+
+"Cannot you tell me?"
+
+"No, I believe I wish you knew, but I could not tell you.  No, I do
+not even wish you to know."
+
+"Have you seen Kate?"
+
+She covered her face with her hands again: "No, no, no," she cried,
+"not Kate!"  Then she looked up at him with eyes suddenly kindling:
+"Have you heard what Kate's life has been since her marriage?"
+
+"We have all heard, I suppose."
+
+"She has never spoken a word against him--not even to me from whom
+she never had a secret.  How could I go to her about Rowan?  Even
+if she had confided in me, I could not tell her this."
+
+"If you are going away, change of scene will help you to forget it."
+
+"No, it will help me to remember."
+
+"There is prayer, Isabel."
+
+"I know there is prayer.  But prayer does not do any good.  It has
+nothing to do with this."
+
+"Enter as soon as possible into the pleasures of the people you are
+to visit."
+
+"I cannot!  I do not wish for pleasure,"
+
+"Isabel," he said at last, "forgive him."
+
+"I cannot forgive him."
+
+"Have you tried?"
+
+"No, I cannot try.  If I forgave him, it would only be a change in
+me: it would not change him: it would not undo what he has done."
+
+"Do you know the necessity of self-sacrifice?"
+
+"But how can I sacrifice what is best in me without lowering
+myself?  Is it a virtue in a woman to throw away what she holds to
+be as highest?"
+
+"Remember," he said, returning to the point, "that, if you forgive
+him, you become changed yourself.  You no longer see what he has
+done as you see it now.  That is the beauty of forgiveness: it
+enables us better to understand those whom we have forgiven.
+Perhaps it will enable you to put yourself in his place."
+
+She put her hands to her eyes with a shudder: "You do not know what
+you are saying," she cried, and rose.
+
+"Then trust it all to time," he said finally, "that is best!  Time
+alone solves so much.  Wait!  Do not act!  Think and feel as little
+as possible.  Give time its merciful chance.  I'll come to see you."
+
+They had moved toward the door.  She drew off her glove which she
+was putting on and laid her hand once more in his.
+
+"Time can change nothing.  I have decided."
+
+As she was going down the steps to the carriage, she turned and
+came back.
+
+"Do not come to see me!  I shall come to you to say good-by.  It is
+better for you not to come to the house just now.  I might not be
+able to see you."
+
+Isabel had the carriage driven to the Osborns'.
+
+The house was situated in a pleasant street of delightful
+residences.  It had been newly built on an old foundation as a
+bridal present to Kate from her father.  She had furnished it with
+a young wife's pride and delight and she had lined it throughout
+with thoughts of incommunicable tenderness about the life history
+just beginning.  Now, people driving past (and there were few in
+town who did not know) looked at it as already a prison and a doom.
+
+Kate was sitting in the hall with some work in her lap.  Seeing
+Isabel she sprang up and met her at the door, greeting her as
+though she herself were the happiest of wives.
+
+"Do you know how long it has been since you were here?" she
+exclaimed chidingly.  "I had not realized how soon young married
+people can be forgotten and pushed aside."
+
+"Forget you, dearest!  I have never thought of you so much as since
+I was here last."
+
+"Ah," thought Kate to herself, "she has heard.  She has begun to
+feel sorry for me and has begun to stay away as people avoid the
+unhappy."
+
+But the two friends, each smiling into the other's eyes, their arms
+around each other, passed into the parlors.
+
+"Now that you are here at last, I shall keep you," said Kate,
+rising from the seat they had taken.  "I will send the carriage
+home.  George cannot be here to lunch and we shall have it all to
+ourselves as we used to when we were girls together."
+
+"No," exclaimed Isabel, drawing her down into the seat again, "I
+cannot stay.  I had only a few moments and drove by just to speak
+to you, just to tell you how much I love you."
+
+Kate's face changed and she dropped her eyes.  "Is so little of me
+so much nowadays?" she asked, feeling as though the friendship of a
+lifetime were indeed beginning to fail her along with other things.
+
+"No, no, no," cried Isabel.  "I wish we could never be separated."
+
+She rose quickly and went over to the piano and began to turn over
+the music.  "It seems so long since I heard any music.  What has
+become of it?  Has it all gone out of life?   I feel as though
+there were none any more."
+
+Kate came over and looked at one piece of music after another
+irresolutely.
+
+"I have not touched the piano for weeks."
+
+She sat down and her fingers wandered forcedly through a few
+chords.  Isabel stepped quickly to her side and laid restraining
+hands softly upon hers: "No; not to-day."
+
+Kate rose with averted face: "No; not any music to-day!"
+
+The friends returned to their seat, on which Kate left her work.
+She took it up and for a few moments Isabel watched her in silence.
+
+"When did you see Rowan?"
+
+"You know he lives in the country," replied Isabel, with an air of
+defensive gayety.
+
+"And does he never come to town?"
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+Kate took this seriously and her head sank lower over her work:
+"Ah," she thought to herself, "she will not confide in me any
+longer.  She keeps her secrets from me--me who shared them all my
+life."
+
+"What is it you are making?"
+
+Isabel stretched out her hand, but Kate with a cry threw her breast
+downward upon her work.  With laughter they struggled over it; Kate
+released it and Isabel rising held it up before her.  Then she
+allowed it to drop to the floor.
+
+"Isabel!" exclaimed Kate, her face grown cold and hard.  She
+stooped with dignity and picked up the garment.
+
+"Oh, forgive me," implored Isabel, throwing her arms around her
+neck.  "I did not know what I was doing!" and she buried her face
+on the young wife's shoulder.  "I was thinking of myself: I cannot
+tell you why!"
+
+Kate released herself gently.  Her face remained grave.  She had
+felt the first wound of motherhood: it could not be healed at once.
+The friends could not look at each other.  Isabel began to draw on
+her gloves and Kate did not seek to keep her longer.
+
+"I must go.  Dear friend, have you forgiven me?  I cannot tell you
+what was in my heart.  Some day you will understand.  Try to
+forgive till you do understand."
+
+Kate's mouth trembled: "Isabel, why are you so changed toward me?"
+
+"Ah, I have not changed toward you!  I shall never change toward
+you!"
+
+"Are you too happy to care for me any longer?"
+
+"Ah, Kate, I am not too happy for anything.  Some day you will
+understand."
+
+She leaned far out and waved her hand as she drove away, and then
+she threw herself back into the carriage.  "Dear injured friend!
+Brave loyal woman'" she cried, "the men we loved have ruined both
+our lives; and we who never had a secret from each other meet and
+part as hypocrites to shield them.  Drive home," she said to the
+driver.  "If any one motions to stop, pay no attention.  Drive
+fast."
+
+Mrs. Osborn watched the carriage out of sight and then walked
+slowly back to her work.  She folded the soft white fabric over the
+cushions and then laid her cheek against it and gave it its first
+christening--the christening of tears.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The court-house clock in the centre of the town clanged the hour of
+ten--hammered it out lavishly and cheerily as a lusty blacksmith
+strikes with prodigal arm his customary anvil.  Another clock in a
+dignified church tower also struck ten, but with far greater
+solemnity, as though reminding the town clock that time is not to
+be measured out to man as a mere matter of business, but intoned
+savingly and warningly as the chief commodity of salvation.  Then
+another clock: in a more attenuated cobwebbed steeple also struck
+ten, reaffirming the gloomy view of its resounding brother and
+insisting that the town clock had treated the subject with sinful
+levity.
+
+Nevertheless the town clock seemed to have the best of the argument
+on this particular day; for the sun was shining, cool, breezes were
+blowing, and the streets were thronged with people intent on making
+bargains.  Possibly the most appalling idea in most men's notions
+of eternity is the dread that there will be no more bargaining
+there.
+
+A bird's-eye view of the little town as it lay outspread on its
+high fertile plateau, surrounded by green woods and waving fields,
+would have revealed near one edge of it a large verdurous spot
+which looked like an overrun oasis.  This oasis was enclosed by a
+high fence on the inside of which ran a hedge of lilacs, privet,
+and osage orange.  Somewhere in it was an old one-story manor
+house of rambling ells and verandas.  Elsewhere was a little
+summer-house, rose-covered; still elsewhere an arbor vine-hung; at
+various other places secluded nooks with seats, where the bushes
+could hide you and not hear you--a virtue quite above anything
+human.   Marguerite lived in this labyrinth.
+
+As the dissenting clocks finished striking, had you been standing
+outside the fence near a little side gate used by grocers' and
+bakers' carts, you might have seen Marguerite herself.  There came
+a soft push against the gate from within; and as it swung part of
+the way open, you might have observed that the push was delivered
+by the toe of a little foot.  A second push sent it still farther.
+Then there was a pause and then it flew open and stayed open.  At
+first there appeared what looked like an inverted snowy flagstaff
+but turned out to be a long, closed white parasol; then Marguerite
+herself appeared, bending her head low under the privet leaves and
+holding her skirts close in, so that they might not be touched by
+the whitewash on each edge.  Once outside, she straightened herself
+up with the lithe grace of a young willow, released her skirts, and
+balancing herself on the point of her parasol, closed the gate with
+her toe: she was too dainty to touch it.
+
+The sun shone hot and Marguerite quickly raised her parasol.  It
+made you think of some silken white myriad-fluted mushroom of the
+dark May woods; and Marguerite did not so much seem to have come
+out of the house as out of the garden--to have slept there on its
+green moss with the new moon on her eyelids--indeed to have been
+born there, in some wise compounded of violets and hyacinths; and
+as the finishing touch to have had squeezed into her nature a few
+drops of wildwood spritishness.
+
+She started toward the town with a movement somewhat like that of a
+tall thin lily stalk swayed by zephyrs--with a lilt, a cadence, an
+ever changing rhythm of joy: plain walking on the solid earth was
+not for her.  At friendly houses along the way she peeped into open
+windows, calling to friends; she stooped over baby carriages on the
+sidewalk, noting but not measuring their mysteries; she bowed to
+the right and to the left at passing carriages; and people leaned
+far out to bow and smile at her.  Her passage through the town was
+somewhat like that of a butterfly crossing a field.
+
+"Will he be there?" she asked.  "I did not tell him I was coming,
+but he heard me say I should be there at half-past ten o'clock.  It
+is his duty to notice my least remark."
+
+When she reached her destination, the old town library, she mounted
+the lowest step and glanced rather guiltily up and down the street.
+Three ladies were going up and two men were going down: no one was
+coming toward Marguerite.
+
+"Now, why is he not here?  He shall be punished for this."
+
+She paced slowly backward and forward yet a little while.  Then she
+started resolutely in the direction of a street where most of the
+law offices were situated.  Turning a corner, she came full upon
+Judge, Morris.
+
+"Ah, good morning, good morning," he cried, putting his gold-headed
+cane under his arm and holding out both hands.  "Where did you
+sleep last night?  On rose leaves?"
+
+"I was in grandmother's bed when I left off," said Marguerite,
+looking up at the rim of her hat.
+
+"And where were you when you began again?"
+
+"Still in grandmother's bed.  I think I must have been there all
+the time.  I know all about your old Blackstone and all that kind
+of thing," she continued, glancing at a yellow book under his arm
+and speaking with a threat as though he had adjudged her ignorant.
+
+"Ah, then you will make a good lawyer's wife."
+
+"I supposed I'd make a good wife of any kind.  Are you coming to my
+ball?"
+
+"Well, you know I am too old to make engagements far ahead.  But I
+expect to be there.  If I am not, my ghost shall attend."
+
+"How shall I recognize it?  Does it dance?  I don't want to mistake
+it for Barbee."
+
+"Barbee shall not come if I can keep him at home."
+
+"And why, please?"
+
+"I am afraid he is falling in love with you."
+
+"But why shouldn't he?"
+
+"I don't wish my nephew to be flirted."
+
+"But how do you know I'd flirt him?"
+
+"Ah, I knew your mother when she was young and your grandmother
+when she was young: you're all alike."
+
+"We, are so glad we are," said Marguerite, as she danced away from
+him under her parasol.
+
+Farther down the street she met Professor Hardage.
+
+"I know all about your old Odyssey--your old Horace and all those
+things," she said threateningly.  "I am not as ignorant as you
+think."
+
+"I wish Horace had known you."
+
+"Would it have been nice?"
+
+"He might have written an ode _Ad Margaritam_ instead of _Ad
+Lalagem_."
+
+"Then I might have been able to read it," she said.  "In school I
+couldn't read the other one.  But you mustn't think that I did not
+read a great deal of Latin.  The professor used to say that I read
+my Latin b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l-l-y, but that I didn't get much English
+out of it.  I told him I got as much English out of it as the
+Romans did, and that they certainly ought to have known what it was
+meant for."
+
+"That must have taught him a lesson!"
+
+"Oh, he said I'd do: I was called the girl who read Latin
+perfectly, regardless of English.  And, then, I won a prize for an
+essay on the three most important things that the United States has
+contributed to the civilizations of the Old World.  I said they
+were tobacco, wild turkeys and idle curiosity.  Of course every one
+knew about tobacco and turkeys; but wasn't it clever of me to think
+of idle curiosity?  Now, wasn't it?  I made a long list of things
+and then I selected these from my list."
+
+"I'd like to know what the other things were!"
+
+"Oh, I've forgotten now!  But they were very important at the time.
+Are you coming to my ball?"
+
+"I hope to come."
+
+"And is Miss Anna coming?"
+
+"Miss Anna is coming.  She is coming as a man; and she is going to
+bring a lady."
+
+"How is she going to dress as a man?" said Marguerite, as she
+danced away from him under her parasol.
+
+She strolled slowly on until she reached the street of justice and
+the jail; turning into this, she passed up the side opposite the
+law offices.  Her parasol rested far back on one shoulder; to any
+lateral observer there could have been no mistake regarding the
+face in front of it.  She passed through a group of firemen sitting
+in their shirtsleeves in front of the engine-house, disappeared
+around the corner, and went to a confectioner's.  Presently she
+reentered the street, and this time walked along the side where the
+law offices were grouped.  She disappeared around the corner and
+entered a dry-goods store.  A few moments later she reentered the
+street for the third and last time.  Just as she passed a certain
+law office, she dropped her packages.  No one came out to pick them
+up.  Marguerite did this herself--very slowly.  Still no one
+appeared.  She gave three sharp little raps on the woodwork of the
+door.
+
+From the rear office a red head was thrust suddenly out like a
+surprised woodpecker's.  Barbee hurried to the entrance and looked
+up the street.  He saw a good many people.  He looked down the
+street and noticed a parasol moving away.
+
+"I supposed you were in the courthouse," she said, glancing at him
+with surprise.  "Haven't you any cases?"
+
+"One," he answered, "a case of life and death."
+
+"You need not walk against me, Barbee; I am not a vine to need
+propping.  And you need not walk with me.  I am quite used to
+walking alone: my nurse taught me years ago."
+
+"But now you have to learn _not_ to walk alone, Marguerite."
+
+"It will be very difficult."
+
+"It will be easy when the right man steps forward: am I the right
+man?"
+
+"I am going to the library.  Good morning."
+
+"So am I going to the library."
+
+"Aren't all your authorities in your office?"
+
+"All except one."
+
+They turned into the quiet shady street: they were not the first to
+do this.
+
+When they reached the steps, Marguerite sank down.
+
+"Why do I get so tired when I walk with you, Barbee?  You exhaust
+me _very_ rapidly."
+
+He sat down not very near her, but soon edged a little closer.
+
+Marguerite leaned over and looked intently at his big, thin ear.
+
+"What a lovely red your ear is, seen against a clear sky.  It would
+make a beautiful lamp-shade."
+
+"You may have both of them--and all the fixtures--solid brass--an
+antique some day."
+
+He edged a little closer.
+
+Marguerite coughed and pointed across the street: "Aren't those
+trees beautiful?"
+
+"Oh, don't talk to me about trees!  What do I care about _wood_!
+You're the tree that I want to dig up, and take home, and plant,
+and live under, and be buried by."
+
+"That's a great deal--all in one sentence."
+
+"Are you never going to love me a little, Marguerite?"
+
+"How can I tell?"
+
+"Don't torture me."
+
+"What am I doing?"
+
+"You are not doing anything, that's the trouble.   The other night
+I was sure you loved me."
+
+"I didn't say so."
+
+"But you looked it."
+
+"Then I looked all wrong: I shall change my looks."
+
+"Will you name the day?"
+
+"What day?"
+
+"_The_ day."
+
+"I'll name them all: Monday, Tuesday--"
+
+"Ah, Lord--"
+
+"Barbee, I'm going to sing you a love song--an old, old, old love
+song.  Did you ever hear one?"
+
+"I have been hearing mine for some time."
+
+"This goes back to grandmother's time.  But it's the man's song:
+you ought to be singing it to me."
+
+"I shall continue to sing my own."
+
+Marguerite began to sing close to Barbee's ear:
+
+  "I'll give to you a paper of pins,
+  If that's the way that love begins,
+  If you will marry me, me, me,
+  If you will marry me."
+
+"Pins!" said Barbee; "why, that old-time minstrel must have been
+singing when pins were just invented.  You can have--"
+
+Marguerite quieted him with a finger on his elbow:
+
+  "I'll give to you a dress of red,
+  Bound all around with golden thread,
+  If you will marry me, me, me,
+  If you will marry me."
+
+"How about a dress not simply bound with golden thread but made of
+it, made of nothing else! and then hung all over with golden
+ornaments and the heaviest golden utensils?"
+
+Marguerite sang on:
+
+  "I'll give to you a coach and six,
+  Every horse as black as pitch,
+  If you will marry me, me, me,
+  If you will marry me."
+
+"I'll make it two coaches and twelve white ponies."
+
+Marguerite sang on, this time very tenderly:
+
+  "I'll give to you the key of my heart,
+  That we may love and never part,
+  If you will marry me, me, me,
+  If you will marry me."
+
+"No man can give anything better," said Barbee, moving closer (as
+close as possible) and looking questioningly full into Marguerite's
+eyes.
+
+Marguerite glanced up and down the street.  The moment was
+opportune, the disposition of the universe seemed kind.  The big
+parasol slipped a little lower.
+
+"Marguerite. . .  Please, Marguerite. . .  _Marguerite_."
+
+The parasol was suddenly pulled down low and remained very still a
+moment: then a quiver ran round the fringe.  It was still again,
+and there was another quiver.  It swayed to and fro and round and
+round, and then stood very, very still indeed, and there was a
+violent quiver.
+
+Then Marguerite ran into the library as out of a sudden shower; and
+Barbee with long slow strides returned to his office.
+
+
+"Anna," said Professor Hardage, laying his book across his knee as
+they sat that afternoon in the shady side porch, "I saw Marguerite
+this morning and she sent her compliments.  They were very pretty
+compliments.  I sometimes wonder where Marguerite came from--out of
+what lands she has wandered."
+
+"Well, now that you have stopped reading," said Miss Anna, laying
+down her work and smoothing her brow (she never spoke to him until
+he did stop--perfect woman), "that Is what I have been waiting to
+talk to you about: do you wish to go with Harriet to Marguerite's
+ball?"
+
+"I most certainly do not wish to go with Harriet to Marguerite's
+ball," he said, laughing, "I am going with you."
+
+"Well, you most certainly are not going with me: I am going with
+Harriet."
+
+"Anna!"
+
+"If I do not, who will?  Now what I want you to do is to pay
+Harriet some attention after I arrive with her.  I shall take her
+into supper, because if you took her in, she would never get any.
+But suppose that after supper you strolled carelessly up to us--you
+know how men do--and asked her to take a turn with you."
+
+"What kind of a turn in Heaven's name?"
+
+"Well, suppose you took her out into the yard--to one of those
+little rustic seats of Marguerite's--and sat there with her for
+half an hour--in the darkest place you could possibly find.  And I
+want you to try to hold her hand."
+
+"Why, Anna, what on earth--"
+
+"Now don't you suppose Harriet would let you do it," she said
+indignantly.  "But what I want her to have is the pleasure of
+refusing: it would be such a triumph.  It would make her happy for
+days: it might lengthen her life a little."
+
+"What effect do you suppose it would have on mine?"
+
+His face softened as he mused on the kind of woman his sister was.
+
+"Now don't you try to do anything else," she added severely.  "I
+don't like your expression."
+
+He laughed outright: "What do you suppose I'd do?"
+
+"I don't suppose you'd do anything; but don't you do it!"
+
+Miss Anna's invitation to Harriet had been written some days before.
+
+She had sent down to the book-store for ten cents' worth of tinted
+note paper and to the drugstore for some of Harriet's favorite
+sachet powder.  Then she put a few sheets of the paper in a dinner
+plate and sprinkled the powder over them and set the plate where
+the powder could perfume the paper but not the house.  Miss Anna
+was averse to all odor-bearing things natural or artificial.  The
+perfect triumph of her nose was to perceive absolutely nothing.
+The only trial to her in cooking was the fact that so often she
+could not make things taste good without making them smell good.
+
+In the course of time, bending over a sheet of this note paper,
+with an expression of high nasal disapproval.  Miss Anna had
+written the following note:
+
+"A. Hardage, Esq., presents the compliments of the season to Miss
+Crane and begs the pleasure of her company to the ball.  The
+aforesaid Hardage, on account of long intimacy with the specified
+Crane, hopes that she (Crane) will not object to riding alone at
+night in a one-horse rockaway with no side curtains.  Crane to be
+hugged on the way if Hardage so desires--and Hardage certainly will
+desire.  Hardage and Crane to dance at the ball together while
+their strength lasts."
+
+Having posted this letter, Miss Anna went off to her orphan and
+foundling asylum where she was virgin mother to the motherless,
+drawing the mantle of her spotless life around little waifs
+straying into the world from hidden paths of shame.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+It was past one o'clock on the night of the ball.
+
+When dew and twilight had fallen on the green labyrinths of
+Marguerite's yard, the faintest, slenderest moon might have been
+seen bending over toward the spot out of drapery of violet cloud.
+It descended through the secluded windows of Marguerite's room and
+attended her while she dressed, weaving about her and leaving with
+her the fragrance of its divine youth passing away.  Then it
+withdrew, having appointed a million stars for torches.
+
+Matching the stars were globe-like lamps, all of one color, all
+of one shape, which Marguerite had had swung amid the interlaced
+greenery of trees and vines: as lanterns around the gray bark huts
+of slow-winged owls; as sun-tanned grapes under the arches of the
+vine-covered summer-house; as love's lighthouses above the reefs
+of tumbling rose-bushes: all to illumine the paths which led to
+nooks and seats.  For the night would be very warm; and then
+Marguerite--but was she the only one?
+
+The three Marguerites,--grandmother, mother, and
+daughter,--standing side by side and dressed each like each as
+nearly as was fitting, had awaited their guests.  Three high-born
+fragile natures, solitary each on the stem of its generation; not
+made for blasts and rudeness.  They had received their guests with
+the graciousness of sincere souls and not without antique
+distinction; for in their veins flowed blood which had helped to
+make manners gentle in France centuries ago.
+
+The eldest Marguerite introduced some of her aged friends, who had
+ventured forth to witness the launching of the frail life-boat, to
+the youngest; the youngest Marguerite introduced some of hers to
+the eldest; the Marguerite linked between made some of hers known
+to her mother and to her child.
+
+Mrs. Conyers arrived early, leaning on the arm of her grandson,
+Victor Fielding.  To-night she was ennobled with jewels--the old
+family jewels of her last husband's family, not of her own.
+
+When the three Marguerites beheld her, a shadow fell on their
+faces.  The change was like the assumption of a mask behind which
+they could efface themselves as ladies and receive as hostesses.
+While she lingered, they forebore even to exchange glances lest
+feelings injurious to a guest should be thus revealed: so pure in
+them was the strain of courtesy that went with proffered
+hospitality.  (They were not of the kind who invite you to their
+houses and having you thus in their power try to pierce you with
+little insults which they would never dare offer openly in the
+street: verbal Borgias at their own tables and firesides.)  The
+moment she left them, the three faces became effulgent again.
+
+A little later, strolling across the rooms toward them alone, came
+Judge Morris, a sprig of wet heliotrope in his button-hole, plucked
+from one of Marguerite's plants.  The paraffin starch on his shirt
+front and collar and cuffs gave to them the appearance and
+consistency of celluloid--it being the intention of his old
+laundress to make him indeed the stiffest and most highly polished
+gentleman of his high world.  His noble face as always a sermon on
+kindness, sincerity, and peace; yet having this contradiction, that
+the happier it seemed, the sadder it was to look at: as though all
+his virtues only framed his great wrong; so that the more clearly
+you beheld the bright frame, the more deeply you felt the dark
+picture.
+
+As soon as they discovered him, the Marguerites with a common
+impulse linked their arms endearingly.  Six little white feet came
+regimentally forward; each of six little white hands made
+individual forward movements to be the first to lie within his
+palm; six velvet eyes softened and glistened.
+
+Miss Anna came with Harriet; Professor Hardage came alone;
+Barbee--burgeoning Alcibiades of the ballroom--came with
+Self-Confidence.  He strolled indifferently toward the eldest
+Marguerite, from whom he passed superiorly to the central one; by
+that time the third had vanished.
+
+Isabel came with the Osborns: George soon to be taken secretly home
+by Rowan; Kate (who had forced herself to accompany him despite her
+bereavement), lacerated but giving no sign even to Isabel, who
+relieved the situation by attaching herself momentarily to her
+hostesses.
+
+"Mamma," protested Marguerite, with indignant eyes, "do you wish
+Isabel to stand here and eclipse your daughter?  Station her on the
+far side of grandmother, and let the men pass this way first!"
+
+The Merediths were late.  As they advanced to pay their respects,
+Isabel maintained her composure.  An observer, who had been told to
+watch, might have noticed that when Rowan held out his hand, she
+did not place hers in it; and that while she did not turn her face
+away from his face, her eyes never met his eyes.  She stood a
+little apart from the receiving group at the moment and spoke to
+him quickly and awkwardly:
+
+"As soon as you can, will you come and walk with me through the
+parlors?  Please do not pay me any more attention.  When the
+evening is nearly over, will you find me and take me to some place
+where we may not be interrupted?  I will explain."
+
+Without waiting for his assent, she left him, and returned with a
+laugh to the side of Marguerite, who was shaking a finger
+threateningly at her.
+
+It was now past one o'clock: guests were already leaving.
+
+When Rowan went for Isabel, she was sitting with Professor Hardage.
+They were not talking; and her eyes had a look of strained
+expectancy.  As soon as she saw him, she rose and held out her hand
+to Professor Hardage; then without speaking and still without
+looking at him, she placed the tips of her fingers on the elbow of
+his sleeve.  As they walked away, she renewed her request in a low
+voice: "Take me where we shall be undisturbed."
+
+They left the rooms.  It was an interval between the dances: the
+verandas were crowded.  They passed out into the yard.  Along the
+cool paths, college boys and college girls strolled by in couples,
+not caring who listened to their words and with that laughter of
+youth, the whole meaning of which is never realized save by those
+who hear it after they have lost it.  Older couples sat here and
+there in quiet nooks--with talk not meant to be heard and with
+occasional laughter so different.
+
+They moved on, seeking greater privacy.  Marguerite's lamps were
+burnt out--brief flames as measured by human passion.  But overhead
+burnt the million torches of the stars.  How brief all human
+passion measured by that long, long light!
+
+He stopped at last:
+
+"Here?"
+
+She placed herself as far as possible from him.
+
+The seat was at the terminus of a path in the wildest part of
+Marguerite's garden.  Overhead against the trunk of a tree a
+solitary lantern was flickering fitfully.  It soon went out.  The
+dazzling lights of the ballroom, glimmering through boughs and
+vines, shot a few rays into their faces.  Music, languorous,
+torturing the heart, swelled and died on the air, mingled with the
+murmurings of eager voices.  Close around them in the darkness was
+the heavy fragrance of perishing blossoms--earth dials of
+yesterday; close around them the clean sweetness of fresh
+ones--breath of the coming morn.  It was an hour when the heart,
+surrounded by what can live no more and by what never before has
+lived, grows faint and sick with yearnings for its own past and
+forlorn with the inevitableness of change--the cruelty of all
+change.
+
+For a while silence lasted.  He waited for her to speak; she tried
+repeatedly to do so.  At length with apparent fear that he might
+misunderstand, she interposed an agitated command:
+
+"Do not say anything."
+
+A few minutes later she began to speak to him, still struggling for
+her self-control.
+
+"I do not forget that to-night I have been acting a part, and that
+I have asked you to act a part with me.  I have walked with you and
+I have talked with you, and I am with you now to create an
+impression that is false; to pretend before those who see us that
+nothing is changed.  I do not forget that I have been doing this
+thing which is unworthy of me.  But it is the first time--try not
+to believe it to be my character.  I am compelled to tell you that
+it is one of the humiliations you have forced upon me."
+
+"I have understood this," he said hastily, breaking the silence she
+had imposed upon him.
+
+"Then let it pass," she cried nervously.  "It is enough that I have
+been obliged to observe my own hypocrisies, and that I have asked
+you to countenance and to conceal them."
+
+He offered no response.  And in a little while she went on:
+
+"I ought to tell you one thing more.  Last week I made all my
+arrangements to go away at once, for the summer, for a long time.
+I did not expect to see you again.  Two or three times I started to
+the station.  I have stayed until now because it seemed best after
+all to speak to you once more.  This is my reason for being here
+to-night; and it is the only apology I can offer to myself or to
+you for what I am doing."
+
+There was a sad and bitter vehemence in her words; she quivered
+with passion.
+
+"Isabel," he said more urgently, "there is nothing I am not
+prepared to tell you."
+
+When she spoke again, it was with difficulty and everything seemed
+to hang upon her question:
+
+"Does any one else know?"
+
+His reply was immediate:
+
+"No one else knows."
+
+"Have you every reason to believe this?"
+
+"I have every reason to believe this."
+
+"You kept your secret well," she said with mournful irony.  "You
+reserved it for the one person whom it could most injure: my
+privilege is too great!"
+
+"It is true," he said.
+
+She turned and looked at him.  She felt the depth of conviction
+with which he spoke, yet it hurt her.  She liked his dignity and
+his self-control, and would not have had them less; yet she
+gathered fresh bitterness from the fact that he did not lose them.
+But to her each moment disclosed its new and uncontrollable
+emotions; as words came, her mind quickly filled again with the
+things she could not say.  She now went on:
+
+"I am forced to ask these questions, although I have no right to
+ask them and certainly I have no wish.  I have wanted to know
+whether I could carry out the plan that has seemed to me best for
+each of us.  If others shared your secret, I could not do this.  I
+am going away--I am going in the morning.  I shall remain away a
+long time.  Since we have been seen together here to-night as
+usual, no one suspects now that for us everything has become
+nothing.  While I am away, no one can have the means of finding
+this out.  Before I return, there will be changes--there may be
+many changes.  If we meet with indifference then, it will be
+thought that we have become indifferent, one of us, or both of us:
+I suppose it will be thought to be you.  There will be comment,
+comment that will be hard to stand; but this will be the quietest
+way to end everything--as far as anything can ever be ended."
+
+"Whatever you wish!  I leave it all to you."
+
+She did not pause to heed his words:
+
+"This will spare me the linking of my name with yours any further
+just now; it will spare me all that I should suffer if the matter
+which estranges us should be discovered and be discussed.  It will
+save me hereafter, perhaps, from being pointed out as a woman who
+so trusted and was so deceived.  It may shield my life altogether
+from some notoriety: I could be grateful for that!"
+
+She was thinking of her family name, and of the many proud eyes
+that were turned upon her in the present and out of the past.
+There was a sting for her in the remembrance and the sting passed
+into her concluding words:
+
+"I do not forget that when I ask you to do all this, I, who am not
+given to practising deception, am asking you to go on practising
+yours.  I am urging you to shirk the consequences of your
+wrong-doing--to enjoy in the world an untarnished name after you
+have tarnished your life.  Do not think I forget that!  Still I beg
+you to do as I say.  This is another of the humiliations you have
+led me to: that although I am separated from you by all that once
+united us, I must remain partner with you in the concealment of a
+thing that would ruin you if it were known."
+
+She turned to him as though she experienced full relief through her
+hard and cruel words:
+
+"Do I understand, then, that this is to be buried away by you--and
+by me--from the knowledge of the world?"
+
+"No one else has any right to know it.  I have told you that."
+
+"Then that is all!"
+
+She gave a quick dismissal to the subject, so putting an end to the
+interview.
+
+She started to rise from her seat; but impulses, new at the
+instant, checked her: all the past checked her, all that she was
+herself and all that he had been to her.
+
+Perhaps what at each moment had angered her most was the fact that
+she was speaking, not he.  She knew him to be of the blood of
+silent men and to have inherited their silence.  This very trait of
+his had rendered association with him so endearing.  Love had been
+so divinely apart from speech, either his or her own: most intimate
+for having been most mute.  But she knew also that he was capable
+of speech, full and strong and quick enough upon occasion; and her
+heart had cried out that in a lifetime this was the one hour when
+he should not have given way to her or allowed her to say a
+word--when he should have borne her down with uncontrollable
+pleading.
+
+It was her own work that confronted her and she did not recognize
+it.  She had exhausted resources to convince him of her
+determination to cast him off at once; to render it plain that
+further parley would to her be further insult.  She had made him
+feel this on the night of his confession; in the note of direct
+repulse she sent him by the hand of a servant in her own house the
+following afternoon; by returning to him everything that he had
+ever given her; by her refusal to acknowledge his presence this
+evening beyond laying upon him a command; and by every word that
+she had just spoken.  And in all this she had thought only of what
+she suffered, not of what he must be suffering.
+
+Perhaps some late instantaneous recognition of this flashed upon
+her as she started to leave him--as she looked at him sitting
+there, his face turned toward her in stoical acceptance of his
+fate.  There was something in the controlled strength of it that
+touched her newly.  She may have realized that if he had not been
+silent, if he had argued, defended himself, pleaded, she would have
+risen and walked back to the house without a word.  It turned her
+nature toward him a little, that he placed too high a value upon
+her dismissal of him not to believe it irrevocable.
+
+Yet it hurt her: she was but one woman in the world; could the
+thought of this have made it easier for him to let her go away now
+without a protest?
+
+The air of the summer night grew unbearable for sweetness about
+her.  The faint music of the ballroom had no pity for her.  There
+young eyes found joy in answering eyes, passed on and found joy in
+others and in others.  Palm met palm and then palms as soft and
+then palms yet softer.  Some minutes before, the laughter of
+Marguerite in the shrubbery quite close by had startled Isabel.
+She had distinguished a voice.  Now Marguerite's laughter reached
+her again--and there was a different voice with hers.  Change!
+change! one put away, the place so perfectly filled by another.
+
+A white moth of the night wandered into Rowan's face searching its
+features; then it flitted over to her and searched hers, its wings
+fanning and clinging to her lips; and then it passed on, pursuing
+amid mistakes and inconstancies its life-quest lasting through a
+few darknesses.
+
+Fear suddenly reached down into her heart and drew up one question;
+and she asked that question in a voice low and cold and guarded:
+
+"Sometime, when you ask another woman to marry you, will you think
+it your duty to tell her?"
+
+"I will never ask any other woman."
+
+"I did not inquire for your intention; I asked what you would
+believe to be your duty."
+
+"It will never become my duty.  But if it should, I would never
+marry without being true to the woman; and to be true is to tell
+the truth."
+
+"You mean that you would tell her?"
+
+"I mean that I would tell her."
+
+After a little silence she stirred in her seat and spoke, all her
+anger gone:
+
+"I am going to ask you, if you ever do, not to tell her as you have
+told me--after it is too late.  If you cannot find some way of
+letting her know the truth before she loves you, then do not tell
+her afterward, when you have won her life away from her.  If there
+is deception at all, then it is not worse to go on deceiving her
+than it was to begin to deceive her.  Tell her, if you must, while
+she is indifferent and will not care, not after she has given
+herself to you and will then have to give you up.  But what can
+you, a man, know what it means to a woman to tell her this!  How
+can you know, how can you ever, ever know!"
+
+She covered her face with her hands and her voice broke with tears.
+
+"Isabel--"
+
+"You have no right to call me by my name, and I have no right to
+hear it, as though nothing were changed between us."
+
+"I have not changed."
+
+"How could you tell me!  Why did you ever tell me!" she cried
+abruptly, grief breaking her down.
+
+"There was a time when I did not expect to tell you.  I expected to
+do as other men do."
+
+"Ah, you would have deceived me!" she exclaimed, turning upon him
+with fresh suffering.  "You would have taken advantage of my
+ignorance and have married me and never have let me know!  And you
+would have called that deception love and you would have called
+yourself a true man!"
+
+"But I did not do this!  It was yourself who helped me to see that
+the beginning of morality is to stop lying and deception."
+
+"But if you had this on your conscience already, what right had you
+ever to come near me?"
+
+"I had come to love you!"
+
+"Did your love of me give you the right to win mine?"
+
+"It gave me the temptation."
+
+"And what did you expect when you determined to tell me this?  What
+did you suppose such a confession would mean to me?  Did you
+imagine that while it was still fresh on your lips, I would smile
+in your face and tell you it made no difference?  Was I to hear you
+speak of one whose youth and innocence you took away through her
+frailties, and then step joyously into her place?  Was this the
+unfeeling, the degraded soul you thought to be mine?  Would I have
+been worthy even of the poor love you could give me, if I had done
+that?"
+
+"I expected you to marry me!  I expected you to forgive.   I have
+this at least to remember: I lost you honestly when I could have
+won you falsely."
+
+"Ah, you have no right to seek any happiness in what is all sadness
+to me!  And all the sadness, the ruin of everything, comes from
+your wrong-doing."
+
+"Remember that my wrong-doing did not begin with me.  I bear my
+share: it is enough: I will bear no more."
+
+A long silence followed.  She spoke at last, checking her tears:
+
+"And so this is the end of my dream!  This is what life has brought
+me to!  And what have I done to deserve it?  To leave home, to shun
+friends, to dread scandal, to be misjudged, to bear the burden of
+your secret and share with you its shame, to see my years stretch
+out before me with no love in them, no ambitions, no ties--this is
+what life has brought me, and what have I done to deserve it?"
+
+As her tears ceased, her eyes seemed to be looking into a future
+that lacked the relief of tears.  As though she were already passed
+far on into it and were looking back to this moment, she went on,
+speaking very slowly and sadly:
+
+"We shall not see each other again in a long time, and whenever we
+do, we shall be nothing to each other and we shall never speak of
+this.  There is one thing I wish to tell you.  Some day you may
+have false thoughts of me.  You may think that I had no deep
+feeling, no constancy, no mercy, no forgiveness; that it was easy
+to give you up, because I never loved you.  I shall have enough to
+bear and I cannot bear that.  So I want to tell you that you will
+never know what my love for you was.  A woman cannot speak till she
+has the right; and before you gave me the right, you took it away.
+For some little happiness it may bring me hereafter let me tell you
+that you were everything to me, everything!  If I had taught myself
+to make allowances for you, if I had seen things to forgive in you,
+what you told me would have been only one thing more and I might
+have forgiven.  But all that I saw in you I loved.  Rowan, and I
+believed that I saw everything.  Remember this, if false thoughts
+of me ever come to you!  I expect to live a long time: the memory
+of my love of you will be the sorrow that will keep me alive."
+
+After a few moments of silent struggle she moved nearer.
+
+"Do not touch me," she said; "remember that what love makes dear,
+it makes sacred."
+
+She put out a hand in the darkness and, closing her eyes over
+welling tears, passed it for long remembrance over his features:
+letting the palm lie close against his forehead with her fingers in
+his hair; afterward pressing it softly over his eyes and passing it
+around his neck.  Then she took her hand away as though fearful of
+an impulse.  Then she put her hand out again and laid her fingers
+across his lips.  Then she took her hand away, and leaning over,
+laid her lips on his lips:
+
+"Good-by!" she murmured against his face, "good-by! good-by!
+good-by!"
+
+
+Mrs. Conyers had seen Rowan and Isabel together in the parlors
+early in the evening.  She had seen them, late in the evening, quit
+the house.  She had counted the minutes till they returned and she
+had marked their agitation as they parted.  The closest association
+lasting from childhood until now had convinced her of the
+straightforwardness of Isabel's character; and the events of the
+night were naturally accepted by her as evidences of the renewal of
+relationship with Rowan, if not as yet of complete reconciliation.
+
+She herself had encountered during the evening unexpected slights
+and repulses.  Her hostesses had been cool, but she expected them
+to be cool: they did not like her nor she them.  But Judge Morris
+had avoided her; the Hardages had avoided her; each member of the
+Meredith family had avoided her; Isabel had avoided her; even
+Harriet, when once she crossed the rooms to her, had with an
+incomprehensible flare of temper turned her back and sought refuge
+with Miss Anna.  She was very angry.
+
+But overbalancing the indignities of the evening was now this
+supreme joy of Isabel's return to what she believed to be Isabel's
+destiny.  She sent her grandson home that she might have the drive
+with the girl alone.  When Isabel, upon entering the carriage, her
+head and eyes closely muffled in her shawl, had withdrawn as far as
+possible into one corner and remained silent on the way, she
+refrained from intrusion, believing that she understood the
+emotions dominating her behavior.
+
+The carriage drew up at the door.  She got out quickly and passed
+to her room--with a motive of her own.
+
+Isabel lingered.  She ascended the steps without conscious will.
+At the top she missed her shawl: it had become entangled in the
+fringe of a window strap, had slipped from her bare shoulders as
+she set her foot on the pavement, and now lay in the track of the
+carriage wheels.  As she picked it up, an owl flew viciously close
+to her face.  What memories, what memories came back to her!  With
+a shiver she went over to a frame-like opening in the foliage on
+one side of the veranda and stood looking toward the horizon where
+the moon had sunk on that other night--that first night of her
+sorrow.  How long it was since then!
+
+At any other time she would have dreaded the parting which must
+take place with her grandmother: now what a little matter it seemed!
+
+As she tapped and opened the door, she put her hand quickly before
+her eyes, blinded by the flood of light which streamed out into the
+dark hall.  Every gas-jet was turned on--around the walls, in the
+chandelier; and under the chandelier stood her grandmother,
+waiting, her eyes fixed expectantly on the door, her countenance
+softened with returning affection, the fire of triumph in her eyes.
+
+She had unclasped from around her neck the diamond necklace of old
+family jewels, and held it in the pool of her rosy palms, as though
+it were a mass of clear separate raindrops rainbow-kindled.  It was
+looped about the tips of her two upright thumbs; part of it had
+slipped through the palms and flashed like a pendent arc of light
+below.
+
+The necklace was an heirloom; it had started to grow in England of
+old; it had grown through the generations of the family in the New
+World.
+
+It had begun as a ring--given with the plighting of troth; it had
+become ear-rings; it had become a pendant; it had become a tiara;
+it had become part of a necklace; it had become a necklace--completed
+circlet of many hopes.
+
+As Isabel entered Mrs. Conyers started forward, smiling, to clasp
+it around her neck as the expression of her love and pleasure; then
+she caught sight of Isabel's face, and with parted lips she stood
+still.
+
+Isabel, white, listless, had sunk into the nearest chair, and now
+said, quietly and wearily, noticing nothing:
+
+"Grandmother, do not get up to see me off in the morning.  My trunk
+is packed; the others are already at the station.  All my
+arrangements are made.  I'll say good-by to you now," and she stood
+up.
+
+Mrs. Conyers stood looking at her.  Gradually a change passed over
+her face; her eyes grew dull, the eyelids narrowed upon the balls;
+the round jaws relaxed; and instead of the smile, hatred came
+mysteriously out and spread itself rapidly over her features: true
+horrible revelation.  Her fingers tightened and loosened about the
+necklace until it was forced out through them, until it glided,
+crawled, as though it were alive and were being strangled and were
+writhing.  She spoke with entire quietness:
+
+"After all that I have seen to-night, are you not going to marry
+Rowan?"
+
+Isabel stirred listlessly as with remembrance of a duty:
+
+"I had forgotten, grandmother, that I owe you an explanation.  I
+found, after all, that I should have to see Rowan again: there was
+a matter about which I was compelled to speak with him.  That is
+all I meant by being with him to-night: everything now is ended
+between us."
+
+"And you are going away without giving me the reason of all this?"
+
+Isabel gathered her gloves and shawl together and said with simple
+distaste:
+
+"Yes."
+
+As she did so, Mrs. Conyers, suddenly beside herself with aimless
+rage, raised one arm and hurled the necklace against the opposite
+wall of the room.  It leaped a tangled braid through the air and as
+it struck burst asunder, and the stones scattered and rattled along
+the floor and rolled far out on the carpet.
+
+She turned and putting up a little white arm, which shook as though
+palsied, began to extinguish the lights.  Isabel watched her a
+moment remorsefully:
+
+"Good night, grandmother, and good-by.  I am sorry to go away and
+leave you angry."
+
+As she entered her room, gray light was already creeping in through
+the windows, left open to the summer night.  She went mournfully to
+her trunk.  The tray had been lifted out and placed upon a chair
+near by.  The little tops to the divisions of the tray were all
+thrown back, and she could see that the last thing had been packed
+into its place.  Her hand satchel was open on her bureau, and she
+could see the edge of a handkerchief and the little brown wicker
+neck of a cologne bottle.  Beside the hand satchel were her purse,
+baggage checks, and travelling ticket: everything was in readiness.
+She looked at it all a long time:
+
+"How can I go away?  How can I, how can I?"
+
+She went over to her bed.  The sheet had been turned down, the
+pillow dented for her face.  Beside the pillow was a tiny
+reading-stand and on this was a candle and a book--with thought of
+her old habit of reading after she had come home from pleasures
+like those of to-night--when they were pleasures.  Beside the book
+her maid had set a little cut-glass vase of blossoms which had
+opened since she put them there--were just opening now.
+
+"How can I read?  How can I sleep?"
+
+She crossed to a large window opening on the lawn in the rear of
+the house--and looked for the last time out at the gray old pines
+and dim blue, ever wintry firs.  Beyond were house-tops and
+tree-tops of the town; and beyond these lay the country--stretching
+away to his home.  Soon the morning light would be crimsoning the
+horizon before his window.
+
+"How can I stay?" she said.  "How can I bear to stay?"
+
+She recalled her last words to him as they parted:
+
+"Remember that you are forgotten!"
+
+She recalled his reply:
+
+"Forget that you are remembered!"
+
+She sank down on the floor and crossed her arms on the window sill
+and buried her face on her arms.  The white dawn approached,
+touched her, and passed, and she did not heed.
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND
+
+I
+
+The home of the Merediths lay in a region of fertile lands adapted
+alike to tillage and to pasturage.  The immediate neighborhood was
+old, as civilization reckons age in the United States, and was well
+conserved, It held in high esteem its traditions of itself,
+approved its own customs, was proud of its prides: a characteristic
+community of country gentlemen at the side of each of whom a
+characteristic lady lived and had her peculiar being.
+
+The ownership of the soil had long since passed into the hands of
+capable families--with this exception, that here and there between
+the borders of large estates little farms were to be found
+representing all that remained from slow processes of partition and
+absorption.  These scant freeholds had thus their pathos, marking
+as they did the losing fight of successive holders against more
+fortunate, more powerful neighbors.  Nothing in its way records
+more surely the clash and struggle and ranking of men than the
+boundaries of land.  There you see extinction and survival, the
+perpetual going under of the weak, the perpetual overriding of the
+strong.
+
+Two such fragmentary farms lay on opposite sides of the Meredith
+estate.  One was the property of Ambrose Webb, a married but
+childless man who, thus exempt from necessity of raking the earth
+for swarming progeny, had sown nearly all his land in grass and
+rented it as pasturage: no crops of children, no crops of grain.
+
+The other farm was of less importance.  Had you ridden from the
+front door of the Merediths northward for nearly a mile, you would
+have reached the summit of a slope sweeping a wide horizon.
+Standing on this summit any one of these bright summer days, you
+could have seen at the foot of the slope, less than a quarter of a
+mile away on the steep opposite side, a rectangle of land covering
+some fifty acres.  It lay crumpled into a rough depression in the
+landscape.  A rivulet of clear water by virtue of indomitable crook
+and turn made its way across this valley; a woodland stood in one
+corner, nearly all its timber felled; there were a few patches of
+grain so small that they made you think of the variegated peasant
+strips of agricultural France; and a few lots smaller still around
+a stable.  The buildings huddled confusedly into this valley seemed
+to have backed toward each other like a flock of sheep, encompassed
+by peril and making a last stand in futile defence of their right
+to exist at all.
+
+What held the preeminence of castle in the collection of structures
+was a small brick house with one upper bedroom.  The front entrance
+had no porch; and beneath the door, as stepping-stones of entrance,
+lay two circular slabs of wood resembling sausage blocks, one half
+superposed.  Over the door was a trellis of gourd vines now
+profusely, blooming and bee-visited.  Grouped around this castle in
+still lower feudal and vital dependence was a log cabin of one room
+and of many more gourd vines, an ice-house, a house for fowls, a
+stable, a rick for hay, and a sagging shed for farm implements.
+
+If the appearance of the place suggested the struggles of a family
+on the verge of extinction, this idea was further borne out by what
+looked like its determination to stand a long final siege at least
+in the matter of rations, for it swarmed with life.  In the quiet
+crystalline air from dawn till after sunset the sounds arising from
+it were the clamor of a sincere, outspoken multitude of what man
+calls the dumb creatures.  Evidently some mind, full of energy and
+forethought, had made its appearance late in the history of these
+failing generations and had begun a fight to reverse failure and
+turn back the tide of aggression.  As the first step in
+self-recovery this rugged island of poverty  must  be made
+self-sustaining.  Therefore it had been made to teem with animal
+and vegetable plenty.
+
+On one side of the house lay an orderly garden of vegetables and
+berry-bearing shrubs; the yard itself was in reality an orchard of
+fruit trees, some warmed by the very walls; under the shed there
+were beegums alive with the nectar builders; along the garden walks
+were frames for freighted grape-vines.  The work of regeneration
+had been pushed beyond the limits of utilitarianism over into a
+certain crude domain of aesthetics.  On one front window-sill what
+had been the annual Christmas box of raisins had been turned into a
+little hot-bed of flowering plants; and under the panes of glass a
+dense forest of them, sun-drawn, looked like a harvest field swept
+by a storm.  On the opposite window ledge an empty drum of figs was
+now topped with hardy jump-up-johnnies.  It bore some resemblance
+to an enormous yellow muffin stuffed with blueberries.  In the
+garden big-headed peonies here and there fell over upon the young
+onions.  The entire demesne lay white and green with tidiness under
+yellow sun and azure sky; for fences and outhouses, even the trunks
+of trees several feet up from the ground, glistened with whitewash.
+So that everywhere was seen the impress and guidance of a spirit
+evoking abundance, order, even beauty, out of what could so easily
+have been squalor and despondent wretchedness.
+
+This was the home of Pansy Vaughan; and Pansy was the explanation
+of everything beautiful and fruitful, the peaceful Joan of Arc of
+that valley, seeing rapt visions of the glory of her people.
+
+In the plain upper room of the plain brick house, on her hard white
+bed with her hard white thoughts, lay Pansy--sleepless throughout
+the night of Marguerite's ball.  The youngest of the children slept
+beside her; two others lay in a trundle-bed across the room; and
+the three were getting out of sleep all that there is in it for
+tired, healthy children.  In the room below, her father and the
+eldest boy were resting; and through the rafters of the flooring
+she could hear them both: her father a large, fluent, well-seasoned,
+self-comforting bassoon; and her brother a sappy, inexperienced
+bassoon trying to imitate it.  Wakefulness was a novel state for
+Pansy herself, who was always tired when bedtime came and as full
+of wild vitality as one of her young guineas in the summer wheat;
+so that she sank into slumber as a rock sinks into the sea,
+descending till it reaches the unstirred bottom.
+
+What kept her awake to-night was mortification that she had not
+been invited to the ball.  She knew perfectly well that she was not
+entitled to an invitation, since the three Marguerites had never
+heard of her.  She had never been to a fashionable party even in
+the country.  But her engagement to Dent Meredith already linked
+her to him socially and she felt the tugging of those links: what
+were soon to become her rights had begun to be her rights already.
+Another little thing troubled her: she had no flower to send him
+for his button-hole, to accompany her note wishing him a pleasant
+evening.   She could not bear to give him anything common; and
+Pansy believed that no one was needed to tell her what a common
+thing is.
+
+For a third reason slumber refused to descend and weigh down her
+eyelids: on the morrow she was to call upon Dent's mother, and the
+thought of this call preoccupied her with terror.  She was one of
+the bravest of souls; but the terror which shook her was the terror
+that shakes them all--terror lest they be not loved.
+
+All her life she had looked with awe upward out of her valley
+toward that great house.  Its lawns with stately clumps of
+evergreens, its many servants, its distant lights often seen
+twinkling in the windows at night, the tales that reached her of
+wonderful music and faery dancing; the flashing family carriages
+which had so often whirled past her on the turnpike with scornful
+footman and driver--all these recollections revisited her to-night.
+In the morning she was to cross the boundary of this inaccessible
+world as one who was to hold a high position in it.
+
+How pictures came crowding back!  One of the earliest recollections
+of childhood was hearing the scream of the Meredith peacocks as
+they drew their gorgeous plumage across the silent summer lawns; at
+home they had nothing better than fussing guineas.  She had never
+come nearer to one of those proud birds than handling a set of tail
+feathers which Mrs. Meredith had presented to her mother for a
+family fly brush.  Pansy had good reason to remember because she
+had often been required to stand beside the table and, one little
+bare foot set alternately on the other little bare foot, wield the
+brush over the dishes till arms and eyelids ached.
+
+Another of those dim recollections was pressing her face against
+the window-panes when the first snow began to fall on the scraggy
+cedars in the yard; and as she began to sing softly to herself one
+of the ancient ditties of the children of the poor, "Old Woman,
+picking Geese," she would dream of the magical flowers which they
+told her bloomed all winter in a glass house at the Merediths'
+while there was ice on the pines outside.  Big red roses and
+icicles separated only by a thin glass--she could hardly believe
+it; and she would cast her eye toward their own garden where a few
+black withered stalks marked the early death-beds of the pinks and
+jonquils.
+
+But even in those young years Pansy had little time to look out of
+windows and to dream of anything.  She must help, she must work;
+for she was the oldest of five children, and the others followed so
+closely that they pushed her out of her garments.  A hardy,
+self-helpful child life, bravened by necessities, never undermined
+by luxuries.  For very dolls Pansy used small dried gourds, taking
+the big round end of the gourd for the head of the doll and all the
+rest of the gourd for all the rest of the body.
+
+One morning when she was fourteen, the other children were clinging
+with tears to her in a poor, darkened room--she to be little mother
+to them henceforth: they never clung in vain.
+
+That same autumn when woods were turning red and wild grapes
+turning black and corn turning yellow, a cherished rockaway drawn
+by a venerated horse, that tried to stop for conversation on the
+highroad whenever he passed a neighbor's vehicle, rattled out on
+the turnpike with five children in it and headed for town: Pansy
+driving, taking herself and the rest to the public school.  For
+years thereafter, through dark and bright days, she conveyed that
+nest of hungry fledglings back and forth over bitter and weary
+miles, getting their ravenous minds fed at one end of the route,
+and their ravenous bodies fed at the other.  If the harness broke,
+Pansy got out with a string.  If the horse dropped a shoe, or
+dropped himself, Pansy picked up what she could.  In town she drove
+to the blacksmith shop and to all other shops whither business
+called her.  Her friends were the blacksmith and the tollgate
+keeper, her teachers--all who knew her and they were few: she had
+no time for friendships.  At home the only frequent visitor was
+Ambrose Webb, and Pansy did not care for Ambrose.  The first time
+she remembered seeing him at dinner, she--a very little girl--had
+watched his throat with gloomy fascination.  Afterward her mother
+told her he had an Adam's apple; and Pansy, working obscurely at
+some problem of theology, had secretly taken down the Bible and
+read the story of Adam and the fearful fruit.   Ambrose became
+associated in her mind with the Fall of Man; she disliked the
+proximity.
+
+No time for friendships.  Besides the labors at school, there was
+the nightly care of her father on her return, the mending of his
+clothes; there was the lonely burning of her candle far into the
+night as she toiled over lessons.  When she had learned all that
+could be taught her at the school, she left the younger children
+there and victoriously transferred herself for a finishing course
+to a seminary of the town, where she was now proceeding to graduate.
+
+This was Pansy, child of plain, poor, farmer folk, immemorially
+dwelling close to the soil; unlettered, unambitious, long-lived,
+abounding in children, without physical beauty, but marking the
+track of their generations by a path lustrous with right-doing.
+For more than a hundred years on this spot the land had lessened
+around them; but the soil had worked upward into their veins, as
+into the stalks of plants, the trunks of trees; and that clean,
+thrilling sap of the earth, that vitality of the exhaustless mother
+which never goes for nothing, had produced one heavenly flower at
+last--shooting forth with irrepressible energy a soul unspoiled and
+morally sublime.  When the top decays, as it always does in the
+lapse of time, whence shall come regeneration if not from below?
+It is the plain people who are the eternal breeding grounds of high
+destinies.
+
+In the long economy of nature, this, perhaps, was the meaning and
+the mission of this lofty child who now lay sleepless, shaken to
+the core with thoughts of the splendid world over into which she
+was to journey to-morrow.
+
+
+At ten o'clock next morning she set out.
+
+It had been a question with her whether she should go straight
+across the fields and climb the fences, or walk around by the
+turnpike and open the gates.  Her preference was for fields and
+fences, because that was the short and direct way, and Pansy was
+used to the short and direct way of getting to the end of her
+desires.  But, as has been said, she had already fallen into the
+habit of considering what was due her and becoming to her as a
+young Mrs. Meredith; and it struck her that this lady would not
+climb field fences, at least by preference and with facility.
+Therefore she chose the highroad, gates, dust, and dignity.
+
+It could scarcely be said that she was becomingly raimented.  Pansy
+made her own dresses, and the dresses declared the handiwork of
+their maker.  The one she wore this morning was chiefly
+characterized by a pair of sleeves designed by herself; from the
+elbow to the wrist there hung green pouches that looked like long
+pea-pods not well filled.  Her only ornament was a large oval pin
+at her throat which had somewhat the relation to a cameo as that
+borne by Wedgwood china.  It represented a white horse drinking at
+a white roadside well; beside the shoulder of the horse stood a
+white angel, many times taller, with an arm thrown caressingly
+around the horse's neck; while a stunted forest tree extended a
+solitary branch over the horse's tail.
+
+She had been oppressed with dread that she should not arrive in
+time.  No time had been set, no one knew that she was coming, and
+the forenoons were long.  Nevertheless impatience consumed her to
+encounter Mrs. Meredith; and once on the way, inasmuch as Pansy
+usually walked as though she had been told to go for the doctor,
+but not to run, she was not long in arriving.
+
+When she reached the top of the drive in front of the Meredith
+homestead, her face, naturally colorless, was a consistent red; and
+her heart, of whose existence she had never in her life been
+reminded, was beating audibly.  Although she said to herself that
+it was bad manners, she shook out her handkerchief, which she had
+herself starched and ironed with much care; and gathering her
+skirts aside, first to the right and then to the left, dusted her
+shoes, lifting each a little into the air, and she pulled some
+grass from around the buttons.  With the other half of her
+handkerchief she wiped her brow; but a fresh bead of perspiration
+instantly appeared; a few drops even stood on her dilated
+nostrils--raindrops on the eaves.  Even had the day been cool she
+must have been warm, for she wore more layers of clothing than
+usual, having deposited some fresh strata in honor of her wealthy
+mother-in-law.
+
+As Pansy stepped from behind the pines, with one long, quivering
+breath of final self-adjustment, she suddenly stood still, arrested
+by the vision of so glorious a hue and shape that, for the moment,
+everything else was forgotten.  On the pavement just before her, as
+though to intercept her should she attempt to cross the Meredith
+threshold, stood a peacock, expanding to the utmost its great fan
+of pride and love.  It confronted her with its high-born composure
+and insolent grace, all its jewelled feathers flashing in the sun;
+then with a little backward movement of its royal head and
+convulsion of its breast, it threw out its cry,--the cry she had
+heard in the distance through dreaming years,--warning all who
+heard that she was there, the intruder.  Then lowering its tail and
+drawing its plumage in fastidiously against the body, it crossed
+her path in an evasive circle and disappeared behind the pines.
+
+"Oh, Dent, why did you ever ask me to marry you!" thought Pansy, in
+a moment of soul failure.
+
+Mrs. Meredith was sitting on the veranda and was partly concealed
+by a running rose.  She was not expecting visitors; she had much to
+think of this morning, and she rose wonderingly and reluctantly as
+Pansy came forward: she did not know who it was, and she did not
+advance.
+
+Pansy ascended the steps and paused, looking with wistful eyes at
+the great lady who was to be her mother, but who did not even greet
+her.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Meredith," she said, in a shrill treble,
+holding herself somewhat in the attitude of a wooden soldier, "I
+suppose I shall have to introduce myself: it is Pansy."
+
+The surprise faded from Mrs. Meredith's face, the reserve melted.
+With outstretched hands she advanced smiling.
+
+"How do you do.  Pansy," she said with motherly gentleness; "it is
+very kind of you to come and see me, and I am very glad to know
+you.  Shall we go in where it is cooler?"
+
+They entered the long hall.  Near the door stood a marble bust:
+each wall was lined with portraits.  She passed between Dent's
+ancestors into the large darkened parlors.
+
+"Sit here, won't you?" said Mrs. Meredith, and she even pushed
+gently forward the most luxurious chair within her reach.  To Pansy
+it seemed large enough to hold all the children.  At home she was
+used to chairs that were not only small, but hard.  Wherever the
+bottom of a chair seemed to be in that household, there it was--if
+it was anywhere.  Actuated now by this lifelong faith in literal
+furniture, she sat down with the utmost determination where she was
+bid; but the bottom offered no resistance to her descending weight
+and she sank.  She threw out her hands and her hat tilted over her
+eyes.  It seemed to her that she was enclosed up to her neck in
+what might have been a large morocco bath-tub--which came to an end
+at her knees.  She pushed back her hat, crimson.
+
+"That was a surprise," she said, frankly admitting the fault, "but
+there'll never be another such."
+
+"I am afraid you found it warm walking, Pansy," said Mrs. Meredith,
+opening her fan and handing it to her.
+
+"Oh, no, Mrs. Meredith, I never fan!" said Pansy, declining
+breathlessly.  "I have too much use for my hands.  I'd rather
+suffer and do something else.  Besides, you know I am used to
+walking in the sun.  I am very fond of botany, and I am out of
+doors for hours at a time when I can find the chance."
+
+Mrs. Meredith was delighted at the opportunity to make easy vague
+comment on a harmless subject.
+
+"What a beautiful study it must be," she said with authority.
+
+"Must be!" exclaimed Pansy; "why, Mrs. Meredith, don't you _know_?
+Don't you understand botany?"
+
+Pansy had an idea that in Dent's home botany was as familiarly
+apprehended as peas and turnips in hers.
+
+"I am afraid not," replied Mrs. Meredith, a little coolly.  Her
+mission had been to adorn and people the earth, not to study it.
+And among persons of her acquaintance it was the prime duty of each
+not to lay bare the others' ignorance, but to make a little
+knowledge appear as great as possible.  It was discomfiting to have
+Pansy charge upon what after all was only a vacant spot in her
+mind.   She added, as defensively intimating that the subject had
+another dangerous side:
+
+"When I was a girl, young ladies at school did not learn much
+botany; but they paid a great deal of attention to their manners."
+
+"Why did not they learn it after they had left school and after
+they had learned manners?" inquired Pansy, with ruthless
+enthusiasm.  "It is such a mistake to stop learning everything
+simply because you have stopped school.  Don't you think so?"
+
+"When a girl marries, my dear, she soon has other studies to take
+up.  She has a house and husband.  The girls of my day, I am
+afraid, gave up their botanies for their duties: it may be
+different now."
+
+"No matter how many children I may have," said Pansy, positively,
+"I shall never--give--up--botany!  Besides, you know, Mrs.
+Meredith, that we study botany only during the summer months, and I
+do hope--" she broke off suddenly.
+
+Mrs. Meredith smoothed her dress nervously and sought to find her
+chair comfortable.
+
+"Your mother named you Pansy," she remarked, taking a gloomy view of
+the present moment and of the whole future of this acquaintanceship.
+
+That this should be the name of a woman was to her a mistake, a
+crime.  Her sense of fitness demanded that names should be given to
+infants with reference to their adult characters and eventual
+positions in life.  She liked her own name "Caroline"; and she
+liked "Margaret" and all such womanly, motherly, dignified, stately
+appellatives.  As for "Pansy," it had been the name of one of her
+husband's shorthorns, a premium animal at the county fairs; the
+silver cup was on the sideboard in the dining room now.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Meredith," replied Pansy, "that was the name my mother
+gave me.  I think she must have had a great love of flowers.  She
+named me for the best she had.  I hope I shall never forget that,"
+and Pansy looked at Mrs. Meredith with a face of such gravity and
+pride that silence lasted in the parlors for a while.
+
+Buried in Pansy's heart was one secret, one sorrow: that her mother
+had been poor.  Her father wore his yoke ungalled; he loved rough
+work, drew his religion from privations, accepted hardship as the
+chastening that insures reward.  But that her mother's hands should
+have been folded and have returned to universal clay without ever
+having fondled the finer things of life--this to Pansy was
+remembrance to start tears on the brightest day.
+
+"I think she named you beautifully," said Mrs. Meredith, breaking
+that silence, "and I am glad you told me, Pansy." She lingered with
+quick approval on the name.
+
+But she turned the conversation at once to less personal channels.
+The beauty of the country at this season seemed to offer her an
+inoffensive escape.  She felt that she could handle it at least
+with tolerable discretion.  She realized that she was not deep on
+the subject, but she did feel fluent.
+
+"I suppose you take the same pride that we all do in such a
+beautiful country."
+
+Sunlight instantly shone out on Pansy's face.  Dent was a
+geologist; and since she conceived herself to be on trial before
+Mrs. Meredith this morning, it was of the first importance that she
+demonstrate her sympathy and intelligent appreciation of his field
+of work.
+
+"Indeed I do feel the greatest pride in it, Mrs. Meredith," she
+replied.   "I study it a great deal.  But of course you know
+perfectly the whole formation of this region."
+
+Mrs. Meredith coughed with frank discouragement.
+
+"I do not know it," she admitted dryly.  "I suppose I ought to know
+it, but I do not.  I believe school-teachers understand these
+things.  I am afraid I am a very ignorant woman.  No one of my
+acquaintances is very learned.  We are not used to scholarship."
+
+"I know all the strata," said Pansy.  "I tell the children stories
+of how the Mastodon once virtually lived in our stable, and that
+millions of years ago there were Pterodactyls under their bed."
+
+"I think it a misfortune for a young woman to have much to say to
+children about Pterodactyls under their bed--is that the name?
+Such things never seem to have troubled Solomon, and I believe he
+was reputed wise."  She did not care for the old-fashioned
+reference herself, but she thought it would affect Pansy.
+
+"The children in the public schools know things that Solomon never
+heard of," said Pansy, contemptuously.
+
+"I do not doubt it in the least, my dear.  I believe it was not his
+knowledge that made him rather celebrated, but his wisdom.  But I
+am not up in Solomon!" she admitted hastily, retreating from the
+subject in new dismay.
+
+The time had arrived for Pansy to depart; but she reclined in her
+morocco alcove with somewhat the stiffness of a tilted bottle and
+somewhat the contour.  She felt extreme dissatisfaction with her
+visit and reluctance to terminate it.
+
+Her idea of the difference between people in society and other
+people was that it hinged ornamentally upon inexhaustible and
+scanty knowledge.  If Mrs. Meredith was a social leader, and she
+herself had no social standing at all, it was mainly because that
+lady was publicly recognized as a learned woman, and the world had
+not yet found out that she herself was anything but ignorant.
+Being ignorant was to her mind the quintessence of being common;
+and as she had undertaken this morning to prove to Dent's mother
+that she was not common, she had only to prove that she was
+learned.  For days she had prepared for this interview with that
+conception of its meaning.  She had converted her mind into a kind
+of rapid-firing gun; she had condensed her knowledge into
+conversational cartridges.  No sooner had she taken up a mental
+position before Mrs. Meredith than the parlors resounded with
+light, rapid detonations of information.  That lady had but to
+release the poorest, most lifeless, little clay pigeon of a remark
+and Pansy shattered it in mid air and refixed suspicious eyes on
+the trap.
+
+But the pigeons soon began to fly less frequently.  And finally
+they gave out.  And now she must take nearly all her cartridges
+home!  Mrs. Meredith would think her ignorant, therefore she would
+think her common.  If Pansy had only known what divine dulness,
+what ambrosial stupidity, often reclines on those Olympian heights
+called society!
+
+As last she rose.  Neither had mentioned Dent's name, though each
+had been thinking of him all the time.  Not a word had been spoken
+to indicate the recognition of a relationship which one of them so
+desired and the other so dreaded.  Pansy might merely have hurried
+over to ask Mrs. Meredith for the loan of an ice-cream freezer or
+for a setting of eggs.  On the mother's part this silence was
+kindly meant: she did not think it right to take for granted what
+might never come to pass.  Uppermost in her mind was the cruelty of
+accepting Pansy as her daughter-in-law this morning with the
+possibility of rejecting her afterward.
+
+As Pansy walked reluctantly out into the hall, she stopped with a
+deep wish in her candid eyes.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Meredith, I should so much like to see the portrait of
+Dent's father: he has often spoken to me about It."
+
+Mrs. Meredith led her away in silence to where the portrait hung,
+and the two stood looking at it side by side.  She resisted a
+slight impulse to put her arm around the child.  When they returned
+to the front of the house, Pansy turned:
+
+"Do you think you will ever love me?"
+
+The carriage was at the door.  "You must not walk," said Mrs.
+Meredith, "the sun is too hot now."
+
+As Pansy stepped into the carriage, she cast a suspicious glance at
+the cushions: Meredith upholstery was not to be trusted, and she
+seated herself warily.
+
+Mrs. Meredith put her hand through the window: "You must come to
+see me soon again, Pansy.  I am a poor visitor, but I shall try to
+call on you in a few days."
+
+She went back to her seat on the veranda.
+
+It has been said that her insight into goodness was her strength;
+she usually had a way of knowing at once, as regards the character
+of people, what she was ever to know at all.  Her impressions of
+Pansy unrolled themselves disconnectedly:
+
+"She makes mistakes, but she does not know how to do wrong.  Guile
+is not in her.  She is so innocent that she does not realize
+sometimes the peril of her own words.  She is proud--a great deal
+prouder than Dent.  To her, life means work and duty; more than
+that, it means love.  She is ambitious, and ambition, in her case,
+would be indispensable.  She did not claim Dent: I appreciate that.
+She is a perfectly brave girl, and it is cowardice that makes so
+many women hypocrites.  She will improve--she improved while she
+was here.  But oh, everything else!  No figure, no beauty, no
+grace, no tact, no voice, no hands, no anything that is so much
+needed!  Dent says there are cold bodies which he calls planets
+without atmosphere: he has found one to revolve about him.  If she
+only had some clouds!  A mist here and there, so that everything
+would not be so plain, so exposed, so terribly open!  But neither
+has _he_ any clouds, any mists, any atmosphere.  And if she only
+would not so try to expose other people!  If she had not so
+trampled upon me in my ignorance; and with such a sense of triumph!
+I was never so educated in my life by a visitor.  The amount of
+information she imparted in half an hour--how many months it would
+have served the purpose of a well-bred woman!  And her pride in her
+family--were there ever such little brothers and sisters outside a
+royal family!  And her devotion to her father, and remembrance of
+her mother.  I shall go to see her, and be received, I suppose,
+somewhere between the griddle and the churn."
+
+As Pansy was driven home, feeling under herself for the first time
+the elasticity of a perfect carriage, she experimented with her
+posture.  "This carriage is not to be sat in in the usual way," she
+said.  And indeed it was not.  In the family rockaway there was
+constant need of muscular adjustment to different shocks at
+successive moments; here muscular surrender was required: a
+comfortable collapse--and there you were!
+
+Trouble awaited her at home.  Owing to preoccupation with her visit
+she had, before setting out, neglected much of her morning work.
+She had especially forgotten the hungry multitude of her
+dependants.  The children, taking advantage of her absence, had fed
+only themselves.  As a consequence, the trustful lives around the
+house had suffered a great wrong, and they were attempting to
+describe it to each other.  The instant Pansy descended from the
+carriage the ducks, massed around the doorsteps, discovered her,
+and with frantic outcry and outstretched necks ran to find out what
+it all meant.  The signal was taken up by other species and genera.
+In the stable lot the calves responded as the French horn end of
+the orchestra; and the youngest of her little brothers, who had
+climbed into a fruit tree as a lookout for her return, in
+scrambling hurriedly down, dropped to the earth with the boneless
+thud of an opossum.
+
+Pansy walked straight up to her room, heeding nothing, leaving a
+wailing wake.  She locked herself in.  It was an hour before dinner
+and she needed all those moments for herself.
+
+She sat on the edge of her bed and new light brought new
+wretchedness.  It was not, after all, quantity of information that
+made the chief difference between herself and Dent's mother.  The
+other things, all the other things--would she ever, ever acquire
+them!  Finally the picture rose before her of how the footman had
+looked as he had held the carriage door open for her, and the ducks
+had sprawled over his feet; and she threw herself on the bed, hat
+and all, and burst out crying with rage and grief and mortification.
+
+"She will think I am common," she moaned, "and I am not common!
+Why did I say such things?  It is not my way of talking.  Why did I
+criticise the way the portrait was hung?  And she will think this
+is what I really am, and it is not what I am!  She will think I do
+not even know how to sit in a chair, and she will tell Dent, and
+Dent will believe her, and what will become of me?"
+
+
+"Pansy," said Dent next afternoon, as they were in the woods
+together, "you have won my mother's heart."
+
+"Oh, Dent," she exclaimed, tears starting, "I was afraid she would
+not like me.  How could she like me, knowing me no better?"
+
+"She doesn't yet know that she likes you," he replied, with his
+honest thinking and his honest speech, "but I can see that she
+trusts you and respects you; and with my mother everything else
+follows in time."
+
+"I was embarrassed.  I did myself such injustice."
+
+"It is something you never did any one else."
+
+He had been at work in his quarry on the vestiges of creation; the
+quarry lay at an outcrop of that northern hill overlooking the
+valley in which she lived.  Near by was a woodland, and she had
+come out for some work of her own in which he guided her.  They lay
+on the grass now side by side.
+
+"I am working on the plan of our house, Pansy.  I expect to begin
+to build in the autumn.  I have chosen this spot for the site.  How
+do you like it?"
+
+"I like it very well.  For one reason, I can always see the old
+place from it."
+
+"My father left his estate to be equally divided between Rowan and
+me.  Of course he could not divide the house; that goes to Rowan:
+it is a good custom for this country as it was a good custom for
+our forefathers in England.  But I get an equivalent and am to
+build for myself on this part of the land: my portion is over here.
+You see we have always been divided only by a few fences and they
+do not divide at all."
+
+"The same plants grow on each side, Dent."
+
+"There is one thing I have to tell you.  If you are coming into our
+family, you ought to know it beforehand.  There is a shadow over
+our house.  It grows deeper every year and we do not know what it
+means.  That is, my mother and I do not know.  It is some secret in
+Rowan's life.  He has never offered to tell us, and of course we
+have never asked him, and in fact mother and I have never even
+spoken to each other on the subject."
+
+It was the first time she had even seen sadness in his eyes; and
+she impulsively clasped his hand.  He returned the pressure and
+then their palms separated.  No franker sign of their love had ever
+passed between them.
+
+He went on very gravely: "Rowan was the most open nature I ever saw
+when he was a boy.  I remember this now.  I did not think of it
+then.  I believe he was the happiest.  You know we are all
+pantheists of some kind nowadays.  I could never see much
+difference between a living thing that stands rooted in the earth
+like a tree and a living thing whose destiny it is to move the foot
+perpetually over the earth, as man.  The union is as close in one
+case as in the other.  Do you remember the blind man of the New
+Testament who saw men as trees walking?  Rowan seemed to me, as I
+recall him now, to have risen out of the earth through my father
+and mother--a growth of wild nature, with the seasons in his face,
+with the blood of the planet rising into his veins as intimately as
+it pours into a spring oak or into an autumn grape-vine.  I often
+heard Professor Hardage call him the earth-born.  He never called
+any one else that.  He was wild with happiness until he went to
+college.  He came back all changed; and life has been uphill with
+him ever since.  Lately things have grown worse.  The other day I
+was working on the plan of our house; he came in and looked over my
+shoulder: 'Don't build, Dent,' he said, 'bring your wife here,' and
+he walked quickly out of the room.  I knew what that meant: he has
+been unfortunate in his love affair and is ready to throw up the
+whole idea of marrying.  This is our trouble, Pansy.  It may
+explain anything that may have been lacking in my mother's
+treatment of you; she is not herself at all." He spoke with great
+tenderness and he looked disturbed.
+
+"Can I do anything?"  What had she been all her life but
+burden-bearer, sorrow-sharer?
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"If I ever can, will you tell me?"
+
+"This is the only secret I have kept from you, Pansy.  I am sure
+you have kept none from me.  I believe that if I could read
+everything in you, I should find nothing I did not wish to know."
+
+She did not reply for a while.  Then she said solemnly: "I have one
+secret.  There is something I try to hide from every human being
+and I always shall.  It is not a bad secret, Dent.  But I do not
+wish to tell you what it is, and I feel sure you will never ask me."
+
+He turned his eyes to her clear with unshakable confidence: "I
+never will."
+
+Pansy was thinking of her mother's poverty.
+
+They sat awhile in silence.
+
+He had pulled some stems of seeding grass and drew them slowly
+across his palm, pondering Life.  Then he began to talk to her in
+the way that made them so much at home with one another.
+
+"Pansy, men used to speak of the secrets of Nature: there is not
+the slightest evidence that Nature has a secret.  They used to
+speak of the mysteries of the Creator.  I am not one of those who
+claim to be authorities on the traits of the Creator.  Some of my
+ancestors considered themselves such.  But I do say that men are
+coming more and more to think of Him as having no mysteries.  We
+have no evidence, as the old hymn declares, that He loves to move
+in a mysterious way.  The entire openness of Nature and of the
+Creator--these are the new ways of thinking.  They will be the only
+ways of thinking in the future unless civilization sinks again into
+darkness.  What we call secrets and mysteries of the universe are
+the limitations of our powers and our knowledge.  The little that
+we actually do know about Nature, how open it is, how unsecretive!
+There is nowhere a sign that the Creator wishes to hide from us
+even what is Life.  If we ever discover what Life is, no doubt we
+shall then realize that it contained no mystery."
+
+She loved to listen, feeling that he was drawing her to his way of
+thinking for the coming years.
+
+"It was the folly and the crime of all ancient religions that their
+priesthoods veiled them; whenever the veil was rent, like the veil
+of Isis, it was not God that men found behind it: it was nothing.
+The religions of the future will have no veils.  As far as they can
+set before their worshippers truth at all, it will be truth as open
+as the day.  The Great Teacher in the New Testament--what an
+eternal lesson on light itself: that is the beauty of his Gospel.
+And his Apostles--where do you find him saying to them, 'Preach my
+word to all men as the secrets of a priesthood and the mysteries of
+the Father'?
+
+"It is the tragedy of man alone that he has his secrets.  No doubt
+the time will come when I shall have mine and when I shall have to
+hide things from you, Pansy, as Rowan has his and hides things from
+us.  Life is full of things that we cannot tell because they would
+injure us; and of things that we cannot tell because they would
+injure others.  But surely we should all like to live in a time
+when a man's private life will be his only life."
+
+After a silence he came back to her with a quiet laugh: "Here I am
+talking about the future of the human race, and we have never
+agreed upon our marriage ceremony!  What a lover!"
+
+"I want the most beautiful ceremony in the world."
+
+"The ceremony of your church?" he asked with great respect, though
+wincing.
+
+"My church has no ceremony: every minister in it has his own; and
+rather than have one of them write mine, I think I should rather
+write it myself: shouldn't you?"
+
+"I think I should," he said, laughing.
+
+He drew a little book out of his breast pocket: "Perhaps you will
+like this: a great many people have been married by it."
+
+"I want the same ceremony that is used for kings and queens, for
+the greatest and the best people of the earth.  I will marry you by
+no other!"
+
+"A good many of them have used this," and he read to her the
+ceremony of his church.
+
+When he finished neither spoke.
+
+It was a clear summer afternoon.  Under them was the strength of
+rocks; around them the noiseless growth of needful things; above
+them the upward-drawing light: two working children of the New
+World, two pieces of Nature's quietism.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It was the second morning after Marguerite's ball.
+
+Marguerite, to herself a girl no longer, lay in the middle
+of a great, fragrant, drowsy bed of carved walnut, once her
+grandmother's.  She had been dreaming; she had just awakened.  The
+sun, long since risen above the trees of the yard, was slanting
+through the leaves and roses that formed an outside lattice to her
+window-blinds.
+
+These blinds were very old.  They had been her grandmother's when
+she was Marguerite's age; and one day, not long before this,
+Marguerite, pillaging the attic, had found them and brought them
+down, with adoring eyes, and put them up before her own windows.
+They were of thin muslin, and on them were painted scenes
+representing the River of Life, with hills and castles, valleys and
+streams, in a long series; at the end there was a faint vision of a
+crystal dome in the air--the Celestial City--nearly washed away.
+You looked at these scenes through the arches of a ruined castle.
+A young man (on one blind) has just said farewell to his parents on
+the steps of the castle and is rowing away down the River of Life.
+At the prow of his boat is the figurehead of a winged woman holding
+an hour-glass.
+
+Marguerite lay on her side, sleepily contemplating the whole scene
+between her thick, bosky lashes.  She liked everything but the
+winged woman holding the hour-glass.  Had she been that woman, she
+would have dropped the hour-glass into the blue, burying water, and
+have reached up her hand for the young man to draw her into the
+boat with him.  And she would have taken off her wings and cast
+them away upon the hurrying river.  To have been alone with him, no
+hour-glass, no wings, rowing away on Life's long voyage, past
+castles and valleys, and never ending woods and streams!  As to the
+Celestial City, she would have liked her blinds better if the rains
+of her grandmother's youth had washed it away altogether.  It was
+not the desirable end of such a journey: she did not care to land
+_there_.
+
+Marguerite slipped drowsily over to the edge of the bed in order to
+be nearer the blinds; and she began to study what was left of the
+face of the young man just starting on his adventures from the
+house of his fathers.  Who was he?  Of whom did he cause her to
+think?  She sat up in bed and propped her face in the palms of her
+hands--the April face with its October eyes--and lapsed into what
+had been her dreams of the night.  The laces of her nightgown
+dropped from her wrists to her elbows; the masses of her hair, like
+sunlit autumn maize, fell down over her neck and shoulders into the
+purity of the bed.
+
+Until the evening of her party the world had been to Marguerite
+something that arranged all her happiness and never interfered
+with it.  Only soundness and loveliness of nature, inborn,
+undestroyable, could have withstood such luxury, indulgence,
+surfeit as she had always known.
+
+On that night which was designed to end for her the life of
+childhood, she had, for the first time, beheld the symbol of the
+world's diviner beauty--a cross.  All her guests had individually
+greeted her as though each were happier in her happiness.  Except
+one--he did not care.  He had spoken to her upon entering with the
+manner of one who wished himself elsewhere, he alone brought no
+tribute to her of any kind, in his eyes, by his smile, through the
+pressure of his hand.
+
+The slight wounded her at the moment; she had not expected to have
+a guest to whom she would be nothing and to whom it would seem no
+unkindness to let her know this.  The slight left its trail of pain
+as the evening wore on and he did not come near her.  Several
+times, while standing close to him, she had looked her surprise,
+had shadowed her face with coldness for him to see.  For the first
+time in her life she felt herself rejected, suffered the
+fascination of that pain.  Afterward she had intentionally pressed
+so close to him in the throng of her guests that her arm brushed
+his sleeve.  At last she had disengaged herself from all others and
+had even gone to him with the inquiries of a hostess; and he had
+forced himself to smile at her and had forgotten her while he spoke
+to her--as though she were a child.  All her nature was exquisitely
+loosened that night, and quivering; it was not a time to be so
+wounded and to forget.
+
+She did not forget as she sat in her room after all had gone.  She
+took the kindnesses and caresses, the congratulations and triumphs,
+of those full-fruited hours, pressed them together and derived
+merely one clear drop of bitterness--the languorous poison of one
+haunting desire.  It followed her into her sleep and through the
+next day; and not until night came again and she had passed through
+the gateway of dreams was she happy: for in those dreams it was he
+who was setting out from the house of his fathers on a voyage down
+the River of Life; and he had paused and turned and called her to
+come to him and be with him always.
+
+Marguerite lifted her face from her palms, as she finished her
+revery.  She slipped to the floor out of the big walnut bed, and
+crossing to the blinds laid her fingers on the young man's
+shoulder.  It was the movement with which one says: "I have come."
+
+With a sigh she drew one of the blinds aside and looked out upon
+the leaves and roses of her yard and at the dazzling sunlight.
+Within a few feet of her a bird was singing.  "How can you?" she
+said.  "If you loved, you would be silent.  Your wings would droop.
+You could neither sing nor fly."  She turned dreamily back into her
+room and wandered over to a little table on which her violin lay in
+its box.  She lifted the top and thrummed the strings.  "How could
+I ever have loved you?"
+
+She dressed absent-mindedly.  How should she spend the forenoon?
+Some of her friends would be coming to talk over the party; there
+would be callers; there was the summer-house, her hammock, her
+phaeton; there were nooks and seats, cool, fragrant; there were her
+mother and grandmother to prattle to and caress.  "No," she said,
+"not any of them.  One person only.  I must see _him_."
+
+She thought of the places where she could probably see him if he
+should be in town that day.  There was only one--the library.
+Often, when there, she had seen him pass in and out.  He had no
+need to come for books or periodicals, all these he could have at
+home; but she had heard the librarian and him at work; over the
+files of old papers containing accounts of early agricultural
+affairs and the first cattle-shows of the state.  She resolved to
+go to the library: what desire had she ever known that she had not
+gratified?
+
+When Marguerite, about eleven o'clock, approached the library a
+little fearfully, she saw Barbee pacing to and fro on the sidewalk
+before the steps.  She felt inclined to turn back; he was the last
+person she cared to meet this morning.  Play with him had suddenly
+ended as a picnic in a spring grove is interrupted by a tempest.
+
+"I ought to tell him at once," she said; and she went forward.
+
+He came to meet her--with a countenance dissatisfied and
+reproachful.  It struck her that his thin large ears looked
+yellowish instead of red and that his freckles had apparently
+spread and thickened.  She asked herself why she had never before
+realized how boyish he was.
+
+"Marguerite," he said at once, as though the matter were to be
+taken firmly in hand, "you treated me shabbily the night of your
+party.  It was unworthy of you.  And I will not stand it.  You
+ought not be such a child!"
+
+Her breath was taken away.  She blanched and her eyes dilated as
+she looked at him: the lash of words had never been laid on her.
+
+"Are you calling me to account?" she asked.  "Then I shall call you
+to an account.  When you came up to speak to grandmother and to
+mamma and me, you spoke to us as though you were an indifferent
+suitor of mine--as though I were a suitor of yours.  As soon as you
+were gone, mamma said to me: 'What have you been doing, Marguerite,
+that he should think you are in love with him--that he should treat
+us as though we all wished to catch him?'"
+
+"That was a mistake of your mother's.  But after what had passed
+between us--"
+
+"No matter what had passed between us, I do not think that a _man_
+would virtually tell a girl's mother on her: a boy might."
+
+He grew ashen; and he took his hand out of his pockets and
+straightened himself from his slouchy lounging posture, and stood
+before her, his head in the air on his long neck like a young stag
+affronted and enraged.
+
+"It is true, I have sometimes been too much like a boy with you,"
+he said.  "Have you made it possible for me to be anything else?"
+
+"Then I'll make it possible for you now: to begin, I am too old to
+be called to account for my actions--except by those who have the
+right."
+
+"You mean, that I have no right--after what has passed--"
+
+"Nothing has passed between us!"
+
+"Marguerite," he said, "do you mean that you do not love me?"
+
+"Can you not see?"
+
+She was standing on the steps above him.  The many-fluted parasol
+with its long silken fringes rested on one shoulder.  Her face in
+the dazzling sunlight, under her hat, had lost its gayety.  Her
+eyes rested upon his with perfect quietness.
+
+"I do not believe that you yourself know whether you love me," he
+said, laughing pitifully.  His big mouth twitched and his love had
+come back into his eyes quickly enough.
+
+"Let me tell you how I know," she said, with more kindness.  "If I
+loved you, I could not stand here and speak of it to you in this
+way.  I could not tell you you are not a man.   Everything in me
+would go down before you.  You could do with my life what you
+pleased.  No one in comparison with you would mean anything to
+me--not even mamma.  As long as I was with you, I should never wish
+to sleep; if you were away from me, I should never wish to waken.
+If you were poor, if you were in trouble, you would be all the
+dearer to me--if you only loved me, only loved me!"
+
+Who is it that can mark down the moment when we ceased to be
+children?  Gazing backward in after years, we sometimes attempt
+dimly to fix the time.  "It probably occurred on that day," we
+declare; "it may have taken place during that night.  It coincided
+with that hardship, or with that mastery of life."  But a child can
+suffer and can triumph as a man or a woman, yet remain a child.
+Like man and woman it can hate, envy, malign, cheat, lie,
+tyrannize; or bless, cheer, defend, drop its pitying tears, pour
+out its heroic spirit.  Love alone among the passions parts the two
+eternities of a lifetime.  The instant it is born, the child which
+was its parent is dead.
+
+As Marguerite suddenly ceased speaking, frightened by the secret
+import of her own words, her skin, which had the satinlike fineness
+and sheen of white poppy leaves, became dyed from brow to breast
+with a surging flame of rose.  She turned partly away from Barbee,
+and she waited for him to go.
+
+He looked at her a moment with torment in his eyes; then, lifting
+his hat without a word, he turned and walked proudly down the
+street toward his office.
+
+Marguerite did not send a glance after him.  What can make us so
+cruel to those who vainly love us as our vain love of some one
+else?  What do we care for their suffering?  We see it in their
+faces, hear it in their speech, feel it as the tragedy of their
+lives.  But we turn away from them unmoved and cry out at the
+heartlessness of those whom our own faces and words and sorrow do
+not touch.
+
+She lowered her parasol, and pressing her palm against one cheek
+and then the other, to force back the betraying blood, hurried
+agitated and elated into the library.  A new kind of excitement
+filled her: she had confessed her secret, had proved her fidelity
+to him she loved by turning off the playmate of childhood.  Who
+does not know the relief of confessing to some one who does not
+understand?
+
+The interior of the library was an immense rectangular room.  Book
+shelves projected from each side toward the middle, forming
+alcoves.  Seated in one of these alcoves, you could be seen only by
+persons who should chance to pass.  The library was never crowded
+and it was nearly empty now.  Marguerite lingered to speak with the
+librarian, meantime looking carefully around the room; and then
+moved on toward the shelves where she remembered having once seen a
+certain book of which she was now thinking.  It had not interested
+her then; she had heard it spoken of since, but it had not
+interested her since.  Only to-day something new within herself
+drew her toward it.
+
+No one was in the alcove she entered.  After a while she found her
+book and seated herself in a nook of the walls with her face turned
+in the one direction from which she could be discovered by any one
+passing.  While she read, she wished to watch: might he not pass?
+
+It was a very old volume, thumbed by generations of readers.  Pages
+were gone, the halves of pages worn away or tattered.  It was
+printed in an old style of uncertain spelling so that the period of
+its authorship could in this way be but doubtfully indicated.
+Ostensibly it came down from the ruder, plainer speech of old
+English times, which may have found leisure for such "A Booke of
+Folly."
+
+Marguerite's eyes settled first on the complete title: "Lady
+Bluefields' First Principles of Courting for Ye Use of Ye Ladies;
+but Plainly Set Down for Ye Good of Ye Beginners."
+
+"I am not a beginner," thought Marguerite, who had been in love
+three days; and she began to read:
+
+"_Now of all artes ye most ancient is ye lovely arte of courting.
+It is ye earliest form of ye chase.  It is older than hawking or
+hunting ye wilde bore.  It is older than ye flint age or ye stone
+aye, being as old as ye bones in ye man his body and in ye woman
+her body.  It began in ye Garden of Eden and is as old as ye old
+devil himself_."
+
+Marguerite laughed: she thought Lady Bluefields delightful.
+
+"_Now ye only purpose in all God His world of ye arte of courting
+is to create love where love is not, or to make it grow where it
+has begun.  But whether ye wish to create love or to blow ye little
+coal into ye big blaze, ye principles are ye same; for ye bellows
+that will fan nothing into something will easily roast ye spark
+into ye roaring fire; and ye grander ye fire, ye grander ye arte_."
+
+Marguerite laughed again.  Then she stopped reading and tested the
+passage in the light of her experience.  A bellows and--nothing to
+begin.  Then something.  Then a spark.  Then a name.  She returned
+to the book with the conclusion that Lady Bluefields was a woman of
+experience.
+
+"_This little booke will not contain any but ye first principles:
+if is enough for ye stingy price ye pay.  But ye woman who buys ye
+first principles and fails, must then get ye larger work on ye Last
+Principles of Courting, with ye true account of ye mysteries which
+set ye principles to going: it is ye infallible guide to ye
+irresistible love.  Ye pay more for ye Big Booke, and God knows it
+is worth ye price: it is written for ye women who are ye difficult
+cases--ye floating derelicts in ye ocean of love, ye hidden snags,
+terror of ye seafaring men_."
+
+This did not so much interest Marguerite.  She skipped two or three
+pages which seemed to go unnecessarily into the subject of
+derelicts and snags.  "I am not quite sure as to what a derelict
+is: I do not think I am one; out certainly I am not a snag."
+
+"_Now ye only reason for ye lovely arts of courtinge is ye purpose
+to marry.  If ye do not expect to marry, positively ye must not
+court: flirting is ye dishonest arte.  Courting is ye honest arte;
+if ye woman knows in ye woman her heart that she will not make ye
+man a good wife, let her not try to Cage ye man: let her keep ye
+cat or cage ye canary: that is enough for her_."
+
+"I shall dispose of my canary at once.  It goes to Miss Harriet
+Crane."
+
+"_Now of all men there is one ye woman must not court: ye married
+man.  Positively ye must not court such a man.  If he wishes to
+court ye, ye must make resistance to him with all ye soul; if you
+wish to court him, ye must resist yourself.  If he is a married man
+and happy, let him alone.  If he is married and unhappy, let him
+bear his lot and beat his wife_."
+
+Marguerite's eyes flashed.  "It is well the writer did not live in
+this age," she thought.
+
+"_Ye men to court are three kinds: first ye swain; second ye old
+bachelor; third ye widower.  Ye old bachelor is like ye green
+chimney of ye new house--hard to kindle.  But ye widower is like ye
+familiar fireplace.  Ye must court according to ye kind.  Ye
+bachelor and ye widower are treated in ye big booke_."
+
+"The swain is left," said Marguerite.  "How and when is the swain
+to be courted?"
+
+"_Now ye beauty of ye swain is that ye can court him at all seasons
+of ye year.  Ye female bird will signal for ye mate only when ye
+woods are green; but even ye old maid can go to ye icy spinnet and
+drum wildly in ye dead of winter with ye aching fingers and ye
+swain mate will sometimes come to her out of ye cold_."
+
+Marguerite was beginning to think that nearly every one treated in
+Lady Bluefields' book was too advanced in years: it was too
+charitable to the problems of spinsters.  "Where do the young come
+in?" she asked impatiently.
+
+"_Ye must not court ye young swain with ye food or ye wine.  That
+is for ye old bachelors and ye widowers to whom ye food and wine
+are dear, but ye woman who gives them not dear enough.  Ye woman
+gives them meat and drink and they give ye woman hope: it is ye
+bargain: let each be content with what each gets.  But if ye swain
+be bashful and ye know that he cannot speak ye word that he has
+tried to speak, a glass of ye wine will sometimes give him that
+missing word.  Ye wine passes ye word to him and he passes ye word
+to you: and ye keep it!  When ye man is soaked with wine he does
+not know what he loves nor cares: he will hug ye iron post in ye
+street or ye sack of feathers in ye man his bed and talk to it as
+though nothing else were dear to him in all ye world.  It is not ye
+love that makes him do this; it is ye wine and ye man his own
+devilish nature.  No; ye must marry with wine, but ye must court
+with water.  Ye love that will not begin with water will not last
+with wine_."
+
+This did not go to the heart of the matter.  Marguerite turned over
+several pages.
+
+"_In ye arte of courting, it is often ye woman her eyes that settle
+ye man his fate, But if ye woman her eyes are not beautiful, she
+must not court with them but with other members of ye woman her
+body.  Ye greatest use of ye ugly eyes is to see but not be seen.
+If ye try to court with ye ugly eyes, ye scare ye man away or make
+him to feel sick; and ye will be sorry.  Ye eyes must be beautiful
+and ye eyes must have some mystery.  They must not be like ye
+windows of ye house in summer when ye curtains are taken down and
+ye shutters are taken off.  As ye man stands outside he must want
+to see all that is within, but he must not be able.  What ye man
+loves ye woman for is ye mystery in her; if ye woman contain no
+mystery, let her marry if she must; but not aspire to court.  (This
+is enough for ye stingy price ye pay: if ye had paid more money, ye
+would have received more instruction.)_"
+
+Marguerite thought it very little instruction for any money.  She
+felt disappointed and provoked.  She passed on to "Clothes." "What
+can she teach me on that subject?" she thought.
+
+"_When ye court with ye clothes, ye must not lift ye dress above ye
+ankle bone_."
+
+"Then I know what kind of ankle bone _she_ had," said Marguerite,
+bitter for revenge on Lady Bluefields.
+
+"_Ye clothes play a greate part in ye arte of courtinge_."
+
+
+Marguerite turned the leaf; but she found that the other pages on
+the theme were too thumbed and faint to be legible.
+
+She looked into the subject of "Hands": learning where the palms
+should be turned up and when turned down; the meaning of a crooked
+forefinger, and of full moons rising on the horizons of the finger
+nails; why women with freckled hands should court bachelors.  Also
+how the feet, if of such and such sizes and configurations, must be
+kept as "_ye two dead secrets_."  Similarly how dimples must be
+born and not made--with a caution against "_ye dimple under ye
+nose_" (reference to "Big Booke"--well worth the money, etc.).
+
+When she reached the subject of the kiss, Marguerite thought
+guiltily of the library steps.
+
+"_Ye kiss is ye last and ye greatest act in all ye lovely arte of
+courtinge.  Ye eyes, ye hair, ye feet, ye dimple, ye whole trunk,
+are of no account if they do not lead up to ye kiss.  There are two
+kinds of ye kiss: ye kiss that ye give and ye kiss that ye take.
+Ye kiss that ye take is ye one ye want.  Ye woman often wishes to
+give ye man one but cannot; and ye man often wishes to take one (or
+more) from ye woman but cannot; and between her not being able to
+give and his not being able to take, there is suffering enough in
+this ill-begotten and ill-sorted world.  Ye greatest enemy of ye
+kiss that ye earth has ever known is ye sun; ye greatest friend is
+ye night_.
+
+"_Ye most cases where ye woman can take ye kiss are put down in ye
+'Big Booke_.'
+
+"_When ye man lies sick in ye hospital and ye woman bends over him
+and he is too weak to raise his head, she can let her head fall
+down on his; it is only the law of gravitation.  But not while she
+is giving him ye physick.  If ye woman is riding in ye carriage and
+ye horses run away; and ye man she loves is standing in ye bushes
+and rushes out and seizes ye horses but is dragged, when he lies in
+ye road in ye swoon, ye woman can send ye driver around behind ye
+carriage and kiss him then--as she always does in ye women their
+novels but never does in ye life.  There is one time when any woman
+can freely kiss ye man she loves: in ye dreame.  It is ye safest
+way, and ye best.  No one knows; and it does not disappoint as it
+often does disappoint when ye are awake_.
+
+"_Lastly when ye beautiful swain that ye woman loved is dead, she
+way go into ye room where he lies white and cold and kiss him then:
+but she waited too long_."
+
+Marguerite let the book fall as though an arrow had pierced her.
+At the same time she heard the librarian approaching.  She quickly
+restored the volume to its place and drew out another book.  The
+librarian entered the alcove, smiled at Marguerite, peeped over her
+shoulder into the book she was reading, searched for another, and
+took it away.  When she disappeared, Marguerite rose and looked;
+Lady Bluefields was gone.
+
+She could not banish those heart-breaking words: "_When ye
+beautiful swain that ye woman loved is dead_."  The longing of the
+past days, the sadness, the languor that was ecstasy and pain,
+swept back over her as she sat listening now, hoping for another
+footstep.  Would he not come?  She did not ask to speak with him.
+If she might only see him, only feel him near for a few moments.
+
+She quitted the library slowly at last, trying to escape notice;
+and passed up the street with an unconscious slight drooping of
+that aerial figure.  When she reached her yard, the tree-tops
+within were swaying and showing the pale gray under-surfaces of
+their leaves.  A storm was coming.  She turned at the gate, her hat
+in her hand, and looked toward the cloud with red lightnings
+darting from it: a still white figure confronting that noonday
+darkness of the skies.
+
+"Grandmother never loved but once," she said.  "Mamma never loved
+but once: it is our fate."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"Anna," said Professor Hardage that same morning, coming out of his
+library into the side porch where Miss Anna, sitting in a green
+chair and wearing a pink apron and holding a yellow bowl with a
+blue border, was seeding scarlet cherries for a brown roll, "see
+what somebody has sent _me_."  He held up a many-colored bouquet
+tied with a brilliant ribbon; to the ribbon was pinned an
+old-fashioned card.
+
+"Ah, now, that is what comes of your being at the ball," said Miss
+Anna, delighted and brimming with pride.  "Somebody fell in love
+with you.  I told you you looked handsome that night," and she
+beckoned impatiently for the bouquet.
+
+He surrendered it with a dubious look.  She did not consider the
+little tumulus of Flora, but devoured the name of the builder.  Her
+face turned crimson; and leaning over to one side, she dropped the
+bouquet into the basket for cherry seed.  Then she continued her
+dutiful pastime, her head bent so low that he could see nothing but
+the part dividing the soft brown hair of her fine head.
+
+He sat down and laughed at her: "I knew you'd get me into trouble."
+
+It was some moments before she asked in a guilty voice: "What did
+you _do_?"
+
+"What did you tell me to do?"
+
+"I asked you to be kind to Harriet," she murmured mournfully.
+
+"You told me to take her out into the darkest place I could find
+and to sit there with her and hold her hand."
+
+"I did not tell you to hold her hand.  I told you to _try_ to hold
+her hand."
+
+"Well!  I builded better than you knew: give me my flowers."
+
+"What did you do?" she asked again, in a voice that admitted the
+worst.
+
+"How do I know?  I was thinking of something else!  But here comes
+Harriet," he said, quickly standing up and gazing down the street.
+
+"Go in," said Miss Anna, "I want to see Harriet alone."
+
+"_You_ go in.  The porch isn't dark; but I'll stay here with her!"
+
+"Please."
+
+When he had gone, Miss Anna leaned over and lifting the bouquet
+from the sticking cherry seed tossed it into the yard--tossed it
+_far_.
+
+Harriet came out into the porch looking wonderfully fresh.  "How do
+you do, Anna?" she said with an accent of new cordiality,
+established cordiality.
+
+The accent struck Miss Anna's ear as the voice of the bouquet.  She
+had at once discovered also that Harriet was beautifully
+dressed--even to the point of wearing her best gloves.
+
+"Oh, good morning, Harriet," she replied, giving the yellow bowl an
+unnecessary shake and speaking quite incidentally as though the
+visit were not of the slightest consequence.  She did not invite
+Harriet to be seated.  Harriet seated herself.
+
+"Aren't you well, Anna?" she inquired with blank surprise.
+
+"I am always well."
+
+"Is any one ill, Anna?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge."
+
+Harriet knew Miss Anna to have the sweetest nature of all women.
+She realized that she herself was often a care to her friend.  A
+certain impulse inspired her now to give assurance that she had not
+come this morning to weigh her down with more troubles.
+
+"Do you know, Anna, I never felt so well!  Marguerite's ball really
+brought me out.  I have turned over a new leaf of destiny and I am
+going out more after this.  What right has a woman to give up life
+so soon?  I shall go out more, and I shall read more, and be a
+different woman, and cease worrying you.  Aren't women reading
+history now?   But then they are doing everything.  Still that is
+no reason why I should not read a little, because my mind is really
+a blank on the subject of the antiquities.  Of course I can get the
+ancient Hebrews out of the Bible; but I ought to know more about
+the Greeks and Romans.  Now oughtn't I?"
+
+"You don't want to know anything about the Greeks and the Romans,
+Harriet," said Miss Anna.  "Content yourself with the earliest
+Hebrews.  You have gotten along very well without the Greeks and
+the Romans--for--a--long--time."
+
+Harriet understood at last; there was no mistaking now.  She was a
+very delicate instrument and much used to being rudely played upon.
+Her friend's reception of her to-day had been so unaccountable that
+at one moment she had suspected that her appearance might be at
+fault.  Harriet had known women to turn cold at the sight of a new
+gown; and it had really become a life principle not to dress even
+as well as she could, because she needed the kindness that flows
+out so copiously from new clothes to old clothes.  But it was
+embarrassment that caused her now to say rather aimlessly:
+
+"I believe I feel overdressed.  What possessed me?"
+
+"Don't overdress again," enjoined Miss Anna in stern confidence.
+"Never try to change yourself in anyway.  I like you better as you
+are--a--great--deal--better."
+
+"Then you shall have me as you like me, Anna dear," replied
+Harriet, faithfully and earnestly, with a faltering voice; and she
+looked out into the yard with a return of an expression very old
+and very weary.  Fortunately she was short-sighted and was thus
+unable to see her bouquet which made such a burning blot on the
+green grass, with the ribbon trailing beside it and the card still
+holding on as though determined to see the strange adventure
+through to the end.
+
+"Good-by, Anna," she said, rising tremblingly, though at the
+beginning of her visit.
+
+"Oh, good-by, Harriet," replied Miss Anna, giving a cheerful shake
+to the yellow bowl.
+
+As Harriet walked slowly down the street, a more courageously
+dressed woman than she had been for years, her chin quivered and
+she shook with sobs heroically choked back.
+
+Miss Anna went into the library and sat down near the door.  Her
+face which had been very white was scarlet again: "What was it you
+did--tell me quickly.  I cannot stand it."
+
+He came over and taking her cheeks between his palms turned her
+face up and looked down into her eyes.  But she shut them quickly.
+"What do you suppose I did?  Harriet and I sat for half an hour in
+another room.  I don't remember what I did; but it could not have
+been anything very bad: others were all around us."
+
+She opened her eyes and pushed him away harshly: "I have wounded
+Harriet in her most sensitive spot; and then I insulted her after I
+wounded her," and she went upstairs.
+
+Later he found the bouquet on his library table with the card stuck
+in the top.  The flowers stayed there freshly watered till the
+petals strewed his table: they were not even dusted away.
+
+As for Harriet herself, the wound of the morning must have
+penetrated till it struck some deep flint in her composition; for
+she came back the next day in high spirits and severely
+underdressed--in what might be called toilet reduced to its lowest
+terms, like a common fraction.  She had restored herself to the
+footing of an undervalued intercourse.  At the sight of her Miss
+Anna sprang up, kissed her all over the face, was atoningly cordial
+with her arms, tried in every way to say: "See, Harriet, I bare my
+heart!  Behold the dagger of remorse!"
+
+Harriet saw; and she walked up and took the dagger by the handle
+and twisted it to the right and to the left and drove it in deeper
+and was glad.
+
+"How do you like this dress, Anna?" she inquired with the sweetest
+solicitude.  "Ah, there is no one like a friend to bring you to
+your senses!  You were right.  I am too old to change, too old to
+dress, too old even to read: thank you, Anna, as always."
+
+Many a wound of friendship heals, but the wounder and the wounded
+are never the same to each other afterward.  So that the two
+comrades were ill at ease and welcomed a diversion in the form of a
+visitor.  It happened to be the day of the week when Miss Anna
+received her supply of dairy products from the farm of Ambrose
+Webb.  He came round to the side entrance now with two shining tin
+buckets and two lustreless eyes.
+
+The old maids stood on the edge of the porch with their arms
+wrapped around each other, and talked to him with nervous gayety.
+He looked up with a face of dumb yearning at one and then at the
+other, almost impartially.
+
+"Aren't you well, Mr. Webb?" inquired Miss Anna, bending over
+toward him with a healing smile.
+
+"Certainly I am well," he replied resentfully.  "There is nothing
+the matter with me.  I am a sound man."
+
+"But you were certainly groaning," insisted Miss Anna, "for I heard
+you; and you must have been groaning about _something_."
+
+He dropped his eyes, palpably crestfallen, and scraped the bricks
+with one foot.
+
+Harriet nudged Miss Anna not to press the point and threw herself
+gallantly into the breach of silence.
+
+"I am coming out to see you sometime, Mr. Webb," she said
+threateningly; "I want to find out whether you are taking good care
+of my calf.  Is she growing?"
+
+"Calves always grow till they stop," said Ambrose, axiomatically.
+
+"How high is she?"
+
+He held his hand up over an imaginary back.
+
+"Why, that is _high_!  When she stops growing, Anna, I am going to
+sell her, sell her by the pound.  She is my beef trust.  Now don't
+forget, Mr. Webb, that I am coming out some day."
+
+"I'll be there," he said, and he gave her a peculiar look.
+
+"You know, Anna," said Harriet, when they were alone again, "that
+his wife treats him shamefully.  I have heard mother talking about
+it.  She says his wife is the kind of woman that fills a house as
+straw fills a barn: you can see it through every crack.  That
+accounts for his heavy expression, and for his dull eyes, and for
+the groaning.  They say that most of the time he sits on the fences
+when it is clear, and goes into the stable when it rains."
+
+"Why, I'll have to be kinder to him than ever," said Miss Anna.
+"But how do you happen to have a calf, Harriet?" she added, struck
+by the practical fact.
+
+"It was the gift of my darling mother, my dear, the only present
+she has made me that I can remember.  It was an orphan, and you
+wouldn't have it in your asylum, and my mother was in a peculiar
+mood, I suppose.  She amused herself with the idea of making me
+such a present.  But Anna, watch that calf, and see if thereby does
+not hang a tale.  I am sure, in some mysterious way, my destiny is
+bound up with it.  Calves do have destinies, don't they, Anna?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask _me_, Harriet!  Inquire of their Creator; or try the
+market-house."
+
+It was at the end of this visit that Harriet as usual imparted to
+Miss Anna the freshest information regarding affairs at home: that
+Isabel had gone to spend the summer with friends at the seashore,
+and was to linger with other friends in the mountains during
+autumn; that her mother had changed her own plans, and was to keep
+the house open, and had written for the Fieldings--Victor's mother
+and brothers and sisters--to come and help fill the house; that
+everything was to be very gay.
+
+"I cannot fathom what is under it all," said Harriet, with her
+hand on the side gate at leaving.  "But I know that mother and
+Isabel have quarrelled.  I believe mother has transferred her
+affections--and perhaps her property.  She has rewritten her will
+since Isabel went away.  What have I to do, Anna, but interest
+myself in other people's affairs?  I have none of my own.  And she
+never calls Isabel's name, but pets Victor from morning till night.
+And her expression sometimes!  I tell you, Anna, that when I see
+it, if I were a bird and could fly, gunshot could not catch me.  I
+see a summer before me!  If there is ever a chance of my doing
+_anything_, don't be shocked if I do it;" and in Harriet's eyes
+there were two mysterious sparks of hope--two little rising suns.
+
+"What did she mean?" pondered Miss Anna.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Barbee," said Judge Morris one morning a fortnight later, "what
+has become of Marguerite?  One night not long ago you complained of
+her as an obstacle in the path of your career: does she still annoy
+you with her attentions?  You could sue out a writ of habeas corpus
+in your own behalf if she persists.  I'd take the case.  I believe
+you asked me to mark your demeanor on the evening of that party.  I
+tried to mark it; but I did not discover a great deal of demeanor
+to mark."
+
+The two were sitting in the front office.  The Judge, with nothing
+to do, was facing the street, his snow-white cambric handkerchief
+thrown across one knee, his hands grasping the arms of his chair,
+the newspaper behind his heels, his straw hat and cane on the floor
+at his side, and beside them the bulldog--his nose thrust against
+the hat.
+
+Barbee was leaning over his desk with his fingers plunged in his
+hair and his eyes fixed on the law book before him--unopened.  He
+turned and remarked with dry candor:
+
+"Marguerite has dropped me."
+
+"If she has, it's a blessed thing."
+
+"There was more depth to her than I thought."
+
+"There always is.  Wait until you get older."
+
+"I shall have to work and climb to win her."
+
+"You might look up meantime the twentieth verse of the twenty-ninth
+chapter of Genesis."
+
+Barbee rose and took down a Bible from among the law books: it had
+been one of the Judge's authorities, a great stand-by for reference
+and eloquence in his old days of pleading.  He sat down and read
+the verse and laid the volume aside with the mere comment: "All
+this time I have been thinking her too much of a child; I find that
+she has been thinking the same of me."
+
+"Then she has been a sound thinker."
+
+"The result is she has wandered away after some one else.  I know
+the man; and I know that he is after some one else.  Why do people
+desire the impossible person?  If I had been a Greek sculptor and
+had been commissioned to design as my masterwork the world's Frieze
+of Love, it should have been one long array of marble shapes, each
+in pursuit of some one fleeing.  But some day Marguerite will be
+found sitting pensive on a stone--pursuing no longer; and when I
+appear upon the scene, having overtaken her at last, she will sigh,
+but she will give me her hand and go with me: and I'll have to
+stand it.  That is the worst of it.  I shall have to stand it--that
+she preferred the other man."
+
+The Judge did not care to hear Barbee on American themes with Greek
+imagery.  He yawned and struggled to his feet with difficulty.
+"I'll take a stroll," he said; "it is all I can take."
+
+Barbee sprang forward and picked up for him his hat and cane.  The
+dog, by what seemed the slow action of a mental jackscrew, elevated
+his cylinder to the tops of his legs; and presently the two stiff
+old bodies turned the corner of the street, one slanting, one
+prone: one dotting the bricks with his three legs, the other with
+his four.
+
+Formerly the man and the brute had gone each his own way, meeting
+only at meal time and at irregular hours of the night in the
+Judge's chambers.  The Judge had his stories regarding the origin
+of their intimacy.  He varied these somewhat according to the
+sensibilities of the persons to whom they were related--and there
+were not many habitues of the sidewalks who did not hear them
+sooner or later.  "No one could disentangle fact and fiction and
+affection in them.
+
+"Some years ago," he said one day to Professor Hardage, "I was a
+good deal gayer than I am now and so was he.  We cemented a
+friendship in a certain way, no matter what: that is a story I'm
+not going to tell.  And he came to live with me on that footing of
+friendship.  Of course he was greatly interested in the life of his
+own species at that time; he loved part of it, he hated part; but
+he was no friend to either.  By and by he grew older.  Age removed
+a good deal of his vanity, and I suppose it forced him to part with
+some portion of his self-esteem.  But I was growing older myself
+and no doubt getting physically a little helpless.  I suppose I
+made senile noises when I dressed and undressed, expressive of my
+decorative labors.  This may have been the reason; possibly not;
+but at any rate about this time he conceived it his duty to give up
+his friendship as an equal and to enter my employ as a servant.  He
+became my valet--without wages--and I changed his name to 'Brown.'
+
+"Of course you don't think this true; well, then, don't think it
+true.  But you have never seen him of winter mornings get up before
+I do and try to keep me out of the bath-tub.  He'll station himself
+at the bath-room door; and as I approach he will look at me with an
+air of saying; 'Now don't climb into that cold water!  Stand on the
+edge of it and lap it if you wish!  But don't get into it.  Drink
+it, man, don't wallow in it.'  He waits until I finish, and then he
+speaks his mind plainly again: 'Now see how wet you are!  And
+to-morrow you will do the same thing.'  And he will stalk away,
+suspicious of the grade of my intelligence.
+
+"He helps me to dress and undress.  You'd know this if you studied
+his face when I struggle to brush the dust off of my back and
+shoulders: the mortification, the sense of injustice done him, in
+his having been made a quadruped.  When I stoop over to take off my
+shoes, if I do it without any noise and he lies anywhere near, very
+well; but if I am noisy about it, he always comes and takes a seat
+before me and assists.  Then he makes his same speech: 'What a
+shame that you should have to do this for yourself, when I am here
+to do it for you, but have no hands.'
+
+"You know his portrait in my sitting room.  When it was brought
+home and he discovered it on the wall, he looked at it from
+different angles, and then came across to me with a wound and a
+grievance: 'Why have you put that thing there?  How can you, who
+have me, tolerate such a looking object as that?  See the meanness
+in his face!  See how used up he is and how sick of life!  See what
+a history is written all over him--his crimes and disgraces!  And
+you can care for him when you have _me_, your Brown.'  After I am
+dead, I expect him to publish a memorial volume entitled
+'Reminiscences of the late Judge Ravenel Morris, By his former
+Friend, afterward his Valet, _Taurus-Canis_.'"
+
+The long drowsing days of summer had come.  Business was almost
+suspended; heat made energy impossible.  Court was not in session,
+farmers were busy with crops.  From early morning to late afternoon
+the streets were well-nigh deserted.
+
+Ravenel Morris found life more active for him during this idlest
+season of his native town.   Having no business to prefer, people
+were left more at leisure to talk with him; more acquaintances sat
+fanning on their doorsteps and bade him good night as he passed
+homeward.  There were festivals in the park; and he could rest on
+one of the benches and listen to the band playing tunes.  He had
+the common human heart in its love of tunes.  When tunes stopped,
+music stopped for him.  If anything were played in which there was
+no traceable melody, when the instruments encountered a tumult of
+chords and dissonances, he would exclaim though with regretful
+toleration:
+
+"What are they trying to do now?  What is it all about?  Why can't
+music be simple and sweet?  Do noise and confusion make it better
+or greater?"
+
+One night Barbee had him serenaded.  He gave the musicians
+instruction as to the tunes, how they were to be played, in what
+succession, at what hour of the night.  The melodists grouped
+themselves in the middle of the street, and the Judge came out on a
+little veranda under one of his doors and stood there, a great
+silver-haired figure, looking down.  The moonlight shone upon him.
+He remained for a while motionless, wrapped loosely in what looked
+like a white toga.  Then with a slight gesture of the hand full of
+mournful dignity he withdrew.
+
+It was during these days that Barbee, who always watched over him
+with a most reverent worship and affection, made a discovery.  The
+Judge was breaking; that brave life was beginning to sink and
+totter toward its fall and dissolution.  There were moments when
+the cheerfulness, which had never failed him in the midst of trial,
+failed him now when there was none; when the ancient springs of
+strength ceased to run and he was discovered to be feeble.
+Sometimes he no longer read his morning newspaper; he would sit for
+long periods in the front door of his office, looking out into the
+street and caring not who passed, not even returning salutations:
+what was the use of saluting the human race impartially?  Or going
+into the rear office, he would reread pages and chapters of what at
+different times in his life had been his favorite books: "Rabelais"
+and "The Decameron" when he was young; "Don Quixote" later, and
+"Faust"; "Clarissa" and "Tom Jones" now and then; and Shakespeare
+always; and those poems of Burns that tell sad truths; and the
+account of the man in Thackeray who went through so much that was
+large and at the end of life was brought down to so much that was
+low.  He seemed more and more to feel the need of grasping through
+books the hand of erring humanity.  And from day to day his
+conversations with Barbee began to take more the form of counsels
+about life and duty, about the ideals and mistakes and virtues and
+weaknesses in men.  He had a good deal to say about the ethics of
+character in the court room and in the street.
+
+One afternoon Barbee very thoughtfully asked him a question:
+"Uncle, I have wanted to know why you always defended and never
+prosecuted.  The State is supposed to stand for justice, and the
+State is the accuser; in always defending the accused and so in
+working against the State, have you not always worked against
+justice?"
+
+The Judge sat with his face turned away and spoke as he sat--very
+gravely and quietly: "I always defended because the State can
+punish only the accused, and the accused is never the only
+criminal.  In every crime there are three criminals.  The first
+criminal is the Origin of Evil.  I don't know what the Origin of
+Evil is, or who he is; but if I could have dragged the Origin of
+Evil into the court room, I should have been glad to try to have it
+hanged, or have him hanged.  I should have liked to argue the
+greatest of all possible criminal cases: the case of the Common
+People vs. the Devil--so nominated.  The second criminal is all
+that coworked with the accused as involved in his nature, in his
+temptation, and in his act.  If I could have arraigned all the
+other men and women who have been forerunners or copartners of the
+accused as furthering influences in the line of his offence, I
+should gladly have prosecuted them for their share of the guilt.
+But most of the living who are accessory can no more be discovered
+and summoned than can the dead who also were accessory.  You have
+left the third criminal; and the State is forced to single him out
+and let the full punishment fall upon him alone.  Thus it does not
+punish the guilty--it punishes the last of the guilty.  It does not
+even punish him for his share of the guilt: it can never know what
+that share is.  This is merely a feeling of mine, I do not uphold
+it.  Of course I often declined to defend also."
+
+They returned to this subject another afternoon as the two sat
+together a few days later:
+
+"There was sometimes another reason why I felt unwilling to
+prosecute: I refer to cases in which I might be taking advantage of
+the inability of a fellow-creature to establish his own innocence.
+I want you to remember this--nothing that I have ever said to you
+is of more importance: a good many years ago I was in Paris.  One
+afternoon I was walking through the most famous streets in the
+company of a French scholar and journalist, a deep student of the
+genius of French civilization.  As we passed along, he pointed out
+various buildings with reference to the history that had been made
+and unmade within them.  At one point he stopped and pointed to a
+certain structure with a high wall in front of it and to a hole in
+that wall.  'Do you know what that is?' he asked.  He told me.  Any
+person can drop a letter into that box, containing any kind of
+accusation against any other person; it is received by the
+authorities and it becomes their duty to act upon its contents.  Do
+you know what that means?  Can you for a moment realize what is
+involved?  A man's enemy, even his so-called religious enemy, any
+assassin, any slanderer, any liar, even the mercenary who agrees to
+hire out his honor itself for the wages of a slave, can deposit an
+anonymous accusation against any one whom he hates or wishes to
+ruin; and it becomes the duty of the authorities to respect his
+communication as much as though it came before a court of highest
+equity.  An innocent man may thus become an object of suspicion,
+may be watched, followed, arrested and thrown into prison,
+disgraced, ruined in his business, ruined in his family; and if in
+the end he is released, he is never even told what he has been
+charged with, has no power of facing his accuser, of bringing him
+to justice, of recovering damages from the State.  While he himself
+is kept in close confinement, his enemy may manufacture evidence
+which he alone would be able to disprove; and the chance is never
+given him to disprove it."
+
+The Judge turned and looked at Barbee in simple silence.
+
+Barbee sprang to his feet: "It is a damned shame!" he cried.  "Damn
+the French! damn such a civilization."
+
+"Why damn the French code?  In our own country the same thing goes
+on, not as part of our system of jurisprudence, but as part of our
+system of--well, we'll say--morals.  In this country any man's
+secret personal enemy, his so-called religious enemy for instance,
+may fabricate any accusation against him.  He does not drop it into
+the dark crevice of a dead wall, but into the blacker hole of a
+living ear.  A perfectly innocent man by such anonymous or
+untraceable slander can be as grossly injured in reputation, in
+business, in his family, out of a prison in this country as in a
+prison in France.  Slander may circulate about him and he will
+never even know what it is, never be confronted by his accuser,
+never have power of redress.
+
+"Now what I wish you to remember is this: that in the very nature
+of the case a man is often unable to prove his innocence.  All over
+the world useful careers come to nothing and lives are wrecked,
+because men may be ignorantly or malignantly accused of things of
+which they cannot stand up and prove that they are innocent.  Never
+forget that it is impossible for a man finally to demonstrate his
+possession of a single great virtue.  A man cannot so prove his
+bravery.  He cannot so prove his honesty or his benevolence or his
+sobriety or his chastity, or anything else.  As to courage, all
+that he can prove is that in a given case or in all tested cases he
+was not a coward.  As to honesty, all that he can prove is that in
+any alleged instance he was not a thief.  A man cannot even
+directly prove his health, mental or physical: all that he can
+prove is that he shows no unmistakable evidences of disease.  But
+an enemy may secretly circulate the charge that these evidences
+exist; and all the evidences to the contrary that the man himself
+may furnish will never disperse that impression.  It is so for
+every great virtue.  His final possession of a single virtue can be
+proved by no man.
+
+"This was another reason why I was sometimes unwilling to prosecute
+a fellow-creature; it might be a case in which he alone would
+actually know whether he were innocent, but his simple word would
+not be taken, and his simple word would be the only proof that he
+could give.  I ask you, as you care for my memory, never to take
+advantage of the truth that the man before you, as the accused, may
+in the nature of things be unable to prove his innocence.  Some day
+you are going to be a judge.  Remember you are always a judge; and
+remember that a greater Judge than you will ever be gave you the
+rule: 'Judge as you would be judged.'  The great root of the matter
+is this: that all human conduct is judged; but a very small part of
+human conduct is ever brought to trial."
+
+He had many visitors at his office during these idle summer days.
+He belonged to a generation of men who loved conversation--when
+they conversed.  All the lawyers dropped in.  The report of his
+failing strength brought these and many others.
+
+He saw a great deal of Professor Hardage.  One morning as the two
+met, he said with more feeling than he usually allowed himself to
+show: "Hardage, I am a lonesome old man; don't you want me to come
+and see you every Sunday evening?  I always try to get home by ten
+o'clock, so that you couldn't get tired of me; and as I never fall
+asleep before that time, you wouldn't have to put me to bed.  I
+want to hear you talk, Hardage.  My time is limited; and you have
+no right to shut out from me so much that you know--your learning,
+your wisdom, yourself.  And I know a few things that I have picked
+up in a lifetime.  Surely we ought to have something to say to each
+other."
+
+But when he came, Professor Hardage was glad to let him find relief
+in his monologues--fragments of self-revelation.  This last phase
+of their friendship had this added significance: that the Judge no
+longer spent his Sunday evenings with Mrs. Conyers.  The last
+social link binding him to womankind had been broken.  It was a
+final loosening and he felt it, felt the desolation in which it
+left him.  His cup of life had indeed been drained, and he turned
+away from the dregs.
+
+One afternoon Professor Hardage found him sitting with his familiar
+Shakespeare on his knees.  As he looked up, he stretched out his
+hand in eager welcome and said: "Listen once more;" and he read the
+great kindling speech of King Henry to his English yeomen on the
+eve of battle.
+
+He laid the book aside.
+
+"Of course you have noticed how Shakespeare likes this word
+'mettle,' how he likes the _thing_.  The word can be seen from afar
+over the vast territory of his plays like the same battle-flag set
+up in different parts of a field.  It is conspicuous in the heroic
+English plays, and in the Roman and in the Greek; it waves alike
+over comedy and tragedy as a rallying signal to human nature.  I
+imagine I can see his face as he writes of the mettle of
+children--the mettle of a boy--the quick mettle of a schoolboy--a
+lad of mettle--the mettle of a gentleman--the mettle of the
+sex--the mettle of a woman, Lady Macbeth--the mettle of a king--the
+mettle of a speech--even the mettle of a rascal--mettle in death.
+I love to think of him, a man who had known trouble, writing the
+words: 'The insuppressive mettle of our spirits.'
+
+"But this particular phrase--the mettle of the pasture--belongs
+rather to our century than to his, more to Darwin than to the
+theatre of that time.  What most men are thinking of now, if they
+think at all, is of our earth, a small grass-grown planet hung in
+space.  And, unaccountably making his appearance on it, is man, a
+pasturing animal, deriving his mettle from his pasture.  The old
+question comes newly up to us: Is anything ever added to him?  Is
+anything ever lost to him?  Evolution--is it anything more than
+change?  Civilizations--are they anything but different
+arrangements of the elements of man's nature with reference to the
+preeminence of some elements and the subsidence of others?
+
+"Suppose you take the great passions: what new one has been added,
+what old one has been lost?  Take all the passions you find in
+Greek literature, in the Roman.  Have you not seen them reappear in
+American life in your own generation?  I believe I have met them in
+my office.  You may think I have not seen Paris and Helen, but I
+have.  And I have seen Orestes and Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and
+Oedipus.  Do you suppose I have not met Tarquin and Virginia and
+Lucretia and Shylock--to come down to nearer times--and seen Lear
+and studied Macbeth in the flesh?  I knew Juliet once, and behind
+locked doors I have talked with Romeo.  They are all here in any
+American commonwealth at the close of our century: the great
+tragedies are numbered--the oldest are the newest.  So that
+sometimes I fix my eyes only on the old.  I see merely the planet
+with its middle green belt of pasture and its poles of snow and
+ice; and wandering over that green belt for a little while man the
+pasturing animal--with the mystery of his ever being there and the
+mystery of his dust--with nothing ever added to him, nothing ever
+lost out of him--his only power being but the power to vary the
+uses of his powers.
+
+"Then there is the other side, the side of the new.  I like to
+think of the marvels that the pasturing animal has accomplished in
+our own country.  He has had new thoughts, he has done things never
+seen elsewhere or before.  But after all the question remains, what
+is our characteristic mettle?  What is the mettle of the American?
+He has had new ideas; but has he developed a new virtue or carried
+any old virtue forward to characteristic development?  Has he added
+to the civilizations of Europe the spectacle of a single virtue
+transcendently exercised?  We are not braver than other brave
+people, we are not more polite, we are not more honest or more
+truthful or more sincere or kind.  I wish to God that some virtue,
+say the virtue of truthfulness, could be known throughout the world
+as the unfailing mark of the American--the mettle of his pasture.
+Not to lie in business, not to lie in love, not to lie in
+religion--to be honest with one's fellow-men, with women, with
+God--suppose the rest of mankind would agree that this virtue
+constituted the characteristic of the American!  That would be fame
+for ages.
+
+"I believe that we shall sometime become celebrated for preeminence
+in some virtue.  Why, I have known young fellows in my office that
+I have believed unmatched for some fine trait or noble quality.
+You have met them in your classes."
+
+He broke off abruptly and remained silent for a while.
+
+"Have you seen Rowan lately?" he asked, with frank uneasiness: and
+receiving the reply which he dreaded, he soon afterward arose and
+passed brokenly down the street.
+
+For some weeks now he had been missing Rowan; and this was the
+second cause of his restlessness and increasing loneliness.  The
+failure of Rowan's love affair was a blow to him: it had so linked
+him to the life of the young--was the last link.  And since then he
+had looked for Rowan in vain; he had waited for him of mornings at
+his office, had searched for him on the streets, scanning all young
+men on horseback or in buggies; had tried to find him in the
+library, at the livery stable, at the bank where he was a depositor
+and director.  There was no ground for actual uneasiness concerning
+Rowan's health, for Rowan's neighbors assured him in response to
+his inquiries that he was well and at work on the farm.
+
+"If he is in trouble, why does he not come and tell me?  Am I not
+worth coming to see?  Has he not yet understood what he is to me?
+But how can he know, how can the young ever know how the old love
+them?  And the old are too proud to tell."  He wrote letters and
+tore them up.
+
+As we stand on the rear platform of a train and see the mountains
+away from which we are rushing rise and impend as if to overwhelm
+us, so in moving farther from his past very rapidly now, it seemed
+to follow him as a landscape growing always nearer and clearer.
+His mind dwelt more on the years when hatred had so ruined him,
+costing him the only woman he had ever asked to be his wife,
+costing him a fuller life, greater honors, children to leave behind.
+
+He was sitting alone in his rear office the middle of one
+afternoon, alone among his books.  He had outspread before him
+several that are full of youth.  Barbee was away, the street was
+very quiet.  No one dropped in--perhaps all were tired of hearing
+him talk.  It was not yet the hour for Professor Hardage to walk
+in.  A watering-cart creaked slowly past the door and the gush of
+the drops of water sounded like a shower and the smell of the dust
+was strong.  Far away in some direction were heard the cries of
+school children at play in the street.  A bell was tolling; a green
+fly, entering through the rear door, sang loud on the dusty
+window-panes and then flew out and alighted on a plant of
+nightshade springing up rank at the doorstep.
+
+He was not reading and his thoughts were the same old thoughts.  At
+length on the quiet air, coming nearer, were heard the easy roll of
+wheels and the slow measured step of carriage horses.  The sound
+caught his ear and he listened with quick eagerness.  Then he rose
+trembling and waited.  The carriage had stopped at the door; a
+moment later there was a soft low knock on the lintel and Mrs.
+Meredith entered.  He met her but she said: "May I go in there?"
+and entered the private office.
+
+She brought with her such grace and sweetness of full womanly years
+that as she seated herself opposite him and lifted her veil away
+from the purity of her face, it was like the revelation of a shrine
+and the office became as a place of worship.  She lifted the veil
+from the dignity and seclusion of her life.  She did not speak at
+once but looked about her.  Many years had passed since she had
+entered that office, for it had long ago seemed best to each of
+them that they should never meet.  He had gone back to his seat at
+the desk with the opened books lying about him as though he had
+been searching one after another for the lost fountain of youth.
+He sat there looking at her, his white hair falling over his
+leonine head and neck, over his clear mournful eyes.  The sweetness
+of his face, the kindness of it, the shy, embarrassed, almost
+guilty look on it from the old pain of being misunderstood--the
+terrible pathos of it all, she saw these; but whatever her
+emotions, she was not a woman to betray them at such a moment, in
+such a place.
+
+"I do not come on business," she said.  "All the business seems to
+have been attended to; life seems very easy, too easy: I have so
+little to do.  But I am here, Ravenel, and I suppose I must try to
+say what brought me."
+
+She waited for some time, unable to speak.
+
+"Ravenel," she said at length, "I cannot go on any longer without
+telling you that my great sorrow in life has been the wrong I did
+you."
+
+He closed his eyes quickly and stretched out his hand against her,
+as though to shut out the vision of things that rose before him--as
+though to stop words that would unman him.
+
+"But I was a young girl!  And what does a young girl understand
+about her duty in things like that?  I know it changed your whole
+life; you will never know what it has meant in mine."
+
+"Caroline," he said, and he looked at her with brimming eyes, "if
+you had married me, I'd have been a great man.  I was not great
+enough to be great without you.  The single road led the wrong
+way--to the wrong things!"
+
+"I know," she said, "I know it all.  And I know that tears do not
+efface mistakes, and that our prayers do not atone for our wrongs."
+
+She suddenly dropped her veil and rose,
+
+"Do not come out to help me," she said as he struggled up also.
+
+He did not wish to go, and he held out his hand and she folded her
+soft pure hands about it; then her large noble figure moved to the
+side of his and through her veil--her love and sorrow hidden from
+him--she lifted her face and kissed him.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+And during these days when Judge Morris was speaking his mind about
+old tragedies that never change, and new virtues--about scandal and
+guilt and innocence--it was during these days that the scandal
+started and spread and did its work on the boy he loved--and no one
+had told him.
+
+The summer was drawing to an end.  During the last days of it Kate
+wrote to Isabel:
+
+"I could not have believed, dearest friend, that so long a time
+would pass without my writing.  Since you went away it has been
+eternity.  And many things have occurred which no one foresaw or
+imagined.  I cannot tell you how often I have resisted the impulse
+to write.  Perhaps I should resist now; but there are some matters
+which you ought to understand; and I do not believe that any one
+else has told you or will tell you.  If I, your closest friend,
+have shrunk, how could any one else be expected to perform the duty?
+
+"A week or two after you left I understood why you went away
+mysteriously, and why during that last visit to me you were unlike
+yourself.  I did not know then that your gayety was assumed, and
+that you were broken-hearted beneath your brave disguises.  But I
+remember your saying that some day I should know.  The whole truth
+has come out as to why you broke your engagement with Rowan, and
+why you left home.  You can form no idea what a sensation the news
+produced.  For a while nothing else was talked of, and I am glad
+for your sake that you were not here.
+
+"I say the truth came out; but even now the town is full of
+different stories, and different people believe different things.
+But every friend of yours feels perfectly sure that Rowan was
+unworthy of you, and that you did right in discarding him.  It is
+safe to say that he has few friends left among yours.  He seldom
+comes to town, and I hear that he works on the farm like a common
+hand as he should.  One day not long after you left I met him on
+the street.  He was coming straight up to speak to me as usual.
+But I had the pleasure of staring him in the eyes and of walking
+deliberately past him as though he were a stranger--except that I
+gave him one explaining look.  I shall never speak to him.
+
+"His mother has the greatest sympathy of every one.  They say that
+no one has told her the truth: how could any one tell her such
+things about her own son?  Of course she must know that you dropped
+him and that we have all dropped him.  They say that she is greatly
+saddened and that her health seems to be giving way.
+
+"I do not know whether you have heard the other sensation regarding
+the Meredith family.  You refused Rowan; and now Dent is going to
+marry a common girl in the neighborhood.  Of course Dent Meredith
+was always noted for being a quiet little bookworm, near-sighted,
+and without any knowledge of girls.  So it doesn't seem very
+unnatural for him to have collected the first specimen that he came
+across as he walked about over the country.  This marriage which is
+to take place in the autumn is the second shock to his mother.
+
+"You will want to hear of other people.  And this reminds me that a
+few of your friends have turned against you and insist that these
+stories about Rowan are false, and even accuse you of starting
+them.  This brings me to Marguerite.
+
+"Soon after her ball she had typhoid fever.  In her delirium of
+whom do you suppose she incessantly and pitifully talked?  Every
+one had supposed that she and Barbee were sweethearts--and had been
+for years.  But Barbee's name was never on her lips.  It was all
+Rowan, Rowan, Rowan.  Poor child, she chided him for being so cold
+to her; and she talked to him about the river of life and about his
+starting on the long voyage from the house of his fathers; and
+begged to be taken with him, and said that in their family the
+women never loved but once.  When she grew convalescent, there was
+a consultation of the grandmother and the mother and the doctors:
+one passion now seemed to constitute all that was left of
+Marguerite's life; and that was like a flame burning her strength
+away.
+
+"They did as the doctor said had to be done.  Mrs. Meredith had
+been very kind during her illness, had often been to the house.
+They kept from her of course all knowledge of what Marguerite had
+disclosed in her delirium.  So when Marguerite by imperceptible
+degrees grew stronger, Mrs. Meredith begged that she might be moved
+out to the country for the change and the coolness and the quiet;
+and the doctors availed themselves of this plan as a solution of
+their difficulty--to lessen Marguerite's consuming desire by
+gratifying it.  So she and her mother went out to the Merediths'.
+The change proved beneficial.  I have not been driving myself,
+although the summer has been so long and hot; and during the
+afternoons I have so longed to see the cool green lanes with the
+sun setting over the fields.  But of course people drive a great
+deal and they often meet Mrs. Meredith with Marguerite in the
+carriage beside her.  At first it was Marguerite's mother and
+Marguerite.  Then it was Mrs. Meredith and Marguerite; and now it
+is Rowan and Marguerite.  They drive alone and she sits with her
+face turned toward him--in open idolatry.  She is to stay out there
+until she is quite well.  How curiously things work around!  If he
+ever proposes, scandal will make no difference to Marguerite.
+
+"How my letter wanders!  But so do my thoughts wander.  If you only
+knew, while I write these things, how I am really thinking of other
+things.  But I must go on in my round-about way.  What I started
+out to say was that when the scandals, I mean the truth, spread
+over the town about Rowan, the three Marguerites stood by him.  You
+could never have believed that the child had such fire and strength
+and devotion in her nature.  I called on them one day and was
+coldly treated simply because I am your closest friend.  Marguerite
+pointedly expressed her opinion of a woman who deserts a man
+because he has his faults.  Think of this child's sitting in moral
+condemnation upon you!
+
+"The Hardages also--of course you have no stancher friends than
+they are--have stood up stubbornly for Rowan.  Professor Hardage
+became very active in trying to bring the truth out of what he
+believes to be gossip and misunderstanding.  And Miss Anna has also
+remained loyal to him, and in her sunny, common-sense way flouts
+the idea of there being any truth in these reports.
+
+"I must not forget to tell you that Judge Morris now spends his
+Sunday evenings with Professor Hardage.  No one has told him: they
+have spared him.  Of course every one knows that he was once
+engaged to Rowan's mother and that scandal broke the engagement and
+separated them for life.  Only in his case it was long afterward
+found out that the tales were not true.
+
+"I have forgotten Barbee.  He and Marguerite had quarrelled before
+her illness--no one knows why, unless she was already under the
+influence of her fatal infatuation for Rowan.  Barbee has gone to
+work.  A few weeks ago he won his first serious case in court and
+attracted attention.  They say his speech was so full of dignity
+and unnecessary rage that some one declared he was simply trying to
+recover his self-esteem for Marguerite's having called him trivial
+and not yet altogether grown up.
+
+"Of course you must have had letters of your own, telling you of
+the arrival of the Fieldings--Victor's mother and sisters; and the
+house is continually gay with suppers and parties.
+
+"How my letter wanders!  It is a sick letter, Isabel, a dead
+letter.  I must not close without going back to the Merediths once
+more.  People have been driving out to see the little farm and the
+curious little house of Dent Meredith's bride elect--a girl called
+Pansy Something.  It lies near enough to the turnpike to be in full
+view--too full view.  They say it is like a poultry farm and that
+the bride is a kind of American goose girl: it will be a marriage
+between geology and the geese.  The geese will have the best of it.
+
+"Dearest friend, what shall I tell you of my own life--of my
+nights, of the mornings when I wake, of these long, lonesome,
+summer afternoons?  Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing!  I should
+rather write to you how, my thoughts go back to the years of our
+girlhood together when we were so happy, Isabel, so happy, so
+happy!  What ideals we formed as to our marriages and our futures!
+
+"KATE.
+
+"P.S.--I meant to tell you that of course I shall do everything in
+my power to break up the old friendship between George and Rowan.
+Indeed, I have already done it."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+This letter brought Isabel home at once through three days of
+continuous travel.  From the station she had herself driven
+straight to Mrs. Osborn's house, and she held the letter in her
+hand as she went.
+
+Her visit lasted for some time and it was not pleasant.  When Mrs.
+Osborn hastened down, surprised at Isabel's return and prepared to
+greet her with the old warmth, her greeting was repelled and she
+herself recoiled, hurt and disposed to demand an explanation.
+
+"Isabel," she said reproachfully, "is this the way you come back to
+me?"
+
+Isabel did not heed but spoke: "As soon as I received this letter,
+I determined to come home.  I wished to know at once what these
+things are that are being said about Rowan.  What are they?"
+
+Mrs. Osborn hesitated: "I should rather not tell you."
+
+"But you must tell me: my name has been brought into this, and I
+must know."
+
+While she listened her eyes flashed and when she spoke her voice
+trembled with excitement and anger.  "These things are not true,"
+she said.  "Only Rowan and I know what passed between us.  I told
+no one, he told no one, and it is no one's right to know.  A great
+wrong has been done him and a great wrong has been done me; and I
+shall stay here until these wrongs are righted."
+
+"And is it your feeling that you must begin with me?" said Mrs.
+Osborn, bitterly.
+
+"Yes, Kate; you should not have believed these things.  You
+remember our once saying to each other that we would try never to
+believe slander or speak slander or think slander?  It is unworthy
+of you to have done so now."
+
+"Do you realize to whom you are speaking, and that what I have done
+has been through friendship for you?"
+
+Isabel shook her head resolvedly.  "Your friendship for me cannot
+exact of you that you should be untrue to yourself and false to
+others.  You say that you refuse to speak to Rowan on the street.
+You say that you have broken up the friendship between Mr. Osborn
+and him.  Rowan is the truest friend Mr. Osborn has ever had; you
+know this.  But in breaking off that friendship, you have done more
+than you have realized: you have ended my friendship with you."
+
+"And this is gratitude for my devotion to you and my willingness to
+fight your battles!" said Mrs. Osborn, rising.
+
+"You cannot fight my battles without fighting Rowan's.  My wish to
+marry him or not to marry him is one thing; my willingness to see
+him ruined is another."
+
+Isabel drove home.  She rang the bell as though she were a
+stranger.  When her maid met her at the door, overjoyed at her
+return, she asked for her grandmother and passed at once into her
+parlors.  As she did so, Mrs. Conyers came through the hall,
+dressed to go out.  At the sound of Isabel's voice, she, who having
+once taken hold of a thing never let it go, dropped her parasol;
+and as she stooped to pick it up, the blood rushed to her face.
+
+"I wish to speak to you," said Isabel, coming quickly out into the
+hall as though to prevent her grandmother's exit.  Her voice was
+low and full of shame and indignation.
+
+"I am at your service for a little while," said Mrs. Conyers,
+carelessly; "later I am compelled to go out."  She entered the
+parlors, followed by Isabel, and, seating herself in the nearest
+chair, finished buttoning her glove.
+
+Isabel sat silent a moment, shocked by her reception.  She had not
+realized that she was no longer the idol of that household and of
+its central mind; and we are all loath to give up faith in our
+being loved still, where we have been loved ever.  She was not
+aware that since she had left home she had been disinherited.  She
+would not have cared had she known; but she was now facing what was
+involved in the disinheritance--dislike; and in the beginning of
+dislike there was the ending of the old awe with which the
+grandmother had once regarded the grandchild.
+
+But she came quickly back to the grave matter uppermost in her
+mind.  "Grandmother," she said, "I received a few days ago a letter
+from Kate Osborn.  In it she told me that there were stories in
+circulation about Rowan.  I have come home to find out what these
+stories are.  On the way from the station I stopped at Mrs.
+Osborn's, and she told me.  Grandmother, this is your work."
+
+Mrs. Conyers pushed down the thumb of her glove.
+
+"Have I denied it?  But why do you attempt to deny that it is also
+your work?"
+
+Isabel sat regarding her with speechless, deepening horror.  She
+was not prepared for this revelation.  Mrs. Conyers did not wait,
+but pressed on with a certain debonair enjoyment of her advantage.
+
+"You refused to recognize my right to understand a matter that
+affected me and affected other members of the family as well as
+yourself.  You showed no regard for the love I had cherished for
+you many a year.  You put me aside as though I had no claim upon
+your confidence--I believe you said I was not worthy of it; but my
+memory is failing--perhaps I wrong you."
+
+"It is _true_!" said Isabel, with triumphant joy in reaffirming it
+on present grounds.  "It is _true_!"
+
+"Very well," said Mrs. Conyers, "we shall let that pass.  It was of
+consequence then; it is of no consequence now: these little
+personal matters are very trivial.  But there was a serious matter
+that you left on my hands; the world always demands an explanation
+of what it is compelled to see and cannot understand.   If no
+explanation is given, it creates an explanation.  It was my duty to
+see that it did not create an explanation in this case.  Whatever
+it may have been that took place between you and Rowan, I did not
+intend that the responsibility should rest upon you, even though
+you may have been willing that it should rest there.  You discarded
+Rowan; I was compelled to prevent people from thinking that Rowan
+discarded you.  Your reason for discarding him you refused to
+confide to me; I was compelled therefore to decide for myself what
+it probably was.  Ordinarily when a man is dropped by a girl under
+such circumstances, it is for this," she tapped the tips of her
+fingers one by one as she went on, "or for this, or for this, or
+for this; you can supply the omitted words--nearly any one can--the
+world always does.  You see, it becomes interesting.  As I had not
+your authority for stating which one of these was the real reason,
+I was compelled to leave people at liberty to choose for
+themselves.  I could only say that I myself did not know; but that
+certainly it was for some one of these reasons, or two of them, or
+for all of them."
+
+"You have tried to ruin him!" Isabel cried, white with suffering.
+
+"On the contrary, I received my whole idea of this from you.
+Nothing that I said to others about him was quite so bad as what
+you said to me; for you knew the real reason of your discarding
+him, and the reason was so bad--or so good--that you could not even
+confide it to me, your natural confidant.  You remember saying that
+we must drop him from the list of our acquaintances, must not
+receive him at the house, or recognize him in society, or speak, to
+him in public.  I protested that this would be very unjust to him,
+and that he might ask me at least the grounds for so insulting him;
+you assured me that he would never dare ask.  And now you affect to
+be displeased with me for believing what you said, and trying to
+defend you from criticism, and trying to protect the good name of
+the family."
+
+"Ah," cried Isabel, "you can give fair reasons for foul deeds.  You
+always could.  We often do, we women.  The blacker our conduct, the
+better the names with which we cover it.  If you would only glory
+openly in what you have done and stand by it!  Not a word of what
+you have said is true, as you have said it.  When I left home not a
+human being but yourself knew that there had been trouble between
+Rowan and me.  It need never have become public, had you let the
+matter be as I asked you to do, and as you solemnly promised that
+you would.  It is you who have deliberately made the trouble and
+scattered the gossip and spread the scandal.  Why do you not avow
+that your motive was revenge, and that your passion was not
+justice, but malice.  Ah, you are too deep a woman to try to seem
+so shallow!"
+
+"Can I be of any further service to you?" said Mrs. Conyers with
+perfect politeness, rising.  "I am sorry that the hour of my
+engagement has come.  Are you to be in town long?"
+
+"I shall be here until I have undone what you have done," cried
+Isabel, rising also and shaking with rage.  "The decencies of life
+compel me to shield you still, and for that reason I shall stay in
+this house.  I am not obliged to ask this as a privilege; it is my
+right."
+
+"Then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you often."
+
+Isabel went up to her room as usual and summoned her maid, and
+ordered her carriage to be ready in half an hour.
+
+Half an hour later she came down and drove to the Hardages'.  She
+showed no pleasure in seeing him again, and he no surprise in
+seeing her.
+
+"I have been expecting you," he said; "I thought you would be
+brought back by all this."
+
+"Then you have heard what they are saying about Rowan?"
+
+"I suppose we have all heard," he replied, looking at her
+sorrowfully.
+
+"You have not believed these things?"
+
+"I have denied them as far as I could.  I should have denied that
+anything had occurred; but you remember I could not do that after
+what you told me.  You said something had occurred."
+
+"Yes, I know," she said.  "But you now have my authority at least
+to say that these things are not true.  What I planned for the best
+has been misused and turned against him and against me.  Have you
+seen him?"
+
+"He has been in town, but I have not seen him."
+
+"Then you must see him at once.  Tell me one thing: have you heard
+it said that I am responsible for the circulation of these stories?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you suppose he has heard that?  And could he believe it?  Yet
+might he not believe it?  But how could he, how could he!"
+
+"You must come here and stay with us.  Anna will want you."   He
+could not tell her his reason for understanding that she would not
+wish to stay at home.
+
+"No, I should like to come; but it is better for me to stay at
+home.  But I wish Rowan to come to see me here.  Judge Morris--has
+he done nothing?"
+
+"He does not know.  No one has told him."
+
+Her expression showed that she did not understand.
+
+"Years ago, when he was about Rowan's age, scandals like these were
+circulated about him.  We know how much his life is wrapped up In
+Rowan.  He has not been well this summer: we spared him."
+
+"But you must tell him at once.  Say that I beg him to write to
+Rowan to come to see him.  I want Rowan to tell him everything--and
+to tell you everything."
+
+
+All the next day Judge Morris stayed in his rooms.  The end of life
+seemed suddenly to have been bent around until it touched the
+beginning.  At last he understood.
+
+"It was _she_ then," he said.  "I always suspected her; but I had
+no proof of her guilt; and if she had not been guilty, she could
+never have proved her innocence.  And now for years she has smiled
+at me, clasped my hands, whispered into my ear, laughed in my eyes,
+seemed to be everything to me that was true.  Well, she has been
+everything that is false.  And now she has fallen upon the son of
+the woman whom she tore from me.  And the vultures of scandal are
+tearing at his heart.  And he will never be able to prove his
+innocence!"
+
+He stayed in his rooms all that day.  Rowan, in answer to his
+summons, had said that he should come about the middle of the
+afternoon; and it was near the middle of the afternoon now.  As he
+counted the minutes, Judge Morris was unable to shut out from his
+mind the gloomier possibilities of the case.
+
+"There is some truth behind all this," he said.  "She broke her
+engagement with him,--at least, she severed all relations with him;
+and she would not do that without grave reason."  He was compelled
+to believe that she must have learned from Rowan himself the things
+that had compelled her painful course.  Why had Rowan never
+confided these things to him?  His mind, while remaining the mind
+of a friend, almost the mind of a father toward a son, became also
+the mind of a lawyer, a criminal lawyer, with the old, fixed, human
+bloodhound passion for the scent of crime and the footsteps of
+guilt.
+
+It was with both attitudes that he himself answered Rowan's ring;
+he opened the door half warmly and half coldly.  In former years
+when working up his great cases involving life and death, it had
+been an occasional custom of his to receive his clients, if they
+were socially his friends, not in his private office, but in his
+rooms; it was part of his nature to show them at such crises his
+unshaken trust in their characters.  He received Rowan in his rooms
+now.  It was a clear day; the rooms had large windows; and the
+light streaming in took from them all the comfort which they
+acquired under gaslight: the carpets were faded, the rugs were worn
+out and lay in the wrong places.  It was seen to be a desolate
+place for a desolated life.
+
+"How are you, Rowan?" he said, speaking as though he had seen him
+the day before, and taking no note of changes in his appearance.
+Without further words he led the way into his sitting room and
+seated himself in his leather chair.
+
+"Will you smoke?"
+
+They had often smoked as they sat thus when business was before
+them, or if no business, questions to be intimately discussed about
+life and character and good and bad.  Rowan did not heed the
+invitation, and the Judge lighted a cigar for himself.  He was a
+long time in lighting it, and burned two or three matches at the
+end of it after it was lighted, keeping a cloud of smoke before his
+eyes and keeping his eyes closed.  When the smoke rose and he lay
+back in his chair, he looked across at the young man with the eyes
+of an old lawyer who had drawn the truth out of the breast of many
+a criminal by no other command than their manly light.  Rowan sat
+before him without an effort at composure.  There was something
+about him that suggested a young officer out of uniform, come home
+with a browned face to try to get himself court-martialled.  He
+spoke first:
+
+"I have had Isabel's letter, and I have come to tell you."
+
+"I need not say to you, tell me the whole truth."
+
+"No, you need not say that to me.  I should have told you long ago,
+if it had been a duty.  But it was not a duty.  You had not the
+right to know; there was no reason why you should know.  This was a
+matter which concerned only the woman whom I was to marry."  His
+manner had the firm and quiet courtesy that was his birthright.
+
+A little after dark, Rowan emerged into the street.  His carriage
+was waiting for him and he entered it and went home.  Some minutes
+later, Judge Morris came down and walked to the Hardages'.  He rang
+and asked for Professor Hardage and waited for him on the
+door-step.  When Professor Hardage appeared, he said to him very
+solemnly: "Get your hat."
+
+The two men walked away, the Judge directing their course toward
+the edge of the town.  "Let us get to a quiet place," he said,
+"where we can talk without being overheard."  It was a pleasant
+summer night and the moon was shining, and they stepped off the
+sidewalk and took the middle of the pike.  The Judge spoke at last,
+looking straight ahead.
+
+"He had a child, and when he asked Isabel to marry him he told her."
+
+They walked on for a while without anything further being said.
+When Professor Hardage spoke, his tone was reflective:
+
+"It was this that made it impossible for her to marry him.  Her
+love for him was everything to her; he destroyed himself for her
+when he destroyed himself as an ideal.  Did he tell you the story?"
+
+"Told everything."
+
+By and by the Judge resumed: "It was a student's love affair, and
+he would have married her.  She said that if she married him, there
+would never be any happiness for her in life; she was not in his
+social class, and, moreover, their marriage would never be
+understood as anything but a refuge from their shame, and neither
+of them would be able to deny this.  She disappeared sometime after
+the birth of the child.  More than a year later, maybe it was two
+years, he received a letter from her stating that she was married
+to a man in her own class and that her husband suspected nothing,
+and that she expected to live a faithful wife to him and be the
+mother of his children.  The child had been adopted, the traces of
+its parentage had been wiped out, those who had adopted it could do
+more for its life and honor than he could.  She begged him not to
+try to find her or ruin her by communicating the past to her
+husband.  That's about all."
+
+"The old tragedy--old except to them."
+
+"Old enough.  Were we not speaking the other day of how the old
+tragedies are the new ones?  I get something new out of this; you
+get the old.  What strikes me about it is that the man has declined
+to shirk--that he has felt called upon not to injure any other life
+by his silence.  I wish I had a right to call it the mettle of a
+young American, his truthfulness.  As he put the case to me, what
+he got out of it was this: Here was a girl deceiving her husband
+about her past--otherwise he would never have married her.  As the
+world values such things, what it expected of Rowan was that he
+should go off and marry a girl and conceal his past.  He said that
+he would not lie to a classmate in college, he would not cheat a
+professor; was it any better silently to lie to and cheat the woman
+that he loved and expected to make the mother of his children?
+Whatever he might have done with any one else, there was something
+in the nature of the girl whom he did come to love that made it
+impossible: she drove untruthfulness out of him as health drives
+away disease.  He saved his honor with her, but he lost her."
+
+"She saved her honor through giving up him.  But it is high ground,
+it is a sad hilltop, that each has climbed to."
+
+"Hardage, we can climb so high that we freeze."
+
+They turned back.  The Judge spoke again with a certain sad pride:
+
+"I like their mettle, it is Shakespearean mettle, it is American
+mettle.  We lie in business, and we lie in religion, and we lie to
+women.  Perhaps if a man stopped lying to a woman, by and by he
+might begin to stop lying for money, and at last stop lying with
+his Maker.  But this boy, what can you and I do for him?  We can
+never tell the truth about this; and as we can try to clear him,
+unless we ourselves lie, we shall leave him the victim of a flock
+of lies."
+
+Isabel remained at home a week.
+
+During her first meeting with Rowan, she effaced all evidences that
+there had ever been a love affair between them.  They resumed their
+social relations temporarily and for a definite purpose--this was
+what she made him understand at the outset and to the end.  All
+that she said to him, all that she did, had no further significance
+than her general interest in his welfare and her determination to
+silence the scandal for which she herself was in a way innocently
+responsible.  Their old life without reference to it was assumed to
+be ended; and she put all her interest into what she assumed to be
+his new life; this she spoke of as a certainty, keeping herself out
+of it as related to it in any way.  She forced him to talk about
+his work, his plans, his ambitions; made him feel always not only
+that she did not wish to see him suffer, but that she expected to
+see him succeed.
+
+They were seen walking together and driving together.  He demurred,
+but she insisted.  "I will not accept such a sacrifice," he said,
+but she overruled him by her reply: "It is not a sacrifice; it is a
+vindication of myself, that you cannot oppose."  But he knew that
+there was more in it than what she called vindication of herself;
+there was the fighting friendship of a comrade.
+
+During these days, Isabel met cold faces.  She found herself a
+fresh target for criticism, a further source of misunderstanding.
+And there was fresh suffering, too, which no one could have
+foreseen.  Late one twilight when she and Rowan were driving, they
+passed Marguerite driving also, she being still a guest at the
+Merediths', and getting well.  Each carriage was driving slowly,
+and the road was not wide, and the wheels almost locked, and there
+was time enough for everything to be seen.  And the next day,
+Marguerite went home from the Merediths' and passed into a second
+long illness.
+
+The day came for Isabel to leave--she was going away to remain a
+long time, a year, two years.  They had had their last drive and
+twilight was falling when they returned to the Hardages'.  She was
+standing on the steps as she gave him both her hands.
+
+"Good-by," she said, in the voice of one who had finished her work.
+"I hardly know what to say--I have said everything.  Perhaps I
+ought to tell you my last feeling is, that you will make life a
+success, that nothing will pull you down.  I suppose that the life
+of each of us, if it is worth while, is not made up of one great
+effort and of one failure or of one success, but of many efforts,
+many failures, partial successes.  But I am afraid we all try at
+first to realize our dreams.  Good-by!"
+
+"Marry me," he said, tightening his grasp on her hands and speaking
+as though he had the right.
+
+She stepped quickly back from him.  She felt a shock, a delicate
+wound, and she said with a proud tear: "I did not think you would
+so misjudge me in all that I have been trying to do."
+
+She went quickly in.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+It was a morning in the middle of October when Dent and Pansy were
+married.
+
+The night before had been cool and clear after a rain and a
+long-speared frost had fallen.  Even before the sun lifted itself
+above the white land, a full red rose of the sky behind the rotting
+barn, those early abroad foresaw what the day would be.  Nature had
+taken personal interest in this union of her two children, who
+worshipped her in their work and guarded her laws in their
+characters, and had arranged that she herself should be present in
+bridal livery.
+
+The two prim little evergreens which grew one on each side of the
+door-step waited at respectful attention like heavily powdered
+festal lackeys.  The scraggy aged cedars of the yard stood about in
+green velvet and brocade incrusted with gems.  The doorsteps
+themselves were softly piled with the white flowers of the frost,
+and the bricks of the pavement strewn with multitudinous shells and
+stars of dew and air.  Every poor stub of grass, so economically
+cropped by the geese, wore something to make it shine.  In the back
+yard a clothes-line stretched between a damson and a peach tree,
+and on it hung forgotten some of Pansy's father's underclothes; but
+Nature did what she could to make the toiler's raiment look like
+diamonded banners, flung bravely to the breeze in honor of his new
+son-in-law.  Everything--the duck troughs, the roof of the stable,
+the cart shafts, the dry-goods box used as a kennel--had ugliness
+hidden away under that prodigal revelling ermine of decoration.
+The sun itself had not long risen before Nature even drew over that
+a bridal veil of silver mist, so that the whole earth was left
+wrapped in whiteness that became holiness.
+
+Pansy had said that she desired a quiet wedding, so that she
+herself had shut up the ducks that they might not get to Mrs.
+Meredith.  And then she had made the rounds and fed everything; and
+now a certain lethargy and stupor of food quieted all creatures and
+gave to the valley the dignity of a vocal solitude.
+
+The botanist bride was not in the least abashed during the
+ceremony.  Nor proud: Mrs. Meredith more gratefully noticed this.
+And she watched closely and discovered with relief that Pansy did
+not once glance at her with uneasiness or for approval.  The mother
+looked at Dent with eyes growing dim.  "She will never seem to be
+the wife of my son," she said, "but she will make her children look
+like his children."
+
+And so it was all over and they were gone--slipped away through the
+hiding white mists without a doubt of themselves, without a doubt
+of each other, mating as naturally as the wild creatures who never
+know the problems of human selection, or the problems that
+civilization leaves to be settled after selection has been made.
+
+Mrs. Meredith and Rowan and the clergyman were left with the father
+and the children, and with an unexampled wedding collation--one of
+Pansy's underived masterpieces.  The clergyman frightened the
+younger children; they had never seen his like either with respect
+to his professional robes or his superhuman clerical voice--their
+imaginations balancing unsteadily between the impossibility of his
+being a man in a nightgown and the impossibility of his being a
+woman with a mustache.
+
+After his departure their fright and apprehensions settled on Mrs.
+Meredith.  They ranged themselves on chairs side by side against a
+wall, and sat confronting her like a class in the public school
+fated to be examined in deadly branches.  None moved except when
+she spoke, and then all writhed together but each in a different
+way; the most comforting word from her produced a family spasm with
+individual proclivities.   Rowan tried to talk with the father
+about crops: they were frankly embarrassed.  What can a young man
+with two thousand acres of the best land say to an old man with
+fifty of the poorest?
+
+The mother and son drove home in silence.  She drew one of his
+hands into her lap and held it with close pressure.  They did not
+look at each other.
+
+As the carriage rolled easily over the curved driveway, through the
+noble forest trees they caught glimpses of the house now standing
+clear in afternoon sunshine.  Each had the same thought of how
+empty it waited there without Dent--henceforth less than a son, yet
+how much more; more than brother, but how much less.  How a brief
+ceremony can bind separated lives and tear bound ones apart!
+
+"Rowan," she said, as they walked slowly from the carriage to the
+porch, she having clasped his arm more intimately, "there is
+something I have wanted to do and have been trying to do for a long
+time.  It must not be put off any longer.  We must go over the
+house this afternoon.  There are a great many things that I wish to
+show you and speak to you about--things that have to be divided
+between you and Dent."
+
+"Not to-day! not to-day!" he cried, turning to her with quick
+appeal.  But she shook her head slowly, with brave cheerfulness.
+
+"Yes; to-day.  Now; and then we shall be over with it.  Wait for me
+here."  She passed down the long hall to her bedroom, and as she
+disappeared he rushed into the parlors and threw himself on a couch
+with his hands before his face; then he sprang up and came out into
+the hall again and waited with a quiet face.
+
+When she returned, smiling, she brought with her a large bunch of
+keys, and she took his arm dependently as they went up the wide
+staircase.  She led him to the upper bedrooms first--in earlier
+years so crowded and gay with guests, but unused during later ones.
+The shutters were closed, and the afternoon sun shot yellow shafts
+against floors and walls.  There was a perfume of lavender, of rose
+leaves.
+
+"Somewhere in one of these closets there is a roll of linen."  She
+opened one after another, looking into each.  "No; it is not here.
+Then it must be in there.  Yes; here it is.  This linen was spun
+and woven from flax grown on your great-great-grandfather's land.
+Look at it!  It is beautifully made.  Each generation of the family
+has inherited part and left the rest for generations yet to come.
+Half of it is yours, half is Dent's.  When it has been divided
+until there is no longer enough to divide, that will be the last of
+the home-made linen of the old time.  It was a good time, Rowan; it
+produced masterful men and masterful women, not mannish women.
+Perhaps the golden age of our nation will some day prove to have
+been the period of the home-spun Americans."
+
+As they passed on she spoke to him with an increasing, almost
+unnatural gayety.  He had a new appreciation of what her charm must
+have been when she was a girl.  The rooms were full of memories to
+her; many of the articles that she caressed with her fingers, and
+lingered over with reluctant eyes, connected themselves with days
+and nights of revelry and the joy of living; also with prides and
+deeds which ennobled her recollection.
+
+"You and Dent know that your father divided equally all that he
+had.  But everything in the house is mine, and I have made no will
+and shall not make any.  What is mine belongs to you two alike.
+Still, I have made a list of things that I think he would rather
+have, and a list of things for you--merely because I wish to give
+something to each of you directly."
+
+In a room on a lower floor she unlocked a closet, the walls of
+which were lined with shelves.  She peeped in; then she withdrew
+her head and started to lock the door again; but she changed her
+mind and laughed.
+
+"Do you know what these things are?" She touched a large box, and
+he carried it over to the bed and she lifted the top off, exposing
+the contents.  "Did you ever see anything so _black_?   This was
+the clerical robe in which one of your ancestors used to read his
+sermons.  He is the one who wrote the treatise on 'God Properly and
+Unproperly Understood.'  He was the great seminarian in your
+father's family--the portrait in the hall, you know.  I shall not
+decide whether you or Dent must inherit this; decide for
+yourselves; I imagine you will end it in the quarrel.  How black it
+is, and what black sermons flew out of it--ravens, instead of white
+doves, of the Holy Spirit.  He was the friend of Jonathan Edwards."
+She made a wry face as he put the box back into the closet; and she
+laughed again as she locked it in.
+
+"Here are some things from my side of the family."  And she drew
+open a long drawer and spoke with proud reticence.  They stood
+looking down at part of the uniform of an officer of the
+Revolution.  She lifted one corner of it and disclosed a sword
+beneath.  She lifted another corner of the coat and exposed a roll
+of parchment.  "I suppose I should have had this parchment framed
+and hung up downstairs, so that it would be the first thing seen by
+any one entering the front door; and this sword should have been
+suspended over the fireplace, or have been exposed under a glass
+case in the parlors; and the uniform should have been fitted on a
+tailor's manikin; and we should have lectured to our guests on our
+worship of our ancestors--in the new American way, in the
+Chino-American way.  But I'm afraid we go to the other extreme,
+Rowan; perhaps we are proud of the fact that we are not boastful.
+Instead of concerning ourselves with those who shed glory on us, we
+have concerned ourselves with the question whether we are shedding
+glory on them.  Still, I wonder whether our ancestors may not
+possibly be offended that we say so little about them!"
+
+She led him up and down halls and from floor to floor.
+
+"Of course you know this room--the nursery.  Here is where you
+began to be a bad boy; and you began before you can remember.  Did
+you never see these things before?  They were your first
+soldiers--I have left them to Dent.  And here are some of Dent's
+things that I have left to you.  For one thing, his castanets.  His
+father and I never knew why he cried for castanets.  He said that
+Dent by all the laws of spiritual inheritance from his side should
+be wanting the timbrel and harp--Biblical influence, you
+understand; but that my influence interfered and turned timbrel and
+harp into castanets.  Do you remember the day when you ran away
+with Dent and took him to a prize fight?  After that you wanted
+boxing-gloves, and Dent was crazy for a sponge.  You fought him,
+and he sponged you.  Here is the sponge; I do not know where the
+gloves are.  And here are some things that belong to both of you;
+they are mine; they go with me."  She laid her hand on a little box
+wrapped and tied, then quickly shut the closet.
+
+In a room especially fragrant with lavender she opened a press in
+the wall and turned her face away from him for a moment.
+
+"This is my bridal dress.  This was my bridal veil; it has been the
+bridal veil of girls in my family for a good many generations.
+These were my slippers; you see I had a large foot; but it was well
+shaped--it was a woman's foot.  That was my vanity--not to have a
+little foot.  I leave these things to you both.  I hope each of you
+may have a daughter to wear the dress and the veil."  For the first
+time she dashed some tears from her eyes.  "I look to my sons for
+sons and daughters."
+
+It was near sunset when they stood again at the foot of the
+staircase.  She was white and tired, but her spirit refused to be
+conquered.
+
+"I think I shall He down now," she said, "so I shall say good night
+to you here, Rowan.  Fix the tray for me yourself, pour me out some
+tea, and butter me a roll."  They stood looking into each other's
+eyes.  She saw things in his which caused her suddenly to draw his
+forehead over and press her lips to one and then to the other,
+again and again.
+
+The sun streamed through the windows, level and red, lighting up
+the darkened hall, lighting up the head and shoulders of his mother.
+
+An hour later he sat at the head of his table alone--a table
+arranged for two instead of three.  At the back of his chair waited
+the aged servitor of the household, gray-haired, discreet, knowing
+many things about earlier days on which rested the seal of
+incorruptible silence.  A younger servant performed the duties.
+
+He sat at the head of his table and excused the absence of his
+mother and forced himself with the pride and dignity of his race to
+give no sign of what had passed that day.  His mother's maid
+entered, bringing him in a crystal vase a dark red flower for his
+coat.  She had always given him that same dark red flower after he
+had turned into manhood.  "It is your kind," she said; "I
+understand."
+
+He arranged the tray for her, pouring out her tea, buttering the
+rolls.  Then he forced himself to eat his supper as usual.  From
+old candlesticks on the table a silver radiance was shed on the
+massive silver, on the gem-like glass.  Candelabra on the
+mantelpiece and the sideboard lighted up the browned oak of the
+walls.
+
+He left the table at last, giving and hearing a good night.  The
+servants efficiently ended their duties and put out the lights.  In
+the front hall lamps were left burning; there were lamps and
+candles in the library.  He went off to a room on the ground floor
+in one ell of the house; it was his sitting room, smoking room, the
+lounging place of his friends.  In one corner stood a large desk,
+holding old family papers; here also were articles that he himself
+had lately been engaged on--topics relating to scientific
+agriculture, soils, and stock-raising.  It was the road by which
+some of the country gentlemen who had been his forefathers passed
+into a larger life of practical affairs--going into the Legislature
+of the state or into the Senate; and he had thought of this as a
+future for himself.  For an hour or two he looked through family
+papers.
+
+Then he put them aside and squarely faced the meaning of the day.
+His thoughts traversed the whole track of Dent's life--one straight
+track upward.  No deviations, no pitfalls there, no rising and
+falling.  And now early marriage and safety from so many problems;
+with work and honors and wifely love and children: work and rest
+and duty to the end.  Dent had called him into his room that
+morning after he was dressed for his wedding and had started to
+thank him for his love and care and guardianship and then had
+broken down and they had locked their arms around each other,
+trying not to say what could not be said.
+
+He lived again through that long afternoon with his mother.  What
+had the whole day been to her and how she had risen to meet with
+nobility all its sadnesses!  Her smile lived before him; and her
+eyes, shining with increasing brightness as she dwelt upon things
+that meant fading sunlight: she fondling the playthings of his
+infancy, keeping some of them to be folded away with her at last;
+touching her bridal dress and speaking her reliance on her sons for
+sons and daughters; at the close of the long trying day standing at
+the foot of the staircase white with weariness and pain, but so
+brave, so sweet, so unconquerable.  He knew that she was not
+sleeping now, that she was thinking of him, that she had borne
+everything and would bear everything not only because it was due to
+herself, but because it was due to him.
+
+He turned out the lights and sat at a window opening upon the
+night.  The voices of the land came in to him, the voices of the
+vanished life of its strong men.
+
+He remembered the kind of day it was when he first saw through its
+autumn trees the scattered buildings of his university.  What
+impressions it had made upon him as it awaited him there, gray with
+stateliness, hoary with its honors, pervaded with the very breath
+and spirit of his country.  He recalled his meeting with his
+professors, the choosing of his studies, the selection of a place
+in which to live.  Then had followed what had been the great
+spectacle and experience of his life--the assembling of picked
+young men, all eager like greyhounds at the slips to show what was
+in them, of what stuff they were made, what strength and hardihood
+and robust virtues, and gifts and grace for manly intercourse.  He
+had been caught up and swept off his feet by that influence.
+Looking back as he did to that great plateau which was his home,
+for the first time he had felt that he was not only a youth of an
+American commonwealth, but a youth of his whole country.   They
+were all American youths there, as opposed to English youths and
+German youths and Russian youths.  There flamed up in him the
+fierce passion, which he believed to be burning in them all, to
+show his mettle--the mettle of his state, the mettle of his nation.
+To him, newly come into this camp of young men, it lay around the
+walls of the university like a white spiritual host, chosen youths
+to be made into chosen men.  And he remembered how little he then
+knew that about this white host hung the red host of those
+camp-followers, who beleaguer in outer darkness every army of men.
+
+Then had followed warfare, double warfare: the ardent attack on
+work and study; athletic play, good fellowship, visits late at
+night to the chambers of new friends--chambers rich in furniture
+and pictures, friends richer in old names and fine manners and
+beautiful boyish gallant ways; his club and his secret society, and
+the whole bewildering maddening enchantment of student life, where
+work and duty and lights and wine and poverty and want and flesh
+and spirit strive together each for its own.  At this point he put
+these memories away, locked them from himself in their long silence.
+
+Near midnight he made his way quietly back into the main hall.  He
+turned out the lamps and lighted his bedroom candle and started
+toward the stairway, holding it in front of him a little above his
+head, a low-moving star through the gloom.  As he passed between
+two portraits, he paused with sudden impulse and, going over to
+one, held his candle up before the face and studied it once more.
+A man, black-browed, black-robed, black-bearded, looked down into
+his eyes as one who had authority to speak.  He looked far down
+upon his offspring, and he said to him: "You may be one of those
+who through the flesh are chosen to be damned.  But if He chooses
+to damn you, then be damned, but do not question His mercy or His
+justice: it is not for you to alter the fixed and the eternal."
+
+He crossed with his candle to the opposite wall and held it up
+before another face: a man full of red blood out to the skin;
+full-lipped, red-lipped; audacious about the forehead and brows,
+and beautiful over his thick careless hair through which a girl's
+fingers seemed lately to have wandered.  He looked level out at his
+offspring as though he still stood throbbing on the earth and he
+spoke to him: "I am not alive to speak to you with my voice, but I
+have spoken to you through my blood.  When the cup of life is
+filled, drain it deep.  Why does nature fill it if not to have you
+empty it?"
+
+He blew his candle out in the eyes of that passionate face, and
+holding it in his hand, a smoking torch, walked slowly backward and
+forward in the darkness of the hall with only a little pale
+moonlight struggling in through a window here and there.
+
+Then with a second impulse he went over and stood close to the dark
+image who had descended into him through the mysteries of nature.
+"You," he said, "who helped to make me what I am, you had the
+conscience and not the temptation.  And you," he said, turning to
+the hidden face across the hall, "who helped to make me what I am,
+you had the temptation and not the conscience.  What does either of
+you know of me who had both?
+
+"And what do I know about either of you," he went on, taking up
+again the lonely vigil of his walk and questioning; "you who
+preached against the Scarlet Woman, how do I know you were not the
+scarlet man?  I may have derived both from you--both conscience and
+sin--without hypocrisy.  All those years during which your face was
+hardening, your one sincere prayer to God may have been that He
+would send you to your appointed place before you were found out by
+men on earth.  And you with your fresh red face, you may have lain
+down beside the wife of your youth, and have lived with her all
+your years, as chaste as she."
+
+He resumed his walk, back and forth, back and forth; and his
+thoughts changed:
+
+"What right have I to question them, or judge them, or bring them
+forward in my life as being responsible for my nature?  If I roll
+back the responsibility to them, had they not fathers? and had not
+their fathers fathers? and if a man rolls back his deeds upon those
+who are his past, then where will responsibility be found at all,
+and of what poor cowardly stuff is each of us?"
+
+How silent the night was, how silent the great house!  Only his
+slow footsteps sounded there like the beating of a heavy heart
+resolved not to fail.
+
+At last they died away from the front of the house, passing inward
+down a long hallway and growing more muffled; then the sound of
+them ceased altogether: he stood noiselessly before his mother's
+door.
+
+He stood there, listening if he might hear in the intense stillness
+a sleeper's breathing.  "Disappointed mother," he said as silently
+as a spirit might speak to a spirit.
+
+Then he came back and slowly began to mount the staircase.
+
+"Is it then wrong for a man to do right?  Is it ever right to do
+wrong?" he said finally.  "Should I have had my fling and never
+have cared and never have spoken?  Is there a true place for
+deception in the world?  May our hypocrisy with each other be a
+virtue?  If you have done evil, shall you live the whited
+sepulchre?  Ah, Isabel, how easily I could have deceived you!  Does
+a woman care what a man may have done, if he be not found out?  Is
+not her highest ideal for him a profitable reputation, not a
+spotless character?  No, I will not wrong you by these thoughts.
+It was you who said to me that you once loved all that you saw in
+me, and believed that you saw everything.  All that you asked of me
+was truthfulness that had no sorrow."
+
+He reached the top of the stairs and began to feel his way toward
+his room.
+
+"To have one chance in life, in eternity, for a white name, and to
+lose it!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Autumn and winter had passed.  Another spring was nearly gone.  One
+Monday morning of that May, the month of new growths and of old
+growths with new starting-points on them, Ambrose Webb was walking
+to and fro across the fresh oilcloth in his short hall; the front
+door and the back door stood wide open, as though to indicate the
+receptivity of his nature in opposite directions; all the windows
+were wide open, as though to bring out of doors into his house: he
+was much more used to the former; during married life the open had
+been more friendly than the interior.  But he was now also master
+of the interior and had been for nearly a year.
+
+Some men succeed best as partial automata, as dogs for instance
+that can be highly trained to pull little domestic carts.  Ambrose
+had grown used to pulling his cart: he had expected to pull it for
+the rest of his days; and now the cart had suddenly broken down
+behind him and he was left standing in the middle of the long
+life-road.  But liberty was too large a destiny for a mind of that
+order; the rod of empire does not fit such hands; it was
+intolerable to Ambrose that he was in a world where he could do as
+he pleased.
+
+On this courageous Monday, therefore,--whatsoever he was to do
+during the week he always decided on Mondays,--after months of
+irresolution he finally determined to make a second dash for
+slavery.  But he meant to be canny; this time he would choose a
+woman who, if she ruled him, would not misrule him; what he could
+stand was a sovereign, not a despot, and he believed that he had
+found this exceptionally gifted and exceptionally moderated being:
+it was Miss Anna Hardage.
+
+From the day of Miss Anna's discovery that Ambrose had a dominating
+consort, she had been, she had declared she should be, much kinder
+to him.  When his wife died, Miss Anna had been kinder still.
+Affliction present, affliction past, her sympathy had not failed
+him.
+
+He had fallen into the habit of lingering a little whenever he took
+his dairy products around to the side porch.  Every true man yearns
+for the eyes of some woman; and Ambrose developed the feeling that
+he should like to live with Miss Anna's.  He had no gift for
+judging human conduct except by common human standards; and so at
+bottom he believed that Miss Anna in her own way had been telling
+him that if the time ever came, she could be counted on to do the
+right thing by him.
+
+So Ambrose paced the sticky oilcloth this morning as a man who has
+reached the hill of decision.  He had bought him a new buggy and
+new harness.  Hitched to the one and wearing the other was his
+favorite roan mare with a Roman nose and a white eye, now dozing at
+the stiles in the front yard.  He had curried her and had combed
+her mane and tail and had had her newly shod, and altogether she
+may have felt too comfortable to keep awake.  He himself seemed to
+have received a coating of the same varnish as his buggy.  Had you
+pinned a young beetle in the back of his coat or on either leg of
+his trousers, as a mere study in shades of blackness, it must have
+been lost to view at the distance of a few yards through sheer
+harmony with its background.  Under his Adam's apple there was a
+green tie--the bough to the fruit.  His eyes sparkled as though
+they had lately been reset and polished by a jeweller.
+
+What now delayed and excited him at this last moment before setting
+out was uncertainty as to the offering he should bear Miss Anna.
+Fundamental instincts vaguely warned him that love's altar must be
+approached with gifts.  He knew that some brought fortune, some
+warlike deeds, some fame, some the beauty of their strength and
+youth.  He had none of these to offer; but he was a plain farmer,
+and he could give her what he had so often sold her--a pound of
+butter.
+
+He had awaited the result of the morning churning; but the butter
+had tasted of turnips, and Ambrose did not think that the taste of
+turnips represented the flavor of his emotion.  Nevertheless, there
+was one thing that she preferred even to butter; he would ensnare
+her in her own weakness, catch her in her own net: he would take
+her a jar of cream.
+
+Miss Anna was in her usual high spirits that morning.  She was
+trying a new recipe for some dinner comfort for Professor Hardage,
+when her old cook, who also answered the doorbell, returned to the
+kitchen with word that Mr. Webb was in the parlor.
+
+"Why, I paid him for his milk," exclaimed Miss Anna, without
+ceasing to beat and stir.  "And what is he doing in the parlor?
+Why didn't he come around to the side door?  I'll be back in a
+moment."  She took off her apron from an old habit of doing so
+whenever she entered the parlor.
+
+She gave her dairyman the customary hearty greeting, hurried back
+to get him a glass of water, inquired dispassionately about grass,
+inundated him with a bounteous overflow of her impersonal humanity.
+But he did not state his business, and she grew impatient to return
+to her confection.
+
+"Do I owe you for anything, Mr. Webb?" she suddenly asked, groping
+for some clew to this lengthening labyrinthine visit.
+
+He rose and going to the piano raked heavily off of the top of it a
+glass jar and brought it over to her and resumed his seat with a
+speaking countenance.
+
+"Cream!" cried Miss Anna, delighted, running her practised eye
+downward along the bottle to discover where the contents usually
+began to get blue: it was yellow to the bottom.  "How much is it?
+I'm afraid we are too poor to buy so much cream all at once."
+
+"It has no price; it is above price."
+
+"How much is it, Mr. Webb?" she insisted with impatience.
+
+"It is a free gift."
+
+"Oh, what a beautiful present!" exclaimed Miss Anna, holding it up
+to the light admiringly.   "How can I ever thank you."
+
+"Don't thank me: you could have the dairy!  You could have the
+cows, the farm."
+
+"O dear, no!" cried Miss Anna, "that would be altogether too much!
+One bottle goes far beyond all that I ever hoped for."
+
+"I wish ail women were like you."
+
+"O dear, no! that would not do at all!  I am an old maid, and women
+must marry, must, must!  What would become of the world?"
+
+"You need not be an old maid unless you wish."
+
+"Now, I had never thought of that!" observed Miss Anna, in a very
+peculiar tone.  "But we'll not talk about myself; let us talk about
+yourself.  You are looking extremely well--now aren't you?"
+
+"No one has a better right.  It is due you to let you know this.
+There's good timber in me yet."
+
+"Due _me_!  I am not interested in timber."
+
+"Anna," he said, throwing his arms around one of his knees, "our
+hour has come--we need not wait any longer."
+
+"Wait for _what_?" inquired Miss Anna, bending toward him with the
+scrutiny of a near-sighted person trying to make out some looming
+horror.
+
+"Our marriage."
+
+Miss Anna rose as by an inward explosion.
+
+"Go, _buzzard_!"
+
+He kept his seat and stared at her with a dropped jaw.  Habit was
+powerful in him; and there was something in her anger, in that
+complete sweeping of him out other way, that recalled the domestic
+usages of former years and brought to his lips an involuntary
+time-worn expression:
+
+"I meant nothing offensive."
+
+"I do not know what you meant, and I do not care: go!"
+
+He rose and stood before her, and with a flash of sincere anger he
+spoke his honest mind: "It was you who put the notion in my head.
+You encouraged me, encouraged me systematically; and now you are
+pretending.  You are a bad woman."
+
+"I think I am a bad woman after what has happened to me this
+morning," said Miss Anna, dazed and ready to break down.
+
+He hesitated when he reached the door, smarting with his honest
+hurt; and he paused there and made a request.
+
+"At least I hope that you will never mention this; it might injure
+me."  He did not explain how, but he seemed to know.
+
+"Do you suppose I'd tell my Maker if He did not already know it?"
+She swept past him into the kitchen.
+
+"As soon as you have done your work, go clean the parlor," she said
+to the cook.  "Give it a good airing.  And throw that cream away,
+throw the bottle away."
+
+A few moments later she hurried with her bowl into the pantry;
+there she left it unfinished and crept noiselessly up the
+backstairs to her room.
+
+That evening as Professor Hardage sat opposite to her, reading,
+while she was doing some needlework, he laid his book down with the
+idea of asking her some question.  But he caught sight of her
+expression and studied it a few moments.  It was so ludicrous a
+commingling of mortification and rage that he laughed outright.
+
+"Why, Anna, what on earth is the matter?"
+
+At the first sound of his voice she burst into hysterical sobs.
+
+He came over and tried to draw her fingers away from her eyes.
+"Tell me all about it."
+
+She shook her head frantically.
+
+"Yes, tell me," he urged.  "Is there anything in all these years
+that you have not told me?"
+
+"I cannot," she sobbed excitedly.  "I am disgraced."
+
+He laughed.  "What has disgraced you?"
+
+"A man."
+
+"Good heavens!" he cried, "has somebody been making love to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His face flushed.  "Come," he said seriously, "what is the meaning
+of this, Anna?"
+
+She told him.
+
+"Why aren't you angry with him?" she complained, drying her eyes.
+"You sit there and don't say a word!"
+
+"Do you expect me to be angry with any soul for loving you and
+wishing to be loved by you?  He cast his mite into the treasury,
+Anna."
+
+"I didn't mind the mite," she replied.  "But he said I encouraged
+him, that I encouraged him _systematically_."
+
+"Did you expect him to be a philosopher?"
+
+"I did not expect him to be a--"  She hesitated at the harsh word.
+
+"I'm afraid you expected him to be a philosopher.  Haven't you been
+kind to him?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"Systematically kind?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"Did you have any motive?"
+
+"You know I had no motive--aren't you ashamed!"
+
+"But did you expect him to be genius enough to understand that?
+Did you suppose that he could understand such a thing as kindness
+without a motive?  Don't be harsh with him, Anna, don't be hard on
+him: he is an ordinary man and judged you by the ordinary standard.
+You broke your alabaster box at his feet, and he secretly suspected
+that you were working for something more valuable than the box of
+ointment.  The world is full of people who are kind without a
+motive; but few of those to whom they are kind believe this."
+
+Before Miss Anna fell asleep that night, she had resolved to tell
+Harriet.  Every proposal of marriage is known at least to three
+people.  The distinction in Miss Anna's conduct was not in telling,
+but in not telling until she had actually been asked.
+
+Two mornings later Ambrose was again walking through his hall.
+There is one compensation for us all in the large miseries of
+life--we no longer feel the little ones.  His experience in his
+suit for Miss Anna's hand already seemed a trifle to Ambrose, who
+had grown used to bearing worse things from womankind.  Miss Anna
+was not the only woman in the world, he averred, by way of swift
+indemnification.  Indeed, in the very act of deciding upon her, he
+had been thinking of some one else.  The road of life had divided
+equally before him: he had chosen Miss Anna as a traveller chooses
+the right fork; the left fork remained and he was now preparing to
+follow that: it led to Miss Harriet Crane.
+
+As Ambrose now paced his hallway, revolving certain details
+connected with his next venture and adventure, the noise of an
+approaching carriage fell upon his ear, and going to the front door
+he recognized the brougham of Mrs. Conyers.  But it was Miss
+Harriet Crane who leaned forward at the window and bowed smilingly
+to him as he hurried out.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Webb?" she said, putting out her hand and
+shaking his cordially, at the same time giving him a glance of
+new-born interest.  "You know I have been threatening to come out
+for a long time.  I must owe you an enormous bill for pasturage,"
+she picked up her purse as she spoke, "and I have come to pay my
+debts.  And then I wish to see my calf," and she looked into his
+eyes very pleasantly.
+
+"You don't owe me anything," replied Ambrose.  "What is grass?
+What do I care for grass?  My mind is set on other things."
+
+He noticed gratefully how gentle and mild she looked; there was
+such a beautiful softness about her and he had had hardness enough.
+He liked her ringlets: they were a novelty; and there hung around
+her, in the interior of the carriage, a perfume that was unusual to
+his sense and that impressed him as a reminder of her high social
+position.  But Ambrose reasoned that if a daughter of his neighbor
+could wed a Meredith, surely he ought to be able to marry a Crane.
+
+"If you want to see the calf," he said, but very reluctantly, "I'll
+saddle my horse and we'll go over to the back pasture."
+
+"Don't saddle your horse," objected Harriet, opening the carriage
+door and moving over to the far cushion, "ride with me."
+
+He had never ridden in a brougham, and as he got in very nervously
+and awkwardly, he reversed his figure and tried to sit on the
+little front seat on which lay Harriet's handkerchief and parasol.
+
+"Don't ride backwards, Mr. Webb," suggested Harriet.  "Unless you
+are used to it, you are apt to have a headache," and she tapped the
+cushion beside her as an invitation to him.  "Now tell me about my
+calf," she said after they were seated side by side.
+
+As she introduced this subject, Ambrose suddenly looked out of the
+window.   She caught sight of his uneasy profile.
+
+"Now, don't tell me that there's any bad hews about it!" she cried.
+"It is the only pet I have."
+
+"Miss Harriet," he said, turning his face farther away, "you forget
+how long your calf has been out here; it isn't a calf any longer:
+it has had a calf."
+
+He spoke so sternly that Harriet, who all her life had winced
+before sternness, felt herself in some wise to be blamed.  And
+coolness was settling down upon them when she desired only a
+melting and radiant warmth.
+
+"Well," she objected apologetically, "isn't it customary?  What's
+the trouble?  What's the objection?  This is a free country!
+Whatever is natural is right!  Why are you so displeased?"
+
+About the same hour the next Monday morning Ambrose was again
+pacing his hallway and thinking of Harriet.  At least she was no
+tyrant: the image of her softness rose before him again.  "I make
+no mistake this time."
+
+His uncertainty at the present moment was concerned solely with the
+problem of what his offering should be in this case: under what
+image should love present itself?  The right thought came to him by
+and by; and taking from his storeroom an ornamental basket with a
+top to it, he went out to his pigeon house and selected two blue
+squabs.  They were tender and soft and round; without harshness,
+cruelty, or deception.  Whatever they seemed to be, that they were;
+and all that they were was good.
+
+But as Ambrose walked back to the house, he lifted the top of the
+basket and could but admit that they did look bare.  Might they
+not, as a love token, be--unrefined?  He crossed to a flower bed,
+and, pulling a few rose-geranium leaves, tucked them here and there
+about the youngsters.
+
+It was not his intention to present these to Harriet in person: he
+had accompanied the cream--he would follow the birds; they should
+precede him twenty-four hours and the amative poison would have a
+chance to work.
+
+During that forenoon his shining buggy drawn by his roan mare,
+herself symbolic of softness, drew up before the entrance of the
+Conyers homestead.  Ambrose alighted; he lifted the top of the
+basket--all was well.
+
+"These pets are for your Miss Harriet," he said to the maid who
+answered his ring.
+
+As the maid took the basket through the hall after having watched
+him drive away, incredulous as to her senses, she met Mrs. Conyers,
+who had entered the hall from a rear veranda.
+
+"Who rang?" she asked; "and what is that?"
+
+The maid delivered her instructions.  Mrs. Conyers took the basket
+and looked in.
+
+"Have them broiled for my supper," she said with a little click of
+the teeth, and handing the basket to the maid, passed on into her
+bedroom.
+
+Harriet had been spending the day away from home.  She returned
+late.  The maid met her at the front door and a few moments of
+conversation followed.  She hurried into the supper room; Mrs.
+Conyers sat alone.
+
+"Mother," exclaimed Harriet with horror, "have you _eaten_ my
+squabs?"
+
+Mrs. Conyers stabbed at a little pile of bones on the side plate.
+"This is what is left of them," she said, touching a napkin to her
+gustatory lips.  "There are your leaves," she added, pointing to a
+little vase in front of Harriet's plate.  "When is he going to send
+you some more?  But tell him we have geraniums."
+
+The next day Ambrose received a note:
+
+"Dear Mr. Webb: I have been thinking how pleasant my visit to you
+was that morning.  It has not been possible for me to get the
+carriage since or I should have been out to thank you for your
+beautiful present.  The squabs appealed to me.  A man who loves
+them must have tender feeling; and that is what all my life I have
+been saying: Give me a man with a heart!  Sometime when you are in
+town, I may meet you on the street somewhere and then I can thank
+you more fully than I do now.  I shall always cherish the memory of
+your kind deed.  You must give me the chance to thank you very
+soon, or I shall fear that you do not care for my thanks.  I take a
+walk about eleven o'clock.
+
+  "Sincerely yours,
+
+    "HARRIET CRANE."
+
+Ambrose must have received the note.  A few weeks later Miss Anna
+one morning received one herself delivered by a boy who had ridden
+in from the farm; the boy waited with a large basket while she read:
+
+"Dearest Anna: It is a matter of very little importance to mention
+to you of course, but I am married.  My husband and I were married
+at ------ yesterday afternoon.  He met me at an appointed place and
+we drove quietly out of town.  What I want you to do at once is,
+send me some clothes, for I left all the Conyers apparel where it
+belonged.  Send me something of everything.  And as soon as I am
+pinned in, I shall invite you out.  Of course I shall now give
+orders for whatever I desire; and then I shall return to Mrs.
+Conyers the things I used on my bridal trip.
+
+"This is a very hurried note, and of course I have not very much to
+say as yet about my new life.  As for my husband, I can at least
+declare with perfect sincerity that he is mine.  I have made one
+discovery already, Anna: he cannot be bent except where he has
+already been broken.  I am discovering the broken places and shall
+govern him accordingly.
+
+"Do try to marry, Anna!  You have no idea how a married woman feels
+toward one of her sex who is single.
+
+"I want you to be sure to stand at the windows about five o'clock
+this afternoon and see the Conyers' cows all come travelling home:
+they graze no more these heavenly pastures.  It will be the first
+intimation that Mrs. Conyers receives that I am no longer the
+unredeemed daughter of her household.  Her curiosity will, of
+course, bring her out here as fast as the horse can travel.  But,
+oh, Anna, my day has come at last!  At last she shall realize that
+I am strong, _strong_!  I shall receive her with the front door
+locked and talk to her out of the window; and I expect to talk to
+her a long, _long_ time.  I shall have the flowers moved from the
+porch to keep them from freezing during that interview.
+
+"As soon as I am settled, as one has so much more time in the
+country than in town, I may, after all, take up that course of
+reading: would you object?
+
+"It's a wise saying that every new experience brings some new
+trouble: I longed for youth before I married; but to marry after
+you are old--that, Anna, is sorrow indeed.
+
+  "Your devoted friend,
+
+    "HARRIET CRANE WEBB.
+
+"P.S. Don't send any but the _plainest_ things; for I remember,
+noble friend, how it pains you to see me _overdressed_."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+It was raining steadily and the night was cold.  Miss Anna came
+hurriedly down into the library soon after supper.  She had on an
+old waterproof; and in one hand she carried a man's cotton
+umbrella--her own--and in the other a pair of rubbers.  As she sat
+down and drew these over her coarse walking shoes, she talked in
+the cheery tone of one who has on hand some congenial business.
+
+"I may get back late and I may not get back at all; it depends upon
+how the child is.  But I wish it would not rain when poor little
+children are sick at night--it is the one thing that gives me the
+blues.  And I wish infants could speak out and tell their symptoms.
+When I see grown people getting well as soon as they can minutely
+narrate to you all their ailments, my heart goes out to babies.
+Think how they would crow and gurgle, if they could only say what
+it is all about.  But I don't see why people at large should not be
+licensed to bring in a bill when their friends insist upon
+describing their maladies to them: doctors do.  But I must be
+going.  Good night."
+
+She rose and stamped her feet into the rubbers to make them fit
+securely; and then she came across to the lamp-lit table beside
+which he sat watching her fondly--his book dropped the while upon
+his lap.  He grasped her large strong hand in his large strong
+hand; and she leaned her side against his shoulder and put her arm
+around his neck.
+
+"You are getting younger, Anna," he said, looking up into her face
+and drawing her closer.
+
+"Why not?" she answered with a voice of splendid joy.  "Harriet is
+married; what troubles have I, then?  And she patronizes--or
+matronizes--me and tyrannizes over Ambrose: so the world is really
+succeeding at last.  But I wish her husband had not asked me
+_first_; that is her thorn."
+
+"And the thorn will grow!"
+
+"Now, don't sit up late!" she pleaded.  "I turned your bed down and
+arranged the pillows wrong end out as you will have them; and I put
+out your favorite night-shirt--the one with the sleeves torn off
+above the elbows and the ravellings hanging down just as you
+require.  Aren't you tired of books yet?  Are you never going to
+get tired?  And the same books!  Why, I get fresh babies every few
+years--a complete change."
+
+"How many generations of babies do you suppose there have been
+since this immortal infant was born?" he asked, laying his hand
+reverently over the book on his lap as if upon the head of a divine
+child.
+
+"I don't know and I don't care," she replied.  "I wish the immortal
+infant would let you alone."  She stooped and kissed his brow, and
+wrung his hand silently, and went out into the storm.  He heard her
+close the street door and heard the rusty click of her cotton
+umbrella as she raised it.  Then he turned to the table at his
+elbow and kindled his deep-bowled pipe and drew over his legs the
+skirts of his long gown, coarse, austere, sombre.
+
+He looked comfortable.  A rainy night may depress a woman nursing a
+sick child that is not her own--a child already fighting for its
+feeble, unclaimed, repudiated life, in a world of weeping clouds;
+but such a night diffuses cheer when the raindrops are heard
+tapping the roof above beloved bookshelves, tapping the
+window-panes; when there is low music in the gutter on the back
+porch; when a student lamp, throwing its shadow over the ceiling
+and the walls, reserves its exclusive lustre for lustrous
+pages--pages over which men for centuries have gladly burnt out the
+oil of their brief lamps, their iron and bronze, their silver and
+gold and jewelled lamps--many-colored eyes of the nights of ages.
+
+It was now middle September of another year and Professor Hardage
+had entered upon the work of another session.  The interval had
+left no outward mark on him.  The mind stays young a long time when
+nourished by a body such as his; and the body stays young a long
+time when mastered by such a mind.  Day by day faithfully to do
+one's work and to be restless for no more; without bitterness to
+accept obscurity for ambition; to possess all vital passions and to
+govern them; to stand on the world's thoroughfare and see the young
+generations hurrying by, and to put into the hands of a youth here
+and there a light which will burn long after our own personal taper
+is extinguished; to look back upon the years already gone as not
+without usefulness and honor, and forward to what may remain as
+safe at least from failure or any form of shame, and thus for one's
+self to feel the humility of the part before the greatness of the
+whole of life, and yet the privileges and duties of the individual
+to the race--this brings blessedness if it does not always bring
+happiness, and it had brought both to him.
+
+He sat at peace beside his lamp.  The interval had brought changes
+to his towns-people.  As he had walked home this afternoon, he had
+paused and looked across at some windows of the second story of a
+familiar corner.   The green shutters, tightly closed, were gray
+with cobweb and with dust.  One sagged from a loosened hinge and
+flapped in the rising autumn wind, showing inside a window sash
+also dust-covered and with a newspaper crammed through a broken
+pane.  Where did Ravenel Morris live now?  Did he live at all?
+
+Accustomed as he was to look through the distances of human
+history, to traverse the areas of its religions and see how its
+great conflicting faiths have each claimed the unique name of
+revelation for itself, he could not anywhere discover what to him
+was clear proof either of the separate existence of the soul or of
+its immortal life hereafter.  The security of that belief was
+denied him.  He had wished for it, had tried to make it his.  But
+while it never became a conviction, it remained a force.  Under all
+that reason could affirm or could deny, there dwelt unaccountable
+confidence that the light of human life, leaping from headland to
+headland,--the long transmitted radiance of thought,--was not to go
+out with the inevitable physical extinction of the species on this
+planet.  Somewhere in the universe he expected to meet his own, all
+whom he had loved, and to see this friend.  Meantime, he accepted
+the fact of death in the world with that uncomplaining submission
+to nature which is in the strength and sanity of genius.  As
+acquaintances left him, one after another, memory but kindled
+another lamp; hope but disclosed another white flower on its
+mysterious stem.
+
+He sat at peace.  The walls of the library showed their changes.
+There were valuable maps on Caesar's campaigns which had been sent
+him from Berlin; there were other maps from Athens; there was
+something from the city of Hannibal, and something from Tiber.
+Indeed, there were not many places in Isabel's wandering from which
+she had not sent home to him some proof that he was remembered.
+And always she sent letters which were more than maps or books,
+being in themselves charts to the movements of her spirit.  They
+were regular; they were frank; they assured him how increasingly
+she needed his friendship.  When she returned, she declared she
+would settle down to be near him for the rest of life.  Few names
+were mentioned in these letters: never Rowan's; never Mrs.
+Osborn's--that lifelong friendship having been broken; and in truth
+since last March young Mrs. Osborn's eyes had been sealed to the
+reading of all letters.  But beneath everything else, he could
+always trace the presence of one unspoken certainty--that she was
+passing through the deeps without herself knowing what height or
+what heath her feet would reach at last, there to abide.
+
+As he had walked homeward this afternoon through the dust,
+something else had drawn his attention: he was passing the Conyers
+homestead, and already lights were beginning to twinkle in the many
+windows; there was to be a ball that night, and he thought of the
+unconquerable woman ruling within, apparently gaining still in
+vitality and youth.  "Unjailed malefactors often attain great
+ages," he said to himself, as he turned away and thought of the
+lives she had helped to blight and shorten.
+
+As the night advanced, he fell under the influence of his book, was
+drawn out of his poor house, away from his obscure town, his
+unknown college, quitted his country and his age, passing backward
+until there fell around him the glorious dawn of the race before
+the sunrise of written history: the immortal still trod the earth;
+the human soldier could look away from his earthly battle-field and
+see, standing on a mountain crest, the figure and the authority of
+his Divine Commander.  Once more it was the flower-dyed plain,
+blood-dyed as well; the ships drawn up by the gray, the wrinkled
+sea; over on the other side, well-built Troy; and the crisis of the
+long struggle was coming.  Hector, of the glancing plume, had come
+back to the city for the last time, mindful of his end.
+
+He read once more through the old scene that is never old, and then
+put his book aside and sat thoughtful.  "_I know not if the gods
+will not overthrow me. . . .   I have very sore shame if, like a
+coward, I shrink away from battle; moreover mine own soul
+forbiddeth me. . . .  Destiny . . .  no man hast escaped, be he
+coward or be he valiant, when once he hath been born_."
+
+His eyes had never rested on any spot in human history, however
+separated in time and place, where the force of those words did not
+seem to reign.  Whatsoever the names under which men have conceived
+and worshipped their gods or their God, however much they have
+believed that it was these or it was He who overthrew them and made
+their destinies inescapable, after all, it is the high compulsion
+of the soul itself, the final mystery of personal choice, that
+sends us forth at last to our struggles and to our peace: "_mine
+own soul forbiddeth me_"--there for each is right and wrong, the
+eternal beauty of virtue.
+
+He did not notice the sound of approaching wheels, and that the
+sound ceased at his door.
+
+A moment later and Isabel with light footsteps stood before him.
+He sprang up with a cry and put his arms around her and held her.
+
+"You shall never go away again."
+
+"No, I am never going away again; I have come back to marry Rowan."
+
+These were her first words to him as they sat face to face.  And
+she quickly went on:
+
+"How is he?"
+
+He shook his head reproachfully at her: "When I saw him at least he
+seemed better than you seem."
+
+"I knew he was not well--I have known it for a long time.  But you
+saw him--in town--on the street--with his friends--attending to
+business?"
+
+"Yes--in town--on the street--with his friends--attending to
+business."
+
+"May I stay here?  I ordered my luggage to be sent here."
+
+"Your room is ready and has always been ready and waiting since the
+day you left.  I think Anna has been putting fresh flowers in it
+all autumn.  You will find some there to-night.  She has insisted
+of late that you would soon be coming home."
+
+An hour later she came down into the library again.  She had
+removed the traces of travel, and she had travelled slowly and was
+not tired.  All this enabled him to see how changed she was; and
+without looking older, how strangely oldened and grown how quiet of
+spirit.  She had now indeed become sister for him to those images
+of beauty that were always haunting him--those far, dim images of
+the girlhood of her sex, with their faces turned away from the sun
+and their eyes looking downward, pensive in shadow, too freighted
+with thoughts of their brief fate and their immortality.
+
+"I must have a long talk with you before I try to sleep.  I must
+empty my heart to you once."
+
+He knew that she needed the relief, and that what she asked of him
+during these hours would be silence.
+
+"I have tried everything, and everything has failed.  I have tried
+absence, but absence has not separated me from him.  I have tried
+silence, but through the silence I have never ceased speaking to
+him.  Nothing has really ever separated us; nothing ever can.  It
+is more than will or purpose, it is my life.  It is more than life
+to me, it is love."
+
+She spoke very quietly, and at first she seemed unable to progress
+very far from the beginning.  After every start, she soon came back
+to that one beginning.
+
+"It is of no use to weigh the right and the wrong of it: I tried
+that at first, and I suppose that is why I made sad mistakes.  You
+must not think that I am acting now from a sense of duty to him or
+to myself.  Duty does not enter into my feeling: it is love; all
+that I am forbids me to do anything else."
+
+But after a while she went back and bared before him in a way the
+history of her heart.  "The morning after he told me, I went to
+church.  I remember the lessons of the day and the hymns, and how I
+left the church before the sermon, because everything seemed to be
+on his side, and no one was on mine.  He had done wrong and was
+guilty; and I had been wrong and was innocent; and the church
+comforted him and overlooked me; and I was angry and walked out of
+it.
+
+"And do you remember the day I came to see you and you proposed
+everything to me, and I rejected everything?  You told me to go
+away for a while, to throw myself into the pleasures of other
+people; you reminded me of prayer and of the duty of forgiveness;
+you told me to try to put myself in his place, and reminded me of
+self-sacrifice, and then said at last that I must leave it to time,
+which sooner or later settles everything.  I rejected everything
+that you suggested.  But I have accepted everything since, and have
+learned a lesson and a service from each: the meaning of prayer and
+of forgiveness and of self-sacrifice; and what the lapse of time
+can do to bring us to ourselves and show us what we wish.  I say, I
+have lived through all these, and I have gotten something out of
+them all; but however much they may mean, they never constitute
+love; and it is my love that brings me back to him now."
+
+Later on she recurred to the idea of self-sacrifice: much other
+deepest feeling seemed to gather about that.
+
+"I am afraid that you do not realize what it means to a woman when
+a principle like this is involved.  Can any man ever know?  Does he
+dream what it means to us women to sacrifice ourselves as they
+often require us to do?  I have been travelling in old lands--so
+old that the history of each goes back until we can follow it with
+our eyes no longer.  But as far as we can see, we see this
+sorrow--the sorrow of women who have wished to be first in the love
+of the men they have loved.  You, who read everything!  Cannot you
+see them standing all through history, the sad figures of girls who
+have only asked for what they gave, love in its purity and its
+singleness--have only asked that there should have been no other
+before them?  And cannot you see what a girl feels when she
+consents to accept anything less,--that she is lowered to herself
+from that time on,--has lost her own ideal of herself, as well as
+her ideal of the man she loves?  And cannot you see how she lowers
+herself in his eyes also and ceases to be his ideal, through her
+willingness to live with him on a lower plane?  That is our wound.
+That is our trouble and our sorrow: I have found it wherever I have
+gone."
+
+Long before she said this to him, she had questioned him closely
+about Rowan.  He withheld from her knowledge of some things which
+he thought she could better bear to learn later and by degrees.
+
+"I knew he was not well," she said; "I feared it might be worse.
+Let me tell you this: no one knows him as I do.  I must speak
+plainly.  First, there was his trouble; that shadowed for
+him one ideal in his life.  Then this drove him to a kind of
+self-concealment; and that wounded another ideal--his love of
+candor.  Then he asked me to marry him, and he told me the truth
+about himself and I turned him off.  Then came the scandals that
+tried to take away his good name, and I suppose have taken it away.
+And then, through all this, were the sufferings he was causing
+others around him, and the loss of his mother.  I have lived
+through all these things with him while I have been away, and I
+understand; they sap life.  I am going up to write to him now,
+and will you post the letter to-night?  I wish him to come to
+see me at once, and our marriage must take place as soon as
+possible--here--very quietly."
+
+
+Rowan came the next afternoon.   She was in the library; and he
+went in and shut the door, and they were left alone.
+
+Professor Hardage and Miss Anna sat in an upper room.  He had no
+book and she had no work; they were thinking only of the two
+downstairs.  And they spoke to each other in undertones, breaking
+the silence with brief sentences, as persons speak when awaiting
+news from sick-rooms.
+
+Daylight faded.  Outside the lamplighter passed, torching the grimy
+lamps.  Miss Anna spoke almost in a whisper: "Shall I have some
+light sent in?"
+
+"No, Anna."
+
+"Did you tell him what the doctors have said about his health?"
+
+"No; there was bad news enough without that for one day.  And then
+happiness might bring back health to him.  The trouble that
+threatens him will have to be put down as one of the consequences
+of all that has occurred to him--as part of what he is and of what
+he has done.  The origin of disease may lie in our troubles--our
+nervous shocks, our remorses, and better strivings."
+
+The supper hour came.
+
+"I do not wish any supper, Anna."
+
+"Nor I.  How long they stay together!"
+
+"They have a great deal to say to each other, Anna."
+
+"I know, I know.  Poor children!"
+
+"I believe he is only twenty-five."
+
+"When Isabel comes up, do you think I ought to go to her room and
+see whether she wants anything?"
+
+"No, Anna."
+
+"And she must not know that we have been sitting up, as though we
+felt sorry for them and could not go on with our own work."
+
+"I met Marguerite and Barbee this afternoon walking together.  I
+suppose she will come back to him at last.  But she has had her
+storm, and he knows it, and he knows there will never be any storm
+for him.  She is another one of those girls of mine--not sad, but
+with half the sun shining on them.  But half a sun shining
+steadily, as it will always shine on her, is a great deal."
+
+"Hush!" said Miss Anna, in a whisper, "he is gone!  Isabel is
+coming up the steps."
+
+They heard her and then they did not hear her, and then again and
+then not again.
+
+Miss Anna started up:
+
+"She needs me!"
+
+He held her back:
+
+"No, Anna! Not to help is to help."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+One afternoon late in the autumn of the following year, when a
+waiting stillness lay on the land and shimmering sunlight opened up
+the lonely spaces of woods and fields, the Reaper who comes to all
+men and reaps what they have sown, approached the home of the
+Merediths and announced his arrival to the young master of the
+house: he would await his pleasure.
+
+Rowan had been sitting up, propped by his pillows.  It was the room
+of his grandfather as it had been that of the man preceding; the
+bed had been their bed; and the first to place it where it stood
+may have had in mind a large window, through which as he woke from
+his nightly sleep he might look far out upon the land, upon rolling
+stately acres.
+
+Rowan looked out now: past the evergreens just outside to the
+shining lawn beyond; and farther away, upon fields of brown
+shocks--guiltless harvest; then toward a pasture on the horizon.
+He could see his cattle winding slowly along the edge of a russet
+woodland on which the slanting sunlight fell.  Against the blue sky
+in the silvery air a few crows were flying: all went in the same
+direction but each went without companions.  He watched their wings
+curiously with lonely, following eyes.  Whither home passed they?
+And by whose summons?  And with what guidance?
+
+A deep yearning stirred him, and he summoned his wife and the nurse
+with his infant son.  He greeted her; then raising himself on one
+elbow and leaning over the edge of the bed, he looked a long time
+at the boy slumbering on the nurse's lap.
+
+The lesson of his brief span of years gathered into his gaze.
+
+"Life of my life," he said, with that lesson on his lips, "sign of
+my love, of what was best in me, this is my prayer for you: may you
+find one to love you such as your father found; when you come to
+ask her to unite her life with yours, may you be prepared to tell
+her the truth about yourself, and have nothing to tell that would
+break her heart and break the hearts of others.  May it be said of
+you that you are a better man than your father."
+
+He had the child lifted and he kissed his forehead and his eyes.
+"By the purity of your own life guard the purity of your sons for
+the long honor of our manhood."  Then he made a sign that the nurse
+should withdraw.
+
+When she had withdrawn, he put his face down on the edge of the
+pillow where his wife knelt, her face hidden.  His hair fell over
+and mingled with her hair.  He passed his arm around her neck and
+held her close.
+
+"All your troubles came to you because you were true to the
+highest.  You asked only the highest from me, and the highest was
+more than I could give.  But be kind to my memory.  Try to forget
+what is best forgotten, but remember what is worth remembering.
+Judge me for what I was; but judge me also for what I wished to be.
+Teach my son to honor my name; and when he is old enough to
+understand, tell him the truth about his father.  Tell him what it
+was that saddened our lives.  As he looks into his mother's face,
+it will steady him."
+
+He put both arms around her neck.
+
+"I am tired of it all," he said.  "I want rest.  Love has been more
+cruel to me than death."
+
+A few days later, an afternoon of the same autumnal stillness, they
+bore him across his threshold with that gentleness which so often
+comes too late--slowly through his many-colored woods, some leaves
+drifting down upon the sable plumes and lodging in them---along the
+turnpike lined with dusty thistles--through the watching town, a
+long procession, to the place of the unreturning.
+
+They laid him along with his fathers.
+
+
+
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